From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession: Rakesh Khurana
Review
"An important and surprisingly disparaging look at business-school education in the U.S. from the late 19th century to the present." — BusinessWeek
"Khurana issues a call to arms for business schools to take back the high ground." — Tiffany Sharples, TIME Magazine
"Rakesh Khurana has done a great service to management education with this scholarly and important book." — Gary L. Cooper, Times Higher Education Supplement
If Prof. Khurana wanted to torment business–school deans, alumni and current students, he couldn’t have picked a better way. Prof. Khurana has identified an important imbalance. In the current environment, many brilliant young MBAs don’t aspire to be corporate chief executive officers, who struggle to uphold their agendas against pressure from all sides. These students would rather be consultants who earn big money fomenting change. Better yet, they want to be the powerful investors who hire and fire CEOs. — George Anders The Wall Street Journal The book is extremely well written and provides a detailed historical account of US business education from the 1880s to the present day…This text will help many of us in business schools to think about who we are and where we need to go in future. Rakesh Khurana has done a great service to management education with this scholarly and important book. — Gary L. Cooper Times Higher Education Supplement Is corporate management a real profession? The intellectual rigor that legitimized business schools and turned the M.B.A. into a recognized credential has fallen by the wayside, argues Khurana, an associate professor at Harvard Business School. Instead of producing young professionals, he says, business schools are treating students as consumers and their education as a commodity. Exhaustively researched, Khurana’s book examines the birth of the managerial class, the rise of the business school as an academic institution and what he calls its recent deterioration. This failure has created a climate ripe for corruption, and Khurana issues a call to arms for business schools to take back the high ground. — Tiffany Sharples Time Magazine Khurana’s meticulously researched account ends with a call for renewal of the idea of management as a profession… Coming as it does out of Harvard, the most iconic of business schools, From Higher Aims … could hardly be a more provocative and timely intervention… Anyone remotely interested in management and its future should get hold of it–and ignore its lessons at their peril. — Simon Caulkin Observer Khurana’s From Higher Aims to Hired Hands is an important and surprisingly disparaging look at business-school education in the U.S. from the late 19th century to the present…In the new volume, he strikes closer to home, concluding that ‘fundamental questions exist as to whether business schools retain any genuine academic or societal mission’…As Khurana supplies layer upon layer of evidence in this admittedly dense work, it becomes increasingly difficult to disagree with his conclusions. — Hardy Green BusinessWeek A fascinating history of business education. The Economist Khurana presents his argument in rich detail and the book is worth reading by anyone interested in the current trends in the commercialization of academia. — Donald Stabile EH.net It is not uncommon today for critics to ask if business schools have lost their way, but Harvard’s Rakesh Khurana poses the question against such a vivid, detailed, and compulsively researched historical background that it becomes more provocative than ever. Biz Ed Magazine Khurana’s criticism is measured–and is the more damning for it. His book is an impressive tour of the social and intellectual history of American university business schools…Drawing on rich archive material, Khurana traces how the fledgling American business schools confronted these challenges with varying strategies during the early 1900s and the Depression, the postwar boom years and recent decades of freewheeling capitalism. The book is, however, more than just an historical odyssey; it is also a heartfelt plea for business schools to rediscover their higher purpose. The university-based business schools were founded to train a professional class of managers akin to doctors and lawyers. But, he argues forcefully, they have retreated from that goal. — Des Dearlove The Times Rarely does one have the pleasure of reading a scholarly work as complete and as comprehensive as From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Khurana presents a well-crafted social history of the plight of business school education in the context of a broader framework of American higher educationSKhurana exposes inadequacies in current business education programs and advocates for needed reforms. — J.B. Kashner Choice Khurana has produced an excellent institutional history, albeit one in which many of the ingredients were already well-known from earlier accounts… However, these separate accounts had not been stitched together over such a broad canvas as Khurana constructs. The book should be compulsory reading for all Deans of business schools with a concern to learn from history. — Stewart Clegg Australian Review of Public Affairs
Review
If Prof. Khurana wanted to torment business–school deans, alumni and current students, he couldn’t have picked a better way. Prof. Khurana has identified an important imbalance. In the current environment, many brilliant young MBAs don’t aspire to be corporate chief executive officers, who struggle to uphold their agendas against pressure from all sides. These students would rather be consultants who earn big money fomenting change. Better yet, they want to be the powerful investors who hire and fire CEOs.
(George Anders The Wall Street Journal )
The book is extremely well written and provides a detailed historical account of US business education from the 1880s to the present day…This text will help many of us in business schools to think about who we are and where we need to go in future. Rakesh Khurana has done a great service to management education with this scholarly and important book.
(Gary L. Cooper Times Higher Education Supplement )
Is corporate management a real profession? The intellectual rigor that legitimized business schools and turned the M.B.A. into a recognized credential has fallen by the wayside, argues Khurana, an associate professor at Harvard Business School. Instead of producing young professionals, he says, business schools are treating students as consumers and their education as a commodity. Exhaustively researched, Khurana’s book examines the birth of the managerial class, the rise of the business school as an academic institution and what he calls its recent deterioration. This failure has created a climate ripe for corruption, and Khurana issues a call to arms for business schools to take back the high ground.
(Tiffany Sharples Time Magazine )
Khurana’s meticulously researched account ends with a call for renewal of the idea of management as a profession. . . . Coming as it does out of Harvard, the most iconic of business schools, From Higher Aims . . . could hardly be a more provocative and timely intervention. . . . Anyone remotely interested in management and its future should get hold of it–and ignore its lessons at their peril.
(Simon Caulkin Observer )
Khurana’s From Higher Aims to Hired Hands is an important and surprisingly disparaging look at business-school education in the U.S. from the late 19th century to the present….In the new volume, he strikes closer to home, concluding that ‘fundamental questions exist as to whether business schools retain any genuine academic or societal mission’…As Khurana supplies layer upon layer of evidence in this admittedly dense work, it becomes increasingly difficult to disagree with his conclusions.
(Hardy Green BusinessWeek )
A fascinating history of business education.
(The Economist )
Khurana presents his argument in rich detail and the book is worth reading by anyone interested in the current trends in the commercialization of academia.
(Donald Stabile EH.net )
It is not uncommon today for critics to ask if business schools have lost their way, but Harvard’s Rakesh Khurana poses the question against such a vivid, detailed, and compulsively researched historical background that it becomes more provocative than ever.
(Biz Ed Magazine )
Khurana’s criticism is measured–and is the more damning for it. His book is an impressive tour of the social and intellectual history of American university business schools…Drawing on rich archive material, Khurana traces how the fledgling American business schools confronted these challenges with varying strategies during the early 1900s and the Depression, the postwar boom years and recent decades of freewheeling capitalism. The book is, however, more than just an historical odyssey; it is also a heartfelt plea for business schools to rediscover their higher purpose. The university-based business schools were founded to train a professional class of managers akin to doctors and lawyers. But, he argues forcefully, they have retreated from that goal.
(Des Dearlove The Times )
Rarely does one have the pleasure of reading a scholarly work as complete and as comprehensive as From Higher Aims to Hired Hands. Khurana presents a well-crafted social history of the plight of business school education in the context of a broader framework of American higher educationSKhurana exposes inadequacies in current business education programs and advocates for needed reforms.
(J.B. Kashner Choice )
Khurana has produced an excellent institutional history, albeit one in which many of the ingredients were already well-known from earlier accounts. . . . However, these separate accounts had not been stitched together over such a broad canvas as Khurana constructs. The book should be compulsory reading for all Deans of business schools with a concern to learn from history.
(Stewart Clegg Australian Review of Public Affairs )