Top business schools in the UAE are updating their courses to address the economic, strategic, and ethical challenges left behind by the crisis, in an attempt to give the students the wherewithal to cope with future meltdowns.

Underlining the need for educational reforms at business schools, Dr Blair Sheppard, Dean of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business says, “Universities are structured for a world that no longer exists. They are regionally based, and the challenge is to represent a rapidly changing international business perspective at a regional level.”

As with any disaster, the financial crisis can be used as a learning experience — and B-school professors are taking full advantage of the lessons learned from its aftermath.

There is a structural problem with many of the universities. As Dr Blair says, “If I am in a UAE-based university and all of my faculty spend their time here and they read the newspapers here, they listen to the radio here and they look at the news here, at some point they are going to be Emiratis and they are going to think at a local level. This will reflect on what the students think. Therefore, the students aren’t prepared to address the challenges of a global world.”

Lessons Learned

University business programmes are continually addressing theses challenges to give a leg-up to their graduates in the job market, often turning to teaching innovations and industry attachment programmes.

“One of the key issues is finding faculty who are aware of business developments at a global level. You can only be world class if you have world-class faculty. The flow of a curriculum should reflect a total learning experience, and B-schools in the UAE have a lot of work to do in this regard,” adds Dr Blair.

The crisis is a good opportunity for universities to open up, collaborate and find new partnerships. The key, experts say, is to create new teaching models that can add value to already existing courses.

“In many emerging economies, students graduating from universities aren’t ready for work. To come out of this problem, one needs to address the issue of job skills by creating programmes focused on job empowerment.”

Addressing the issues and challenges in designing business programmess, a special session at the 23^rd Annual Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) conference discussed the need for curriculum review.

The three-member panel discussed solutions to provide skill sets required by business graduates to meet the demands of existing and emerging, international and regional markets in a post-recession world.

Speaking on the sidelines of the conference, Dr John Birge, Professor of Operations Management at Booth School of Business said, “Business schools are better at creating generic business knowledge than they are in creating sector-specific knowledge. One of the things business schools need to do is, introduce more sector specific content in their curriculum while maintaining the quality of business education.”

With world economies struggling, Dr John urges governments to support innovation.

“Illumination, integration and innovation are key to development of b-schools across the world. It is all about giving the students an opportunity to learn and helping them make informed decisions.”

Sharing a similar perspective, Dr Blair says, “We live in a globally inter-dependent world where independent nations have different institutional structures. Every student understands one structure well. But, as a B-school student, if you were to do business around the world, then you would need to understand the different structures around the globe.”

He adds, “Many schools make the mistake of treating education as a mere sequence of courses. Education is in actuality a total campus experience that a student goes through.”

While innovating in new programmes and technologies is important, the challenge of innovation at the moment is more in improving teaching models.

As Dr Blair points out, “Universities change slower than technology and universities end-up invariably teaching to yesterday’s technology.

Teaching the right course, in the right sequence, in the right way and at the right time becomes all the more essential.” —muaz@khaleejtimes.com