‘Business Is Good At Providing A Solution … But We Don’t Have The Only Solution’: Wharton’s Dean Answers Chris Marquis

Wharton Dean Erika James is the latest business school leader to push back on Chris Marquis’ call to abolish business schools – and the highest-profile one so far.

Since the Cambridge Judge professor’s New York Times essay was published October 18, and Poets&Quants interviewed the author the next day to further explore his controversial idea, P&Q’s front page has been deluged with responses from across business education, most of them challenging Marquis’ thesis to varying degrees.

Speaking on The Indicator, a podcast from NPR’s Planet Money, James says the essay’s headline “was so outlandish that it seemed worthy of a response, quite frankly.”

“I think that was a salacious attempt to be critical of business schools,” she says. “But I would also say it’s an oversimplification of what business schools do.”

In a LinkedIn post promoting the episode, James says that during a normal week she wouldn’t feel the need to defend B-schools, “but last week was not a normal week.”

Still, the two agree on more than the abolition debate suggests. In the same post, James writes that the essay contained “an argument for how business schools should be reformed.”

WHAT MARQUIS ARGUES

Marquis previously taught at Cornell and Harvard. In the Times essay, titled “I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down,” he wrote that “we don’t need to fix business schools. We need to abolish them.” On the podcast, he says that by “abolish” he means a fundamental redesign and recreation of existing schools.

In an exclusive interview with P&Q, Marquis says it isn’t realistic that B-schools will ever disappear entirely, and notes that a Times editor chose the headline. His fix, he says, starts with curriculum and faculty incentives.

His critique rests on two points. First, he says students arrive wanting to change the world and see those ambitions squashed over two years by curricula centered on shareholder capitalism, career offices that steer them toward higher-paying fields, and peer pressure. Second, he argues that case studies, which often can’t be published without the featured company’s sign-off, overrepresent winners.

When an NPR host suggests he makes the B-school mindset sound like a virus, Marquis agrees. “I actually sort of do think it’s a virus, to be honest,” he says.

JAMES: THE SKILLS STILL MATTER

James defends the core curriculum of accounting, marketing, finance and management.

“Regardless of who you are, chances are, you are gonna be working in some form of organization,” she says. “And most of those organizations have resources, people and money that requires an understanding of how to manage those resources. People need to understand how to sell. And those are all skills that come from a business education.”

She concedes part of Marquis’ point on career funneling. Consulting and finance firms recruit students aggressively, she says, and B-schools have been complicit in that. But she says today’s students want more.

“I’m recognizing generational shifts that exist with young people who are way more focused on businesses’ contributions to society and social impact,” James says. “And they’re coming to us with the expectation that they will get exposure to how businesses operate in a … broader, impactful manner than just profit-seeking.”

Wharton’s course catalog includes offerings on government policy and environmental sustainability, as well as a class on reforming mass incarceration and the role of business, NPR reports.

WHERE THEY AGREE

James’ own background is outside business, as she points out to NPR: she doesn’t hold an MBA; her undergraduate degree is in psychology, and her Ph.D. is in organizational psychology.

“And so, when I think about the opportunities to marry both that liberal arts mindset with the acumen that comes from a business education, to me, that should be the gold standard,” James says. “Business is good at providing a solution to some of the world’s most challenging problems. But we don’t have the only solution.” 

It’s one area where she and Marquis are in step: he has called for B-schools to engage more with disciplines such as government policy, social work, and environmental studies, so graduates are prepared to take on problems like public health and climate change. 

On LinkedIn, James says the best schools are already reforming to keep pace with industry and society. Leading today, she writes, requires collaboration “across both disciplines and divides” – and the B-schools that adopt that approach “are the ones that will thrive.”

DON’T MISS EXCLUSIVE: THE PROFESSOR WHO CALLED TO ABOLISH B-SCHOOLS TELLS P&Q WHAT HE’D BUILD INSTEAD and THE BUSINESS SCHOOL WORLD RESPONDS TO CHRIS MARQUIS – AND NOT ALL OF IT IS PUSHBACK

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