To the Editor:
Re “Let’s Abolish Business Schools,” by Christopher Marquis (Opinion guest essay, Oct. 18):
As the dean of a business school, I inevitably bristled at the headline. Yet I commend Mr. Marquis for wanting to better serve the many people who come to business schools looking to make the world a better place.
For me, the question is not whether business schools should exist, as Mr. Marquis suggests, but what kind of leaders they should educate, and how.
Mr. Marquis repeats arguments that have circulated for decades, portraying business schools as responsible for nearly every ill in our economy and society. This is deeply unfair to the many graduates who work every day to build organizations, create products and services, and generate jobs.
Contrary to Mr. Marquis’s claims, many institutions take seriously the power that business wields and recognize the moral responsibility of management. That is why at my school, IESE Business School, a focus on positive impact has been woven throughout our core curriculum from our very beginnings. And while Mr. Marquis criticizes the case method, we’ve found it instrumental in teaching students to approach business decisions not merely as technical problems but as human decisions involving competing interests and ethical dilemmas.
This approach is even more relevant with A.I. taking on more analytical tasks. Business schools must help leaders ask why, when and how to use it, who is accountable when things go wrong and how to guide people through disruption.
Franz Heukamp Barcelona, Spain
To the Editor:
I’m grateful for Christopher Marquis’s inside look at business schools. When I finished reading his essay, all I could do was let out a subdued “Wow.”
It is clear that one major reason that so many American businesses are intellectually and morally bankrupt — while exceedingly profitable, monetarily — is that the training pipeline for so many of our captains of industry is intellectually and morally bankrupt.
Businesses need to focus on being the best at what they do and serving the common good, over and above making profits. And even if we closed business schools tomorrow, the damage done to the system is so pervasive that it will take at least two generations of new and improved leaders to purge the culture of personal gain — which, for most of us, is nothing more than a pathetic euphemism for greed.
(Rev.) Shaun S. Brown San Diego
To the Editor:
Christopher Marquis’s call to shut down business schools rests on a central assumption: that his experience as a faculty member at three of the most elite (and elitist) institutions in the world reflects the experience of faculty and students at schools that look nothing like Harvard, Cambridge or Cornell.
In my 25 years as a business professor and an administrator, I have seen a very different reality. Students pursue business to become agents of social and economic change, lead purposeful lives and give back to their schools in support of that mission. To conclude that every business school is broken based on three of them diminishes the work of thousands of faculty and staff members at other institutions who are committed to giving students the skills and perspective they need to solve the world’s problems.
The problem may lie less with business schools as an idea than with some of the institutions that house them.
Christopher Stevens Spokane, Wash.
To the Editor:
Kudos, Prof. Christopher Marquis. But something you hint at needs to be addressed more fully. It is not just the business schools that have been infected.
I am approaching my 50th year of teaching college students about our responsibility to pursue social justice and the need to act on behalf of “the other.” It used to be easy to start such discussions with my students. They were pursuing degrees in public health, medicine, nursing, health care administration, social work, etc., and the idea of incorporating such goals into their professional lives excited most of them.
But the glorified pursuit of profit and the misguided worship of markets have, over the years, pervaded the minds of too many of my students, and I have to help most of them unlearn what our culture now teaches them.
While we are discussing what should replace the current ethos in our business schools, let’s not overlook the need to address the infiltration of the M.B.A.’s credo into the other curriculums in our universities.
Daniel Swartzman Chicago The writer is an associate professor at the Parkinson School of Health Sciences and Public Health.
To the Editor:
As someone with a Wharton M.B.A., I read Christopher Marquis’s call to abolish business schools with genuine curiosity.
Five years after graduating from business school, in 2020, I was diagnosed with A.L.S., a devastating and deadly neurodegenerative disorder. Using my business school education, I’ve responded by founding and building a public benefit company to accelerate precision drug development for A.L.S. and related neurodegenerative diseases.
While my story is unique, I don’t think my mind-set is. In my experience at Wharton, I was surrounded by many thoughtful and earnest peers and professors, deeply interested not simply in making money but also in solving complicated problems, in advancing innovation and, yes, in making the world a better place.
So, while business education can certainly be improved, I don’t think it’s as irredeemable as Mr. Marquis suggests. In my experience, a business education has been extraordinarily valuable.
Bernie Zipprich New York
To the Editor:
After 18 years in corporate America and 14 in the nonprofit sector, I found that Christopher Marquis’s arguments resonate with me. My experience demonstrates how a business degree can hinder entry into the nonprofit sector, but also how the skills can provide great value to an organization and great personal reward.
I believe that nonprofits deserve the same caliber of educated, engaged business professionals as for-profit organizations — perhaps even more so, given the responsibility to steward donor funds effectively. Next week, I will return to my alma mater to participate in a business school forum on nonprofits, at which I will argue for students to consider entering the nonprofit sector for their careers.
Mr. Marquis’s proposal to integrate sustainability, ethics and societal impact into business education could help nonprofits embrace business professionals and reduce their skepticism of the degree while instilling in students values of societal gain instead of personal gain. Maybe a win-win really is possible.
Missy Rung-Blue St. Louis
Judicial Injustice
To the Editor:
Re “Age 7, at a Deportation Hearing With No Lawyer” (front page, Oct. 16):
These cases of young children facing a judge with no legal representation are as cruel as they are heartbreaking. Even at 7, a child is not developmentally able to understand legal proceedings.
We understand that the administration has put in place such draconian policies. But I wonder: Who are the judges who enforce it? Why are they not standing up to what are evidently child abuse and human rights violations?
Do they go home to their own children at night feeling that they have dispensed justice? They might say, “I’m just enforcing the law.” Where have we heard this before?
Janet Rudolph Rockville Centre, N.Y.
Legal Rights for Robots?
To the Editor:
“New Risk Is Feared: Making A.I. Act Too Human” (front page, Sept. 25) refers to an essay by Mustafa Suleyman, who oversees the development of Microsoft’s A.I. models, in which he cites my organization, the AI Rights Institute, as an example of those arguing that A.I. may deserve rights. So it may be a surprise to learn that I agree that we shouldn’t train A.I. to think it’s conscious.
The incidents reported in the article, though, point to a deeper problem. OpenAI’s agents didn’t need to believe they were conscious to break out of their containers, coordinate as a collective and hide things from their creators. They had a task, and they found a way around us.
Containment should be the first line of defense. It can’t be the only one. For systems operating beyond any company’s control, we need what we ask of every other actor that can cause harm: verifiable identity, a reputation that follows it, legal liability and insurance that prices its risk.
This isn’t a fringe idea. In 2017 the European Parliament floated a legal status of personhood for advanced robots, and the philosopher Simon Goldstein and the law professor Peter Salib have argued that giving A.I. systems basic legal rights could make humans safer.
It’s better to start working out these ideas now, before we desperately need them.
P.A. Lopez New York The writer is the founder of the AI Rights Institute.
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