Each class runs one hour and 20 minutes. With 95 students working through a case, discussion is lively, often heated. Because there are no right or wrong answers--but rather an endless number of possible approaches--a student can take a provocative position. He will have to defend it by argument, and use every skill to survive the rebuttal.
"Therefore, Mr. Smith?..."
The professor witholds value judgments and lets the students perform, but may fire questions to make people sharpen their views. "Therefore, Mr. Smith?... So what do you propose to do about it? Are you going to hire more men? If so, how many and at what salary?..." Analysis is rigorous. It should consider as many problem areas as possible in each case; what is more, it should be followed up with proposals for concrete action.
Students never know when they will be called on or when a quiz will be given. Day after day, they must take positions and speak out in class--classroom performance is most important at the B-School.
There are three cases a day, on the average. Sometimes one can read a case, not see any particular problems, and fail to develop a meaningful analysis. Partly for this reason, the school encourages the students to form study groups--usually of four to ten members--to pool ideas on the various cases each night. I have found this inefficient at times, but usually helpful. The study groups and sections emphasize the school's approach, that students learn best from each other through group participation, rather than from lectures and professors.
Overexposure
The material studied in the first year covers a great range. Students get an overall view of management which helps them to refine their focus in subsequent years. We were exposed to the basic areas of business: accounting, finance, production, and marketing, as well as the newer administrative techniques, such as computer methodology and statistical analysis. Our Gen Ed Ahf equivalent in the first year is called "Written Analysis of Cases," and demands biweekly papers which are due on Saturday evenings and graded by girls recently graduated from college.
Other courses in the first year include, for example, "Human Behavior in Organizations" and "Planning and the Business Environment." This last course deals with the overlap of business and society at large. The issues studied include union controversies, civil rights in relation to personnel and advertising practices, ethics in advertising, business-government relations, the image of business in America, public responsibility of the manager, business abroad, industrial participation in foreign aid, and other topics of broad concern. This emphasis on the interplay between business and society underlines the purpose and aspiration of the Business School: to prepare students for management responsibility in its largest sense.
The one required course in second year is Business Policy, which aims at synthesis of all aspects bearing on management planning and strategic decision-making.
Harvard University is an institution of great diversity. The College and the Business School serve as examples of the differences that can be found within the community. Both prepare people for society, one on a personal level, the other more pragmatically. The two schools are not identical, nor are they mutually exclusive. Often they fail to understand each other. As one who has lived on both sides of the Charles, I view them as complementary