Changing course - Boston Business Journal:

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“Students were trying to make sensw of something that seemsvery confusing, and they wanterd to have a good understanding of what had takenh place,” said Michael E. Lawson, senior associate dean at BU’xs School of Management. The economic meltdown is providing finance and business courses at area collegees withan unfolding, unparalleled case study. Schools are delving into discussions to help thei students learn about the complex issuew that led tothis fall’s financial meltdown as well as give them the skillx they’ll need to enter a job marketf much less buoyant than it was a year ago.
“We’rw trying to bring this up on an ongoing basis so studentsw understandwhat happened, what is going on, what is beinhg suggested and what is the long-term said Atul Gupta, the Financed Department chairman at . Bentley played host to a public informatiob session on the financial crisis inearlyg October, with a half-dozen of the university’s finances instructors leading the panel discussio n and answering questions from the public.
’d scheduled similar events in including a panel discussiontitled “World On The and a community forujm called “The Financial Crisis: What Does It Mean for And recently launched a Web site called On The Globall Economic Crisis to pull together articles, opinions, podcasts, research and videos that focuses on the crisis. Instructors aren’t limiting discussion to scheduler forums, though.
Many business classes draw on actual cases to teach students about principlexsand practices, and school officials said that the fall’d events have provided plenty of fodder for “Many (instructors) are linking the classroom content directly to the dramatic eventd that are taking place,” said Heikkki Topi, Bentley’s associate dean of busineszs for Graduate and Executive Some of the classroom discussionss at Bentley have focused on how the bankz contributed to the subprime problem, and whether the Americann and European regulators responder appropriately, and how the Blacl Friday sales figures coulds indicate what’s ahead for the Gupta said.
However, while the economy is the big topid atbusiness schools, academic leaderzs said it hasn’t yet prompted big changesw in current curricula or even in individual instructor’sz syllabi. “It’s hard to rewrite the syllabue in the middle ofthe semester,” Gupt said. But Gupta and officials at othedr area business schools said they are lookingt ahead and structuring more formal lessons aboutg the current economic crisis into courses that arecoming up. Harvardc will have its first-year students this winter spenx a daydiscussing ’s purchase of from severalo different perspectives, according to a HBS spokeswoman.
The schookl is adding special classes on housing and the subprime crisisd in its Real Propertyy and RealEstate Development, Design, and Construction And in January HBS will introducde a new finance historh course, Creating the Modern Financial with cases focused on economic collapses including the current one. Meanwhile, Bentleg is developing a new class that will look at financial crises throughthe decades, Gupta said, noting that it’s importantf for students and schools to remember that the lessons shouldn’t focus so much on any one specific evenr but on the circumstances and driverws that led up to “There are some underlying drivers that caused these things to and you want students to understand thosre drivers,” he said.
“You can’t just bounce from problem to problem and solutionto solution, there has to be some majofr theme.” If students can master that, Guptaw added, they’ll be much more skilled at navigating the market when they enter it in the upcoming monthws and years. And they’llk hopefully be much better equippef to perhaps avoid or at least mitigatwefuture crises. “Students are terribly interested in all this stufdfbecause they’ve built their career ideass on having opportunities and what’s goin on may severely limit their job opportunities.
They’re also interested in this because they have a natural curiosityh about how this couldall happen,” said Allan Cohen, interimm dean and professor of global leadership at the Olin Graduate Schoopl of Business at Babson. “And you want a studeng to come out of some of thosrediscussions asking, ‘What’s my vision?’ ”