The liberating art of the Jesuit business school

Author's note: More than ten years on, I am quite skeptical that I could stand behind these words. While I believe that they were quite accurate at the time, they were more optimistic than predictive, and I doubt anyone could have predicted the shambles "woke" life and "Critical Race Theory" have made of higher education, especially Jesuit higher education.

The liberating art of the Jesuit business school

“The approach to higher learning that best serves individuals, our globally engaged democracy and an innovating economy is liberal education. Liberal education comes in many shapes and forms in the contemporary academy, but in every one of those forms, its aims include: developing intellectual and ethical judgment; expanding cultural, societal and scientific horizons; cultivating democratic and global knowledge and engagement; and preparation for work in a dynamic and rapidly evolving economy.” [1]

How can Catholic, Jesuit university business schools provide a liberating education for a diverse, competitive global economy? Can we examine and reaffirm common, core interests and strengths of a Jesuit university business education? More important, can we -- do we -- prepare students for work in a challenging environment while also preparing them with formation of faith and values? Can we provide immediately valuable skills, a broad knowledge base, and a passion for lifelong learning? The purpose of this paper is to provide a positive answer to these questions by examining and reaffirming the Jesuit philosophy of an education that is practical, spiritual, social and humane.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Presidents' Campaign for the Advancement of Liberal Learning (Presidents' CALL)[2] sought to increase the public's understanding of liberal education and to foster a societal commitment to providing a quality liberal education to every college student, regardless of the student's field of study. Scores of college presidents, including presidents of many Catholic and Jesuit colleges and universities, signed the CALL, calling for liberal education.

In their position in the university and the global community, Jesuit and Catholic university business schools often suffer from an unjustified inferiority complex, criticized for supposedly lacking the supposed breath of traditional liberal arts programs while simultaneously inculcating business students with a culture of greed, selfishness, and aversions to ethics and social responsibilities. In fact, these ‘failures’ of Catholic business schools are both of mythic proportion and myths. The purpose of this paper is to inform and to increase awareness of these issues and to refine responses for leaders of Catholic university business education.

What is Liberal Education?

Liberal education claims to be the standard for excellence in American higher education. While the content of a liberal education has changed over time, liberal education has claimed to be a philosophy of education with core knowledge and transferable skills and cultivates social responsibility and a strong sense of ethics and values, a liberal education prepares graduates both for socially valued work and for civic leadership. This does not distinguish a liberal arts degree from an accredited business degree. It usually includes a general education that provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines and ways of knowing, with more study in at least one field or area of concentration. Again, business schools can make the same claim. More important, business faculty and students have taken plentiful liberal arts a courses; some business faculty have liberal arts undergraduate, masters, and doctoral degrees. Unlike most liberal arts leaders, business faculty and students have the broad exposure to global, analytical leadership skills in their business programs, where liberal arts leaders and spokespersons fear to tread.

By traditions and ego, liberal arts educators claim to be global and pluralistic. But not necessarily more so than a business education. It embraces the diversity of ideas and experiences that characterize the social, natural, and intellectual world. To acknowledge such diversity in all its forms is both an intellectual commitment and a social responsibility, for nothing less will equip us to understand our world and to pursue fruitful lives. Again, these words could just as easily been written about a business degree.

Finding the ‘Liberal’ in a Liberal Education

Five traditional terms about ‘liberal arts’ provide the basis for some confusion: liberal education, liberal arts, liberal arts colleges, artes liberals, and general education.[3]

Liberal education. While claiming to be a philosophy that liberates the mind from ignorance, and cultivates social responsibility, many liberal arts programs offer an insular perspective of the modern world. Claiming to be characterized by challenging encounters with important issues, there is no common core of study in the liberal arts, and attempts to articulate a common core have repeated themselves regularly over the past thousand years. Studies of the liberal arts “core” often consume great amounts of time and effort from inward-looking liberal arts faculty committees, re-inventing the wheel every ten or twenty years.

"It's GOING TO BE A BLOODBATH," my colleague warned. I had just become chair of a general education task force charged with reviewing and reforming our core curriculum. And the metaphors were running wild. We were about to awaken the core-war giant, and it was going to be every department for itself, a zerosum game of winner takes all. We'd be carving up the pie, redrawing the boundaries, parceling out the credits, and protecting turf.[4]

Liberal arts. Liberal arts often connote specific disciplines, namely the humanities, social sciences, and sciences, while ignoring disciplines outside these three areas, disciplines that examine these elements. For example, law, the behavioral sciences, economics, statistics, and ethics are business disciplines that have emerged from liberal arts departments, somehow losing their liberal status when they are part of a business school.

Liberal arts colleges. A peculiar, almost antiquated institutional type — often small, often residential — that facilitates interaction between faculty and students, while grounding its curriculum in the liberal arts disciplines. For survival, these colleges often initiate business schools, programs, and majors, sometimes without business faculty. It is the rare case, the liberal arts school that abandons the business major (cf. www.hanover.edu), yet even then they can claim to prepare students for business, and offer much of the same curriculum as an accredited business school – without the nettlesome strictures of business accreditation.

Artes Liberales. Historically, the bases for the ‘modern’ liberal arts were the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) and the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric). No social science here. No history. No global appreciation. But, then again, at its inception, there was very little history to study or even recorded, and knowledge of a world much beyond the host city was quite limited.

General Education. Often referred to as “the core” in a liberal arts college and, to most business schools, it refers to the “liberal arts core”. Or, as described by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, “The part of a liberal education curriculum shared by all students. It provides broad exposure to multiple disciplines and forms the basis for developing important intellectual and civic capacities.”[5] Or, as the liberal arts faculty member predicting a “bloodbath” observed his school’s experience in maintaining a core curriculum:

“From a general education perspective, the core had been stinking up the place for some time.”[6]

Liberating the Catholic business school

So what does this mean for Jesuit, Catholic business schools? Business schools need to make their rightful claim to delivering a true, modern, thoughtful, liberating, liberal education. Not the artes liberals, and not the liberal arts; rather the business school can offer the liberating study of knowledge for life. Catholic business schools can and should be the standard for a liberating education, not the cash cow for the university nor the “red-haired stepchild” for Catholic higher education. Why do Catholic business schools today miss this metric? How have they failed to position themselves as a critical component in global university education? Here are possible explanations.

Failing to recognize and to promote business as a liberal art, ceding the academic high ground and the conversation to the traditional liberal arts disciplines. A business education delivers a liberal arts education. A business education emphasizes writing, because a business education teaches persuasive prose. A business school develops effective speaking skills, because reasoned oral clarity and persuasion can triumph over rhetoric. To survive and to thrive in a global market economy, business school graduates must be inculcated with ethical behavior, where Adam Smith’s concept of self-interest translates into the ethical treatment of customers. A business education must be based primarily on core values, especially the value of making a contribution as a citizen, not just in participating as a citizen. A business education emphasizes what business can do to contribute to civic, social and economic life, not what we want to take from life. A proper business education instills critical thinking, core human values, service to others (creating wealth for the common good); analytical skills, global awareness, and respect and responsibility for diversity. Business is a core discipline of a general education.

Being ashamed for being productive, effective, popular and successful. A common criticism of business schools is the relatively high salaries commanded by the market for business faculty. Yet the criticism never addresses the contribution made by business faculty, teaching large sections and generating significant tuition. High salaries for business faculty are not a problem; inadequate funding and staffing of business courses is a problem. Business schools often generate revenue that provides funding for initiatives elsewhere in the university. And striving for internal salary equity across all disciplines is not social justice, nor is it compatible with external market equity. Business schools are, of course, politically incorrect yet highly proficient at disseminating useful knowledge and attracting large enrollments.

Surpassing first-order social justice with third-order prosocial leadership. Social justice requires a reasonable distribution of resources, to meet basic human needs. Justice requires wealth creation, not just charity or compassion. To wit, one can give a man a fish (first-order), teach a man to fish (second-order), or better yet, build a sustainable fishing industry (third-order prosocial leadership). There is a fundamental error in allowing social justice to be defined only in terms of wealth distribution, when wealth creation is the primary prerequisite to wealth re-distribution. Business requires the effective and efficient management and creation of resources. A Catholic business education teaches the necessary logic of creating resources so there is something to distribute.[7] The pie is not fixed; this is not a zero-sum game. More important, a prosocial, Catholic business education teaches students to help others to make the pie, not just how to offer others a share.

Ignoring Diego Ledesma’s first point. Jesuit scholar Diego Ledesma defines an education for life, not just a salary, a job, or a career.

“John Padberg, director of the Institute of Jesuit Sources, translates Ledesma's rather ornate language: Jesuits have schools because, first, they help to educate a person for a productive career; second, they provide education for social and political responsibility; third, they develop the totally human person in the humanities and sciences; and, fourth, they give an education for a particular perspective, which is Christian and Catholic, on the ultimate nature and destiny of the human person.”[8]

Having a career does not meaning lacking a life; lacking a career may seriously impair one’s ability to have a life. Misconstruing a life’s vocation as merely a vocational career.

Failing to practice positive ethics. Business thrives when it preaches and practices doing good (positive ethics) rather than simply avoiding evil (defensive ethics). As John Kenneth Galbraith observed, “"Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite." More, important, Pope Leo XIII in 1878 recognized the inherent problems with socialism while praising the natural law of capitalism based on private property.

For, while the socialists would destroy the "right" of property, alleging it to be a human invention altogether opposed to the inborn equality of man, and, claiming a community of goods, argue that poverty should not be peaceably endured, and that the property and privileges of the rich may be rightly invaded, the Church, with much greater wisdom and good sense, recognizes the inequality among men, who are born with different powers of body and mind, inequality in actual possession, also, and holds that the right of property and of ownership, which springs from nature itself, must not be touched and stands inviolate.[9]

Confusing income, consumption and wealth accumulation with wealth creation. Wealth creation is a virtue. It’s the love of money that is the root of all evil, not money itself. Avoiding evil as an insufficient condition; rather lead by serving others or, in business, creating wealth by creating and serving customers. Capitalism means more than unfettered, amoral competition. Business offering people new choices is more important than business competing with other producers. Making “good” choices is the responsibility not only of the producers, but also of the purchasers. As Lord Acton observed, liberty is not the freedom to do what you want but the responsibility to do what you ought.

Acxioms of a Jesuit business education

Proponents of today’s ‘popular’ of liberal arts education generally overlook several conditions. First, accredited university baccalaureate business programs require a significant general education component, often requiring business majors to complete the same set of distribution requirements required of liberal arts majors. The curriculum for finance and history majors is more similar than different even though liberal arts majors take few if any business courses.

Second, university business programs deliver the modern components of a liberal education – critical thinking, global awareness, analytical, speaking and writing skills, and an understanding of values across cultures. Yet again, few liberal arts programs recognize this contribution and require a grounding in the liberal education found in a business school.

Third, business programs fund the liberal arts and support enrollments in liberal arts departments. Business faculty teach large sections and deliver tens of thousands of students to faculty in low-salary fields with few students and small sections.[10] The comical assumption by some hopeful liberal arts educators is that were business programs to disappear at a university, business students would shift their majors to the current liberal arts programs.

Fourth, critics of baccalaureate business education use the term “professional” or “vocational” to describe an undergraduate business program. While, graduate business programs are often part of a professional business school, an undergraduate business education is better described as a social sciences and humanities program, with a quantitative component than as a “professional” education. Organizational behavior, management and marketing are social sciences; international business, law and ethics courses provide a global humanities perspective, and business students have a strong math and statistics component to support operation management and logistics. If there is a stinging criticism of undergraduate business schools, it would be that they are too theoretical and lack a strong applied or professional perspective. Professional licensing or certification in business usually requires a graduate degree.

Fifth, while American university enrollments have grown in the past fifty years, with the percent of high school graduates going on to college has tripled, it would naïve to think that those graduates in the lower half of their high school class have the same future or need the same college education as those in the top fifteen percent of their high school cohort. Business schools do assist students in finding and maintaining a career. Proponents of today’s liberal arts education disparagingly claim that a liberal arts education prepares a graduate for life, while a business degree prepares the graduate for a career. A ‘life’ without a career is likely to be an empty life, unfulfilling both personally and financially. And society could not long afford such a condition.

The fundamental point is that a university-based baccalaureate business degree provides knowledge workers, knowledgeable citizens, and critical thinking for a diverse, global world.

Three liberating virtues of Catholic, Jesuit university business education

A business education in a Catholic university has three primary claims to a modern liberal arts education. The three foundations are found in (1) theology and philosophy, (2) the humanities and values education, and (3) critical thinking about the world.

Theology and philosophy. Finding and knowing God through the person of Jesus Christ provides the most enduring form of a liberating education, “to know, love and serve God.” Faith formation is the foundation of humane, social values of leadership, service, justice, and the common good. These are formed and informed by the study of theology and philosophy, with special attention to the positive ethic of producing wealth as a virtue, and not as a sin. Without wealth creation, there is no wealth to distribute.

Humanities and values. The general education curriculum of any accredited business school ensures that students receive an historical, humane foundation for the practical parts of their education. Putting human values in a theological and philosophical context ennobles and empowers the person.

Critical, analytic, empirical awareness of the world and its people. Business schools are doing good by doing well, by making an immediate and long-term contribution to society. The business core curriculum is the foundation for mastery of the practical skills and knowledge to lead and to serve in a global, diverse economy. Social justice starts with creating the wealth to distribute.

Conclusion

Jesuit business schools are the de facto leader in the call for a liberating, liberal arts education for people to live, work and serve in a competitive, diverse, global world. Jesuit business schools need to better articulate this position to the public and to their liberal arts colleagues -- seeking collaboration with them – while also remaining true to the roots of a value-based education, grounded in Ignatian philosophy and practice.

[1] http://www.aacu.org/CALL/CALLtext.cfm [2] http://www.aacu.org/CALL/CALLsigners.cfm [3] http://www.aacu.org/press_room/media_kit/what_is_liberal_education.cfm [4] http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=1257054 [5] http://www.aacu.org/press_room/media_kit/what_is_liberal_education.cfm [6] http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=1257054 [7] http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/edumat/hreduseries/tb1b/Section2/activity2.html [8] http://academic.regis.edu/tleining/pdfs/Jesuit_Education.pdf [9] http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/L13APOST.HTM [10] See also, David Paris. Business and the liberal arts: Integrating Professional and Liberal Education, at http://www.cic.edu/publications/books_reports/index.asp