Thursday 22 April 2010

MBA: Skies the Limit, Says McGill, But It Looks Like It Cares Little about Other Kinds of Education

McGill will persist in charging $30,000 for its new executive MBA program, it seems, despite the fact that the Quebec government is threatening to penalize it $28,000 for each person in the program. That means, in effect, that the school would receive less, net, what it would for the current program. Nevertheless, McGill administration says this is the start of a "new and exciting era." Principal Heather Munro-Blum even suggested to Le Devoir that if the classy new program is penalized, the difference would be taken out of other programs, adding to "the burden" on students in other programs.

This is just another example of how universities have bought into the corporate model. The Université de Montréal, despite the fact that about half the undergraduate courses are taught by lecturers, fought tooth and class recently to put a cap on lecturers' wages which are considerably less than those of full time professors. Research chairs in certain fields, high profile business programs, and some graduate programs are what the universities want us to see, and from which they think they can make some money.

But where are the students in this? Left far behind, I fear.

2 comments:

Martin Langeland said...

Taking a leaf from corporate executive compensation models, perhaps the penalty for each MBA candidate should increase by a factor of 10.
In a similar vein, did you see the Sociopathic paycheck?
--ml

Mary Soderstrom said...

Thanks for the link: very intersting. The stuff about income disparities is along the line of what Paul Krugman talked about in The Conscience of a Liberal.

Mary