Privatise business schools

Privatise business schools por Len Shackleton:

Higher education has many purposes, but one of the most important is the preparation of young people to enter the world of work, either employment in managerial and professional roles or starting their own businesses. This purpose should clearly be pursued most determinedly in business schools ..

.. business schools should be encouraged to break away from universities to encourage a greater emphasis on preparation for employment, more effective and focused learning, and cost savings to government and students.

.. Schools are too detached from business, arguably overly concerned with theory rather than practice. Staff have inadequate private sector experience and are often rather keener on personal research projects aimed at the costly and unnecessary ‘Research Excellence Framework’ than on working with businesses.

Many students have little or no contact with those currently employed in business, particularly since placements and internships have gone into decline, partly as a result of employment regulation .. there are few sanctions for persistently poor or ineffective teachers.

Short academic years and undemanding assessment requirements can’t prepare students for the pressures of business life, and it is no wonder that employers continue to report dissatisfaction with many of the business students they interview ..

Indeed, the over-charging of business students to keep arts and humanities departments open is a hidden national scandal ..

It’s time to change things. Business schools’ location within a university culture of excessive regulation, backward-looking trade unions, anachronistic contracts and a medieval calendar does nothing to promote excellence ..

The government .. can make it clear that there will be no more public funding for business teaching. It can allow universities to keep the proceeds of the sale of their schools, a one-off gain at a difficult time. The rest of the higher education sector will profit from the example of the innovation which will be unleashed, and it may be that other parts of universities could seek to follow in due course – law schools are promising candidates.