Same as It Ever Was

Abstract

This chapter explores what has changed and what has stayed the same in business schools across the United States. On the one hand, the growth of the finance economy since the 1980s has meant that what goes on in business schools has aligned more perfectly with the corporate world than at any other time in the preceding century. Shareholder value became the mantra chanted in classrooms and boardrooms. On the other hand, business schools continue to evade the ethical issues raised in and by the business world, and they have avoided much by way of accountability for what they teach. The chapter then explains that two more things have changed over the last few decades. The first involves the erosion of the democratic impulse of American higher education. The second change is the growing influence of business-school thought on the way universities do their own business.