Carter A. Daniel writes in the Chronicle that reports written 50 years ago by the Ford and Carnegie foundations had a profound and negative effect on business school education in America, leading most to over-emphasize academic theory and credentials at the expense of a thorough grounding in actual business practice.  

Daniel thinks that the schools should have resisted the criticisms, and suggests that much of the research doesn’t impact business: ” The number of academic journals in business tripled over the next 25 years, and the number of business books published each year more than quadrupled. Their relevance and usefulness can’t, of course, be quantitatively proved or disproved, but it’s commonplace to hear businesspeople scoff that academic research never has any influence on what they actually do in their companies.”  I’m wondering, however, how much of what one learns in any educational program is explicitly or consciously remembered and applied, versus how much just becomes ingrained in one’s intellect and skill sets and is used unconsciously.

What do you think?