A number of years ago the quality of business school faculty research was called into question. Now, according to a new study highlighted in the BusinessWeek article, "For MBAs, Faculty Research Pays Off," that conclusion may have been incorrect.
New research shows that MBA faculty research may add as much as $24,000 a year to MBA students' future salaries. The authors of the study write, "The result strongly suggests that research-intensive schools generally do a superior job in helping their students acquire and hone their knowledge, skills, and abilities, which pays financial returns to the students through tier future employment."
While the earlier study suggested that the quality and substance of the research was integral, this new study explains that "the actual state of the relevance of the business school research is not nearly as dire as…some have suggested."
It seems impossible that anyone can believe that research simply for the sake of itself is valuable, without at all placing importance or value on the research quality and substance. In the comments to the article, I raised the following (unanswered) questions:
Is the research more relevant and practical than posited by Bennis and O'Toole? Perhaps it's the quality of the research and not the quantity that counts.
If the research is as esoteric and irrelevant as claimed by Bennis and O'Toole, then maybe this new study is confusing correlation and causation.
A second commenter (George Peterson), adds further, "The authors of the study seem to believe that research is the only or best way to 'help faculty hone their skills' – in my view the best way for faculty to hone their skills is to stay closely involved in business through consulting, board memberships and involvement with professional business associations. It would be interesting if they did a study to determine the relationship between faculty involvement in real business activities and the success of the students after graduation."
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