U.S. Work Force Needs Managers Who Know More Than Business

September was summit month in the world of education. Commentators on the meeting of 50 governors and the President stumbled over each other discovering that what’s at stake in U.S. schooling is the quality of our work force. But their vision came to a screeching stop at the high school graduation line. The pundits would have been wiser--and more faithful to the governors’ concerns--had they borrowed Lester C. Thurow’s observation that a national work force is like an army: it cannot function with lousy lieutenants any more than it can function with comatose corporals. The lieutenants go to college.

October was “national quality month” in the corporate world. Chief executive officers rushed up to microphones to proclaim that quality improvement was more relevant to America’s future standard of living than a golden parachute. A Gallup survey conducted for the American Society for Quality Control allows us a peek into the musings of these generals of our national work force. For example, the effects of mergers and acquisitions worry them; consumers, they speculate, would pay $2,674 more for a $12,000 car if its quality were better; and 61% say they are largely responsible for what quality improvement there has been. Along the way, 44% of the CEOs gave the U.S. education system a grade of D or less, singling out workers and middle managers for special criticism.

Those most feeling the executive heat were junior managers--Thurow’s lieutenants. As the newest products of the mass education system, they embody the cumulative efforts of primary, secondary and higher education to produce quality workers. As such, they should be a significant concern of the governors.

It is no secret that a significant portion of our entry-level managerial work force majored in business administration. Since 1985, in fact, our colleges have handed out more than a million business degrees to undergraduates. Who are these people? What did they actually study? How well did they perform in college?

These are not idle questions. Formal learning is largely responsible for how well these college graduates will help U.S. corporations achieve quality in production, design and marketing, among other areas. If the nation is to be competitive in the international economy of the 1990s, we had better know who our lieutenants are.

The National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 provides some answers. Designed and sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement, it followed the lives of 23,000 high school seniors for 14 years. The college transcripts of 12,600 were collected in 1984.

Business-administration majors accounted for 16% of the bachelor’s degrees (5,000) earned by the group. As entering freshmen, their SAT scores, high school class ranking and academic aspirations were the lowest, overall, of any comparable group. The high school class of ’72 was not an anomaly, though. In 1985, business-administration majors among entering freshmen ranked even lower on the same criteria.

What did those who earned their bachelor’s study?

Of all credits earned, 37% were in business subjects, 8% in economics, 2% in office-support skills, 2% in computer science, 7% in communication skills and 8% in mathematics. With 64% of their time devoted to these “core” subjects, the business majors had little time remaining for other subjects. Indeed, 77% took no foreign language and 10% did not study any other internationally oriented course. Also, only 4% pursued industrial or quality-control technology.

If these graduates sought an entry job in sales or customer relations, which increasingly involve foreign markets and technological products or services, they simply aren’t prepared. We can argue whether pharmaceutical salespersons truly need to study pharmaceutical chemistry in college, but I’d rather hire those who did--and who could explain the virtues of both a drug and a company’s distribution system in, let’s say, German.

Closer inspection of what constituted the “core” study yields even less encouraging data. A third of the communications-skills credits and a quarter of the math credits were in remedial courses. Two-thirds of all business-course credits were in “basic mechanics” (accounting, corporate finance, marketing, etc.)

Women provide the only promise in this depressing pattern. Their undergraduate curricula contained more of what U.S. corporations now say they want: foreign languages and international studies, contextual and integrative studies, even production/product management. But at age 32-33, the women were paid 27% less than the men. This unhappy paradox of pay and preparation cannot endure.

The effects of the business curriculum, though, are not impressive for either gender. After four, five or six years in college, business-administration majors do not perform well on admissions tests to graduate school. In fact, on the Graduate Management Admissions Test, they ranked 19th of 20 fields in 1985, a position they have held for a decade.

Some will argue that all this reflects a simple case of GIGO, or “garbage in, garbage out.” The governors would disagree--and they are right. If course-content standards are raised by finding and filling in the missing elements of the business curriculum, student performance and contributions can be indirectly improved.

At least three components come to mind.

One is the customer, who is treated as a “microsystem” or “institution” rather than as a human being. To study cultural anthropology or urban history would be a far better way to humanize this “customer” than a course in marketing research.

Another is competence in science. Technological empowerment is not simply the ability to program a computer. Rather, it is understanding what is being programmed. Business-administration majors are taught plenty about operations and precious little about their content. You can’t teach science or technology in a product-management course. You must require it before the students get there.

Finally, imagination is missing. The fact that two-thirds of business courses taken by the study’s business-administration students were in four “basic mechanics” is frightening. For starters, that means a carbon-copy generation of managers is playing an important role in the conduct of American business. No wonder their only motivation for learning is a vision of the next leveraged buyout.

Can imagination be learned? Yes, by induction, by doing something more than rehearsing the mechanics. You can’t write music simply by practicing an instrument. You must know the literature of many instruments and the theory that both structures and liberates. And you must be willing and able to work outside the box of conventional formulas.

The task of preparing lieutenants for the work force will not be easy, but following the education summit, the only way to go is up. One trusts that business-school deans and corporate representatives will listen to the governors and demand more of college curricula.