Are education's ivory towers beginning to crumble?

That classroom dictum permeates - to a very great extent - South Africa's institutions of higher learning. Critics cite these institutions' inability to keep abreast of (or anticipate) the requirements of a rapidly changing business world as one of the main reasons why universities and colleges are churning out graduates that the labour market regards as functionally unemployable.

The champions of vocational training go further: they say hide-bound tertiary education facilities rank alongside the dysfunctional national schooling system as the main contributors to the country's growing skills shortage.

Learning versus teaching

Veteran educator Professor Merlyn Mehl of the Triple L Academy argues that “we still generally confuse learning with teaching. “The two are not synonymous: just because I am taught doesn't mean that I have learned. One thing is done to me, the other I have to do myself.”

He contends that “we can double the university population but that won't halve the skills shortage. It won't come anything close to halving the skills shortage because the knowledge requirements of the working world are completely different to the highly structured ones taught in most institutions of higher learning.”

There are strong arguments for and against the largely theoretical nature of foundational learning but there is an encouraging trend at post-graduate level towards abandoning the traditional “ivory tower” approach.

“Undergraduate programmes that cater for students who have just finished matric will, in most institutions of higher learning, tend to focus on basic concepts, principles and theories,” says Professor Frank Horwitz, director of the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town.

“As students advance on to more advanced programmes, they consider more practical applications and applied research.

“What distinguishes the Graduate School of Business from undergraduate faculties is that we're an adult-education institution.

Different things

This means a number of different things but it includes the notion that people who would study here - whether it's a post-graduate diploma in business practice or an executive MBA - are all people who have had at least three or four years of work experience.”

He says this leads to “a different education process in that the design and delivery of the programme takes into account the work and life experiences of the individuals on the programme”.

The programmes are generally much more flexible in their content and delivery is a facilitated process rather than pure instruction. There is much greater use of case studies and drawing on personal experiences.

“When it comes to continuous professional development [CPD], our approach is to be an educational laboratory in which we experiment with programmes we think might meet a need,” says Horwitz.

“We review our CPD programmes annually on the basis of whether they are clearly meeting client demand. Up to 30% of our programmes are new each year.

“There is a significant percentage of our programmes for which there is consistent demand. However, even within these, we ensure the content is fresh and that lecturers are on top if not ahead of the game in their particular fields.

“Even with our MBA programmes, we have the flexibility to change elective modules at fairly short notice. In fact, we review our electives every year,” he adds.

Dr Hoosen Rasool, formerly CEO of the clothing and textiles SETA but now heading the management college of South Africa (MANCOSA), said recently that business schools had to address a number of issues that include:

Curricula must be more relevant

“Local enterprises are faced with formidable challenges on the economic front,” he says. These include global competition, transformation, poverty alleviation, rural development, small business development and the divide between the first and second economies.

“A frequent criticism levelled at business schools is their tendency to over-emphasise the traditional business functions of finance, accounting, strategy, marketing, human resources and operations, without establishing connections between them.

“But problem-solving is multi-disciplinary. Managers must learn to manage interfaces between strategy, human resources, technology, finance, risk procurement, operations, marketing and customer service in their daily tasks.”

Practice as well as theory

A common criticism levelled at business schools is their tendency to over-emphasise management theory without giving sufficient attention to the practice of managing people, resources and operations.

“While an understanding of theory is important, it cannot substitute for the practical skill of managing in diverse contexts. Practising managers have as much to learn from each other as they do from the classroom,” says Rasool.

“Business schools cannot be regarded as the sole provider of knowledge and skills in business management. In fact, as they make their offerings more relevant to the needs of the marketplace, they will compete with other sources of knowledge and skills, such as private enterprises that have real-life experience in skilling managers.”

A greater focus on entrepreneurship

“Generally, business schools have rooted teaching in the context of students managing large enterprises or departments. Case studies tend to focus on the activities of well-known, Western multinational corporations. Starting up new ventures has not figured largely in formal business management programmes,” he maintains.

“Yet enterprises are flattening hierarchies, downsizing, outsourcing non-core functions and contracting temporary labour, while retaining a small contingent of permanent staff. There is also a concomitant rise of home workers, consultants, small businesses and micro-enterprises operating on the fringes of the formal economy.”

Rasool believes entrepreneurship training should be integrated into the structure of the overall curriculum, instead of "added on" as a compensatory component.

It is heartening that Horwitz, Mehl and Rasool by and large agree that the “chalk and talk” approach of the classroom has little place in management development.

Says Horwitz, “Learning is a social process. One of our key tasks as an institution of higher learning is to create an environment where individuals learn from subject experts as well as from each other.

“Peer-learning in a business school is a great leveller. No matter the importance of the position you hold in your organisation, the fact that you are all equal in the classroom is a critical part of the learning process - especially in terms of group dynamics.

“When you put senior people from different sectors, types of organisations, professions, original subject disciplines, genders and cultures together in a team, you develop very important learning dynamics. Often, people learn as much from the process as from the content,” he says.

People don't leave with business acumen alone, insists Horwitz. They leave with life and leadership skills.

“Typically, people who enrol in our programmes regard learning as an investment in themselves. They want to know they will be getting a good return on that investment in respect of the contribution they can make in their workplaces and in creating opportunities for their career development.”