The business of business schools

Abstract

Rakesh Khurana, the renowned Harvard business school professor, has outlined the history and evolution of US business schools from their beginning in the late 19th and early 20th century. The "storm" of rankings changed everything. In simple terms and for better or worse, the advent of rankings in 1987 marked the dawn of the era of business schools as businesses with the rules of the game laid down by the Foundation Studies. As an organising principle in considering the management of the business school and the associated activities and offerings, consider a simple value chain. As one progresses along the age spectrum, the business-to-consumer model holds true for pre-experience postgraduate students but a centralised recruitment system no longer exists. Income varies considerably along this spectrum. For all of the business-to-consumer and business-to-business consumer programmes, income per day, what we phrase the "revenuedelivered-view" is a straight-forward calculation of tuition x classroom occupancy / days taught.