The McDonough School of Business has every right to its place on the Hilltop.
Georgetown is a Jesuit research university, a tradition the MSB complements as powerfully as the university’s other three schools by providing its students with the well-rounded education central to becoming leaders. Georgetown is not in the business of liberal arts alone. Nick Timiraos (COL ‘06) shallowly argues otherwise in his article “MSB Has No Place at Georgetown” (The Hoya, Feb. 3, 2006).
Nearly half (18 out of 40) of the required courses in the MSB undergraduate program pertain to a liberal arts core. Five of these courses are liberal arts electives, allowing students to explore any particular subject in more depth, and earn a minor for doing so.
However, our exposure to the liberal arts does not end there. Confusion about this point perhaps lies in a failure to appreciate that education is most valuable when we learn to integrate all the subjects we study.
Consequently, no one business course directly and restrictively relates to only one liberal art. Rather, these courses straddle a wide spectrum of arts. Management and Organizational Behavior is a practical application of sociology and psychology; Marketing has as much to do with psychology as it does with economics; International Business studies require a sound understanding of economics and government relations at the international level.
Business is hardly a “narrow” field. With so wide a base, the principles of business provide an efficient framework that allows everyone from scientists who research cancer to authors who write books to get their work into the hands of the people they intend to benefit.
Need an example? Consider the non-profit organization funded by One Laptop Per Child. It was established by five major companies to oversee the production and sale of the $100 hand-cranked laptop recently developed in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. These computers will reach the hands of millions of school children in developing countries, a scale achievable because business practices such as those taught in the MSB offer the necessary framework.
Secondly, business faces constantly changing obstacles and overcomes them. Research done in business programs, both graduate and undergraduate, is as vital as research done in the field to keep business resilient. To argue that business is learned solely in the field is ill-informed. Why have prestigious graduate business programsif this is true?
I close by addressing Timiraos’ insult to the entire student body. No college education, liberal arts-based or otherwise, turns fouryears old and promptly dies. Education is life-long, whether one enters academia, teaches high school or builds his own business. No individual with the drive and academic caliber of a Georgetown undergraduate is limited to “four short years” for discovering the best way to channel his energies.
Furthermore, any edge a student has upon graduating from Georgetown will be something of his own making. An “edge” is not taught by a professor, it can’t be lost in a PowerPoint presentation nor is it included with one’s diploma on graduation day. A student is exactly what he chooses to make of himself.
And that’s good news when one considers that nearly everything in life boils down to an interview. A Rhodes scholarship, a professorship, an investment banking position and even a second date all hinge on nailing an interview. If you’re not concerned with nailing an interview, then how exactly do you plan on getting anywhere in life?
In all four of its schools, Georgetown educates its students in the skills of critical thinking, insightful analysis, and written and oral communication. An argument as flawed as that presented by Timiraos seems to imply he’s made little of his days on the hilltop. Who would have guessed a broadening liberal arts education would produce such a narrow mind? How’s that for a legitimate academic question?
