Let’s Abolish Business Schools

By the Editorial Team · Sunday, October 18, 2026

Business schools like Harvard and Wharton have solidified their academic standing by adopting the case study method to teach management as a professional discipline, though this approach often frames business issues narrowly and relies on sanitized corporate narratives. This method shapes curricula that emphasize decisive leadership and marketable ideas but has been criticized for downplaying systemic problems and limiting critical scrutiny of business practices and their social impact.

Business schools have long faced challenges in establishing their academic legitimacy within universities, primarily because they focus explicitly on the pursuit of profit—a private good—unlike professional schools such as law or medicine, which center on public goods like justice and health. This tension was noted over a century ago by sociologist Thorstein Veblen, who questioned the service value of commerce-focused education to the common good.

In an effort to elevate the status of business education, institutions like Harvard Business School and Wharton developed management as a profession comparable to law and medicine. However, unlike these fields, management lacked a foundational scientific or legal body of knowledge. The solution, pioneered in the 1920s by Harvard’s Dean Wallace Donham, was the adoption of the case study method drawn from law and medical schools. This approach immerses students in business dilemmas through detailed narratives that culminate in a decision point, fostering classroom debate.

The case method remains central to business education, with Harvard Business School alone selling nearly 17 million cases globally in 2024. An illustrative example is the well-known “Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley” case, which places students in the role of a manager deciding whether to promote or reprimand a high-performing but culturally abrasive employee. While this case provokes lively discussion on leadership challenges, it also narrows focus to the individual manager’s decision, often sidelining broader systemic issues such as industry norms around hierarchy and aggressive performance metrics.

Unlike cases used in law and medicine, which aim to cultivate critical inquiry and question assumptions, business school cases emphasize decisiveness—positioning students as “the decider.” This lens tends to obscure questions about who holds legitimate authority and marginalized perspectives, including those of workers, regulators, and communities.

Critics highlight that many case studies are not based on independent research but are corporate narratives shaped and approved by the companies involved, often editing out unfavorable facts. This has led to business school curricula that overly highlight success stories while downplaying failures or complex systemic problems. For example, prior to its collapse, Enron’s business model was showcased in multiple cases as innovative, without addressing critical governance or regulatory issues that contributed to its downfall.

Furthermore, to fit educational purposes, cases often simplify real-world complexity, compress timelines, and omit dissenting views, producing sanitized narratives that do not fully reflect organizational realities.

This pedagogical approach fosters a curriculum that prioritizes attractive management concepts over rigorous academic scrutiny, incentivizing faculty to generate marketable ideas rather than robust, peer-reviewed research. Business schools often promote the notion of “win-win” solutions that reconcile profit with social good, exemplified by the concept of stakeholder capitalism. This ideology posits that companies can simultaneously achieve financial returns and address environmental, social, and governance concerns.

Though widely embraced in corporate and academic circles during the 2010s, evidence suggests that stakeholder capitalism has had limited impact on actual corporate behavior regarding wages, environmental policies, and governance. Many foundational studies underpinning these ideals have faced replication failures or data issues, indicating that the concept may serve more as a reputational strategy than a substantive shift.

The trajectory of business schools reflects a broader trend of university corporatization, where institutions increasingly prioritize rankings, partnerships, and market-driven goals. Students are viewed as customers, degrees as products, and academic units as brand elements subject to return-on-investment calculations. This shift raises ongoing questions about the place and purpose of business education in serving both private interests and the public good.

This article was reported by synthesizing coverage from multiple independent news outlets to present a balanced, unbiased account. Read about our editorial standards. Spotted an error? Let us know.