I reckon a few very brief comments are in order since some folks were so kind to post their thoughts.

To Al McDonald: The title was given by the editor. My title was not nearly so pointed. I wish our colleges had as much sense as you regarding business majors on the undergraduate level. We don’t need them. But this is an industry now. At Loyola, maybe some might buy my suggestion to inject literature into the curriculum where students least expect it and where they just might actually be persuaded it is important. Business majors do not value the core curriculum. They are at college for the degree in marketing or finance.

To Paul Klaassen: I suppose that after you read the full article you saw that my argument was not about Enron or other corporate scandals. Again, my editor thought it might be useful to include that in the initial provocation. Peter is getting all the blame. But you were provoked!

To Joe Carson: I received my BA at U.Va and was in a fraternity house that was populated by many engineering students. At U.VA the engineering degree took five years in part because it housed its own required program in the humanities. At least they tried. But I always felt from what I saw of the courses and reading that these did not measure up to what I got in the College of Arts and Sciences. And I suspected that because the engineers did not mix with C of A&S;students their vision was narrowed. I suppose the rationale for a separate humanities program within the engineering school was that the courses could be tailored for engineering minds. In my view that was a big mistake.

Vigen Guroian

The Guroian article raises some excellent questions that deserve thoughtful attention and discussion. At the same time, I find the title to be implicitly so biased and pejorative that it detracts from the excellent substance of his content. Frankly, as a student and product of the commercial world predominantly, I do not consider myself a “slave to the market” any more than professors may feel that they are “slaves to publishers.”

At the same time, I am a strong proponent and practitioner of capitalism as seen currently in the U.S. with reasonable restraints based on law, ethics, the necessity of maintaining complex constituent relationships, and the requirements to produce acceptable returns for the use of the capital of others. The “bad apples” of company transgressors illustrated are rare in that it would be difficult, even with all the publicity that is usually anti-business, to come up with names of more than 10 entities from among some 5,000 public corporations here that have defied the confidence of shareholders during the last three or four years of intense criticism of business.

The stock market recognizes this factor, so it has continued to prosper based on basic economic factors even during the heavy reporting of abuses. One of the errant firms listed, Arthur Anderson, was convicted by a lower court and the media, which destroyed its reputation and essentially killed this great enterprise although higher courts later overthrew its conviction as invalid. If anything this shows the fragility of public entities, and particularly larger service firms who can only exist and continue based on their clients’ confidence and trust in their integrity.

Two other comments may be useful. In my view there should be no undergraduate education in business except for selected courses in economics and perhaps basic accounting which are useful in all vocations. A liberal education with a reasonable understanding of physical sciences and even more in the social sciences are ideal as basic training for business. Regular business courses should be reserved for intensive graduate school study just as happens with law and medicine.

At the same time we live prosperously as a society because of the intensive competitive pressures that seem to bring out some of the best talents in human beings and occasionally tempt others to unacceptable excesses. Many of us are more disturbed, however, by the laxity and relative unproductivity of tenured faculty members in Universities than by those who earnestly try to understand and shape markets to serve better their customers and society’s needs for jobs, goods and services.

As additional background, one might want to know of the new book by Prof. Joe Badaracco of Harvard Business School entitled Questions of Character. It contains comments and excerpts from key works of literature to illustrate values, ethics and desirable traits that should be the norm in business (and frankly in other fields as well). He is also one of the professors heading a relatively new course at HBS on “teaching business students life lessons in leadership.” It simply reiterates that the most important lessons taught in the better MBA areas do not deal with business mechanics, as importance as they are, but with the elements and qualities of leadership that determine one’s ability to think strategically and widely and then channel large organizations of people and resources toward some common productive purpose.

Such is our capitalistic system . . . always looking for better ways although knowing that there will be those whose moral or judgmental lapses will fall below desired levels in every major occupational area including all of the so-called professions. At the moment, I am still ranking the normal successful business executive above the level of integrity that we have too often encountered with priests and third-party, class-action lawyers, among others.

All the best. . . . almcdonald

Society’s only hope is to educate broad gauge leaders. Actions have consequences and the only hope for knowing action is for leaders to understand the implications of their acts on the broader public and themselves. When a choice engages morality it is essential that it be added to the risk/reward equation.

I believe Vigen goes “a bridge too far” in trying to trying to connect the disappearance of a liberal arts curriculum in higher education with Enron, Worldcom and Arthur Anderson. His quote from Lewis is wonderful to make the point that Man is created to and able to do much more than work and I would have developed that train of thought a bit further. The capacity to be an “amateur”, is an “out of the box” way of thinking of Man and his relationship with the Creator, as well as the role of education in furthering that capacity. By linking corporate scandals into the otherwise insightful piece the argument, without any evidence at all that the two might have a causal relationship, the main point becomes weakened.

Does Vigen really believe that with more focus on a liberal arts education corporate scandals such as those he mentioned would not occur? No those scandals occur (and will unfortunately continue to occur) because of another human condition, and that is man’s capacity to be selfish and greedy. The cure for that is not to be found by taking some college credits in the humanities.

Having said that, the value of such an education to stimulate, as he put it, “the moral imagination” is clear and needed. It would enrich all parts of everyday life, even if it won’t protect us from other parts of the human condition, namely man’s capacity for evil.

Thanks for writing a provocative and timely piece!

Paul Klaassen
Founder, Chairman & CEO
Sunrise Senior Living

as an engineer, i appreciate the article’s implicit paean to my profession and its products - without which we would not be living in any luxury.

But engineering education has always been the one-sided affair lamented in the article.

So what, if anything, can be said about God’s will for the engineering profession and its Christian members?  Should Christian engineers, to any degree, try to intentionally and collectively influence their profession to advance God’s will in and through it? 

We’ve all seen the recent (or continuing) war in lebanon - in which highly engineered weapons and their delivery systems destroy other products of engineering - roads, bridges, building, etc. 

We should anyone be surprised, given the lack of a collective and intentional Christian influence in the profession? 

So what is the point of the article, relevant to engineering colleges?

Joe Carson, P.E.
President,
Affiliation of Christian Engineers