Last week, the Commerce School staged its own version of a hostile takeover, advancing in the BusinessWeek rankings of undergraduate business programs to the number one spot. The Commerce School’s achievement demonstrates what can come of a holistic approach to educating students and funding the resources they need to succeed. The way the rankings are generated, however, highlights key differences between the Commerce School and other schools within the University and necessitates the examination of this “achievement gap.”
BusinessWeek used five metrics to determine its rankings: student satisfaction, a survey of company recruiters, “academic quality” (gauged by SAT scores, student-teacher ratios and class size), the starting salaries of students entering the workforce and the MBA feeder rank — students’ rate of success obtaining MBAs from top business schools. Rankings should usually be taken with a grain of salt, but BusinessWeek assessed factors that actually impact students’ undergraduate experience and success.
For the most part, undergraduates in the Commerce School will apply their academic curricula more directly than their counterparts in the College. While an accounting concentrator will likely become an accountant, a philosophy major will not necessarily become a philosopher; the department of philosophy measures its success in the academic achievements of its students rather than their long-term financial or career success. The very intent of programs within the College and the Commerce School is fundamentally different, and success is more easily measured in the tangible world of business.
But just because it’s harder to calculate success in liberal arts disciplines does not mean some of the same quantitative benchmarks are not worth applying. Commerce School Dean Carl Zeithaml said in an interview that the Commerce School’s high level of student satisfaction catapulted it into the top spot. The Commerce School has achieved such a high level of student satisfaction by providing its students with excellent resources including a high-caliber faculty, up-to-date technology, more classroom space and effective programming. Many departments in the College would benefit from such intentional investment in resources.
Zeithaml attributed the Commerce School’s success to continual innovation, saying, “You can’t just flip a switch and change your ranking.” But continual innovation requires continual funding, which is oftentimes more difficult for the College. The Commerce School is better poised to solicit donations from its alumni, whose business pursuits often put them in a better position to give. Additionally, the Commerce School relies upon the commonwealth for a smaller percentage of its budget. Departments within the College might find their needs better met were the College less at the whim of the commonwealth’s budget cuts. Without a stable source of outside funding the College’s ability to innovate at the departmental level remains severely handicapped.
Zeithaml identified the “decades of great students, dedicated faculty and staff who work to create a great curriculum and great experience for ... students and alumni and recruiters who are loyal to the school and consistently come back to engage with the program [and] hire our students” as a self-perpetuating cycle of success. The intent of most academic departments in the College is far less career-driven because the end goal is the mental mastery of material rather than its application. Similarly, College faculty and administrators have less lucrative networks because their students and colleagues found success in academia rather than in the business world.
Rankings give us something to brag about, but they also point to the need for recognizing and working to solve gaps in the way we structure spending and fundraising at the University. The Commerce School found success through innovation and consistent dedication to students; other schools at the University would do well to evaluate success with the same benchmarks.
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