BUSINESS SCHOOLS
Are they too elitist?
Apaper by two local academics has ignited a debate on the role and responsibility of SA business schools, and whether academic freedom is more important than national priorities. It accuses other academics of being “chameleons” paying “lip-service” to post-apartheid policies intended to give blacks more access to higher education.
The paper — “Claiming to be a cut above the rest: class, race, elitism and hypocrisy are alive and well in the African business school sector” — was written by Dhiru Soni and Mark Hay, of Regent Business School and the Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa), respectively. The privately owned schools are neighbours in Durban’s city centre. Hay is a former executive director at the Council on Higher Education, which governs the activities of SA business schools.
The immediate target of the paper is Walter Baets, dean of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB). Belgian-born Baets, who previously held senior positions in several European schools, has headed the GSB since 2009.
However, arguments in the paper have raised broader issues about the role and independence of business schools.
The initial reason for the authors’ ire appears to have been a published interview with Baets in January, in which he suggested that inexpensive master of business administration (MBA) degrees are not necessarily better value than expensive ones. The GSB’s MBA is near the top of the SA cost scale, and Mancosa’s and Regent’s near the bottom.
Baets said: “The MBA will only keep its value if it can guarantee to the graduate a job at a level of salary that justifies the investment. The price of a good MBA is high, hence the return needs to be in line. The less-good MBAs might do more harm than good. A student still pays an important amount of money for something that does not necessarily have the quality, but does not give them employment either.”
Baets, in an interview for this Cover Story, denies he was running down cheap schools. “The point I was trying to make was that the SA business schools community and education authorities need to increase the quality of all schools. Cheap doesn’t automatically equate to value.
“There’s no point paying for an MBA that doesn’t help your career.”
The argument, however, extends beyond MBAs, into other academic programmes and executive education.
Soni and Hay say high fees put qualifications beyond the reach of less-well-off students, mainly black. They hint at a broader business schools problem where “rightly earned black privileges in higher education (have) unleashed the anger of bigots who are threatened by what they see as the invasion of their elitist spaces”.
Mancosa director Zaheer Hamid takes it further: “SA business schools have failed to live up to the Freedom Charter in a real and meaningful way. It’s a travesty that they receive government funding through subsidies (from the pockets of the tax base) but continue to benefit only a few.”
Regent executive director Ahmed Shaikh says this should be part of a general debate within the business schools community. The most important thing is that they all need to be driven by common national goals.
University schools, particularly, should link their teaching to helping government achieve its developmental needs. “The universities of which they are part are statefunded. So their schools should be aligned to state goals.”
He finds no argument from other schools when those goals
‘‘ SA BUSINESS SCHOOLS HAVE FAILED TO LIVE UP TO THE FREEDOM CHARTER. IT’S A TRAVESTY THAT THEY RECEIVE GOVERNMENT FUNDING THROUGH SUBSIDIES BUT CONTINUE TO BENEFIT ONLY A FEW ZAHEER HAMID
include helping provide the economy with hundreds of thousands of competent managers. There is also some consensus when he suggests schools should help champion government’s National Development Plan (NDP).
University of Stellenbosch Business School dean Piet Naude says: “The difference between the NDP and other economic policies is that it is based on the best analysis of impediments in the country and its solutions are not based on ideology. Someone needs to take it further.”
SA Business Schools Association president Owen Skae, who is also dean of Rhodes Business School, wants his organisation to lead the conversation. “It’s about compelling people to be dragged along with you. The NDP is official policy but never seems to be part of the main discussion. We have the academic capacity to put it there and shape the debate.”
Baets accepts this up to a point. Schools have a duty to contribute to economic development but each one must decide how. Putting too much emphasis on the NDP risks ignoring other potential inputs.
But any agreement between Shaikh and other school deans ends when he and his Regent colleagues suggest the state should have a more direct say in how universities and schools spend its money.
Baets calls the idea “communist”. Wits Business School director Steve Bluen speaks for most when he retorts: “You can’t argue that because the state gives you money, you have to toe the line. That would be a direct contravention of academic freedom.”
Some might argue that, though some of their activities are degree-based, a large part of business schools’ activities is management training and not strictly academic.
Naude says universities are not arms of government. “But because we are funded by the state, it would be morally wrong to say the NDP and poverty and job creation and entrepreneurship are not important to us.
“We are a partner to both state and business, which is not easy in SA, where there is such lack of trust between the two. It would be great for the country if the three of us could sit around the table and discuss what we need to do for education. Working together, business schools have the capacity to lead that conversation. If we could get that going, it would be fantastic. But we have to overcome the mistrust.”
Cobus Oosthuizen, dean of the Johannesburg-based Milpark Business School, says schools should have the freedom “to choose what we teach”, but is more sympathetic to Shaikh’s view that the content of programmes — academic or otherwise — should not be dictated by corporate clients. “Any school worth its salt would look beyond the needs of business. There are so many stakeholders in what we do. Every one affects the others.”
Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership CEO Renosi Mokate says that to rely too much on business is to invite a shortterm view. “What companies want now may be different in five years. That’s why education has to have an open approach.”
The same point might apply to the priorities of the government of the day.
Shaikh and Hamid also face opposition to their criticism of “elitism” in SA business schools. It’s a word apparently aimed at schools that market themselves as academically superior, and whose high fees are beyond the scope of most South Africans. Hamid says such schools “skew the realities” of quality, access, affordability, impact and relevance. They are guilty of the “commodification of education for profit”.
It’s not just business schools. Shaikh complains that only 6% of South Africans move on to higher education, compared to more than 30% in some other countries.
That’s hardly the institutions’ fault, says Naude. They have to follow entry rules and academic standards set by national education authorities. Stellenbosch Executive Development CEO Frik Landman says rules allow business schools to accept some students — mainly black — without the necessary academic qualifications for certain degree courses, as long as they have the background and experience to cope. Some of these students have flourished, outperforming those with prior degrees. Executive education programmes, many of which are heavily dependent on employer sponsorship of staff, offer much more flexibility in terms of entry requirements.
But even these success stories don’t justify business schools throwing open their gates to everyone, he says. “We have to deliver a high-end product. Not everyone