Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education: Liberal Learning for the Profession

Praise for Rethinking Undergraduate Business Education

"With business the most popular undergraduate major for more than 30 years, this book meets a long overdue need to carefully evaluate the state of undergraduate business education in the United States and provide frameworks for improving it. The authors argue forcefully for a balanced approach one that integrates applied learning with liberal arts models of inquiry. Only with this kind of integration can we educate leaders who can reason both concretely and creatively."
Sally Blount, dean, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

"The authors have provided the most thoughtful and systematic study of under–graduate business education since the famous Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation reports of the 1950s. It is difficult to imagine a more bold and timely study that also offers a path for revitalizing America′s undergraduate business schools and, in turn, our nation′s business leadership."
Rakesh Khurana, Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development, Harvard Business School, and author, From Higher Aims to Hired Hands

"This book effectively dismantles the argument that there is no time or need for the liberal arts in modern business education. The authors correctly point out that the world needs business leaders who can manage complexity, think creatively, and leverage the insights of others skills honed far more explicitly in the liberal arts than in business. Their call for a thoughtful balance between mastery of business disciplines and exploration of alternative perspectives is one I wholeheartedly endorse."
Roger Martin, dean, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and author, The Opposable Mind

Acknowledgments xv

The Authors xvii

1. Liberal Learning for Business Education: An Integrative Vision 1

2. Business and the Academy: Founding Hopes and Continuing Challenges 14

3. On the Ground: The Challenges of Undergraduate Business Education 32

4. The Meaning and Relevance of Liberal Education 51

5. Teaching for Key Dimensions of Liberal Learning 70

6. Pedagogies of Liberal Learning in Business Education 88

7. Structural Approaches to Integration: Building Institutional Intentionality 111

8. Emerging Agendas: Globalization and Entrepreneurship 132

9. The Way Forward 161

References 179

Index 185

Anne Colby is consulting professor at Stanford University School of Education.

Thomas Ehrlich is visiting professor at Stanford University School of Education.

William M. Sullivan is senior scholar at the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash College.

All three were formerly senior scholars at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Jonathan R. Dolle is associate partner for Research and Development at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.