B-schools after the crisis- business as usual?

There was much talk in the early months of the present crisis of b-schools doing deep introspection into their goals and pedagogy and coming out with a radical revamp. What has actually happened? Not much, according to the Economist. Even as the world recovers from the crisis, b-schools, it appears, will carry on as usual, with some cosmetic changes to take into account the crisis.

Most (b-schools) have settled for modest adjustments. Columbia Business School in New York, for example, set up a faculty committee that delved into every aspect of the MBA programme. But it is introducing just two new modules—on the future of finance and the collapse of the auto industry. At Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona, too, there is to be no ripping up and starting afresh. Instead, students on the Global MBA course are to be brought together at the end of the programme for a final module on global citizenship.

Instead of radical change, there will now be attempts to incorporate the crisis and its lessons in various courses, as required. That is normal. The East Asian crisis is part of courses in economic development. LTCM is standard fare in courses on financial institutions and markets.

Randall Kroszner, a former governor of the Federal Reserve and an economics lecturer at Chicago University’s Booth school, agrees that his MBA students will notice a change of emphasis, if not a radical new curriculum. “If I just taught my money class as I did four years ago I wouldn’t have the same emphasis on the housing market or the inter-connections between the banking and non-banking financial systems. I touched on it, but one would be foolhardy not to put a new emphasis on it.”

Monetary policy is another example. Five years ago, the theoretical possibility of a zero lower bound on interest rates may have been mentioned in passing, but most students saw it as such a low-probability event for most developed countries that they didn’t pay it much attention. Now it is a real issue that affects business decisions.

Anthing else? Well, there is talk of greater focus on "soft skills". But this can only give those familiar with b-schools a sense of deja vu......