Business School, Disrupted

54 points by jcreedon 11 years ago | 23 comments

Harvard Business School student here. I find this article fascinating, specifically because it highlights the challenge of transferring the case based method to the virtual world. Unlike regular lectures where you can sit and absorb, the case based method requires you to actively participate and defend your argument in front of 90 peers. You have to prepare, think on your feet and be ready to challenge and build upon what others have said. Each one brings his own experience to the table, and you find yourself learning a lot more than in regular lectures.

For example, in an average HBS finance class you will get input from former PE guys on how to actually valuate a company, the potential pitfalls and what is important to remember. In a global economy class (BGIE) you can hear from bankers who worked in Europe on how they faced the global economic crisis.

This creates high barriers to replicate the HBS model online. I'm not sure what the UX will be for replicating this discussion setting, and invoking individuals to share from their experience. How do you validate the quality of the comments? how do you highlight the takeaways in a situation where there is no one right answer? These are all though issues to solve, and I'm glad HBS is actively tackling it. I'm looking forward to seeing if they succeed.

damoncali 11 years ago | |

I'll go ahead and say what you tiptoed around. You cannot recreate the experience of a top-tier MBA program online. You cannot drink online. You cannot travel the world online. You cannot play rugby online. There are hundreds of things that make B school what it is that you just cannot do online.

nether 11 years ago | | |

Funny post validating that ⅔ * HBS = BS.

fozzieBoston 11 years ago | | |

I agree that HBS provides many of the experiences you described, but that argument can be made for college level education as well, no? one of the downsides of online education is that it lacks the social element that is at times just as important as the educational one.

I don't argue that HBS provides all of what you mentioned, but I do argue that many colleges provide the same.

hkmurakami 11 years ago | |

Aren't the top two things you get from HBS the network and the brand name? You can theoretically replicate the "knowledge" you get from HBS, even those from your peers, but you can't recreate the connections or the name.

gatehouse 11 years ago | | |

You get the name but you also make the name, the future reputation will be based on the current students. If the online efforts "works" the reputation will follow.

ilaksh 11 years ago | |

College dropout here. Anyway, my vastly-less-expensive aborted "education" really isn't the point.

> I'm not sure what the UX will be for replicating this discussion setting, and invoking individuals to share from their experience. How do you validate the quality of the comments?

"Then a box pops up on the screen with the words “Cold Call.” The student has 30 seconds to a few minutes to type a response to a question and is then prodded to assess comments made by other students. Eventually there is a multiple-choice quiz to gauge mastery of the concept."

"He unveiled the existence of a studio, built in collaboration with Boston’s public television station, that allows a professor to stand in a pit before a horseshoe of 60 digital “tiles,” or high-definition screens with the live images and voices of geographically dispersed participants."

> These are all though issues to solve, and I'm glad HBS is actively tackling it. I'm looking forward to seeing if they succeed.

Did you read the whole article, or stop in the middle?

Case based method sounds like a much better idea than wasting time listening to a lecture. I think what they mention in the article is a good start.

The type of disruption faced by Harvard and other universities applies not only to that industry but to many other, perhaps most, industries.

Maybe instead of worrying so much about saving their own asses, some of these overpaid Harvard geniuses could come up with an idea or two about how to adjust our underlying "economic" structures to align with new technological realities.

By the way, did you ask those "former PE guys" how they actually valuated WhatsApp? Did you ask the bankers who worked in Europe what they did to fix the "economic" structure so that the global "economic" crisis would not threaten the physical health and well-being of so many people?

sanderjd 11 years ago | |

I think the future of education will look very different from both "lectures and interaction in classrooms" and "lectures and interaction online". The more lecture-based material is, the more successful it is to present it online, while the more interaction-based material is, the more it makes sense to be in an actual room with other students.

I'm not sure whether bricks-and-mortar universities or pure-online companies like Coursera are better positioned to transition to this hybrid approach. Universities already have it, but at a price point and class size more similar to a full on-campus program than a fully online program. They already have classrooms and TAs, but they have a lot of overhead. Online companies may actually be in a better position to figure out how to scale courses with an offline component across the country while keeping costs reasonable.

fnazeeri 11 years ago | |

Don't forget HBX Live too.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2014/05/28/harvar...

foobarqux 11 years ago | |

The value of HBS is the imprimatur not the courses.

Harvard's model is clever because they create perceived value for customers through an affiliated brand without tarnishing the brand itself.

parker94 11 years ago | | |

If they offer online classes I feel like it will reduce the prestige of HBS. Let other MBA programs offer them, one of Harvard's best attributes is its exclusivity.

waps 11 years ago | | |

In other words, a HBS degree only has value because some powerful entranched people feel inclined to defend it because for them it's a sunk cost. In other words, if there is any actual value of the courses, it's beside the point, and HBS has zero incentive to do anything but raise the price, in time and money.

I'm sure they give a reasonable introduction to the material, but that's not how they profile themselves at all.

It's an inverted lemon market. Instead of the lowest price winning, it's the highest price that still generates a just large enough elitist club. But the product is not education, the product is the elitist club.

Exactly what you'd expect for the business side of companies. These people are as suitable for management as high heels are for walking, in the same way.

devanti 11 years ago | |

This is exactly my problem with HBS. Their cases are heavily geared towards financial and exit situations, where PE/bankers will excel at. This also reflects on the fact that a lot of their students come from those backgrounds. They don't really focus on actual technology problems as much, and it would be harder for an engineer to bring their experience to the table.

fozzieBoston 11 years ago | | |

Actually their cases aren't geared towards financial and exit situations. I gave those examples because I don't come from that background, and so found those illustrative of what I personally learned.

I'm a computer scientist by training, and found that my experience helps me excel in the classroom, rather than serve as a burden. Classmates do appreciate the technological perspective, and former Microsoft, Google, Apple and startup employees do a great job of giving that perspective in Entrepreneurship, operations and technology classes. Engineers are highly regarded at the school...

kriro 11 years ago |

I think the most important point of the article is that an unbundling of professors from universities might happen.

Some online education platform could very well buy out some great professors or better yet...identify the newcomers and get them on board.

Research and teaching is still somewhat tightly coupled so I'm curious to see when/if some of the online course providers will opt to sponsor or create their own open access type journals.

For business and IT, I think the market for continued learning is currently more attractive than the typical university market. I'd like to rent a Porter for my company to update them on interesting topics 3x a year.

fnazeeri 11 years ago | |

Sort of like Netflix getting into original content a la Kevin Spacey and House of Cards. Brilliant.

HBSisBS 11 years ago |

The ultimate mission of a great university is to impart high quality education to as many students as it can. If the reason HBS is not offering online courses is to keep profits up, then there is some serious rethinking the leadership needs to do - they've got the mission mixed up. If the new model means reduced profits initially, figure out a model to still make money, because as long as you're creating real value, there is always a way to monetize it.

Even if the case based methodology cannot be brought online, just recording the lectures and putting it up will benefit millions online. This won't really take away from the "value" of a HBS stamp because it is not certified and because you don't have access to the network and the classroom experience that students who attend the traditional program have.

This way you are accomplishing your mission of making the best education accessible to anyone in the world, which is what defines a truly great university. In my book, Stanford and MIT are the real rockstars because of the approach they've taken in this area.

jimbokun 11 years ago |

Interesting this debate is trying to answer some of the questions posed in this article, also on the front page right now:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7826976

If the value of universities for most people is vocational training, that will be far more efficiently accomplished through online courses.