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Why Research Reigns
Study ranking UT #8 for business research holds great implications for the School
by D. Paul Newman and Robert May
Recently, a team in Georgia completed a new and comprehensive ranking of top business schools - not in the usual terms of quality of academic programs, but in terms of research impact. Three professors from the University of Georgia and the Dean of the Cox School of Business at SMU authored the study that ranked business school research productivity across the various business disciplines.1
This is the most comprehensive and careful study of business school research to date, and the results are very favorable for the Texas Business School. Texas ranked 8th among the top-one hundred schools for the thirteen-year period of the study, 1986-1998.
Our position above Harvard is noteworthy, but even more so is our change in rank over time. Texas rose from 14th in 1986-89, to 7th in 1990-93, to 4th in 1994-98. This improvement, unmatched among top-twenty schools, is a tribute to the hard work and creativity of our faculty, and demonstrates the impact that we can achieve with our combination of size and quality.
Still, some of you may ask, what's the big deal? Many of our constituents do not read academic research articles and may wonder why the University and the Business School care so much about research. If you have quality teachers, why bother with research?
Because the answer to this question is so fundamental to our educational mission, we would like to address it here. Research is one of the most important ways that Texas stands out in the educational marketplace. As much as any other factor, research is helping Texas become a global leader in creating business knowledge, education, and leadership of the highest impact.
Research has always been fundamental to major state universities. In fact, it is one of the primary reasons they were founded during the 19th century. Until that time, most colleges trained the clergy and scions of wealthy families, giving them traditional classical or theological educations. With the Industrial Revolution, change became a way of life, and innovation and new technology displaced traditional thought as major success factors-both for individuals and economies.
In 1819, Thomas Jefferson, who had attended the traditional College of William and Mary, founded the first state university, the University of Virginia. His goal was to increase both practical and general knowledge in the state, creating a better, more prosperous, and more competitive Virginia. Eventually, all the states followed Virginia's lead, including Texas.
As our universities have shown, society does not advance steadily and competitively by teaching its youth unproven "armchair axioms" and personal anecdotes. Improving what we know requires research-systematic inquiry that produces useable and reliable (though not necessarily popular) findings. This country's great universities excel in this endeavor and contribute enormously to America's competitiveness. At the same time they add public-domain knowledge that is accessible to the whole world.
Why Should Texas Be a Research Leader?
Given the wealth of accessible knowledge today, one might ask why Texas or any other public university should strive to be a research leader. We would offer several reasons. First, there's competitive edge. Anyone can process the research of others and bring it to the classroom, but the folks who develop that knowledge always have an advantage - among other things, they can be first to market. Another benefit is that active researchers tend to know more about their fields than anyone else, since new findings build on the base of existing knowledge. Recognized as experts, they bring prestige to the institution with which they're connected. Research is highly competitive, and successful researchers have to hone their skills to a high standard. As a result, they are often the best synthesizers of knowledge for students.
Recognizing the advantages of research, the academic market places a premium on researcher-teachers over pure teachers. So does the business community. When businesses look to academe to solve problems, the astute corporations want to know about the research reputations of a school's faculty. They know that all other forms of competitiveness tend to emanate from that central core. For example, Texas Instruments turned to one of our top marketing researchers as a consultant, which ultimately resulted in an invitation to the Texas Business School to create the TI Executive MBA Program in Dallas. When Cisco Systems sent its consulting firm to look for an academic partner to co-develop rigorous new Internet Economy indicators, they selected Texas because of our faculty's seminal research in e-business.
In general, the benefits of having a highly competitive research faculty spill over to program quality as well as reputation. Texas, for example, is among eighteen schools that rank in the top twenty-five for research and also, according to U.S. News and World Report, for program quality.
Most of the schools that pull off this double accomplishment-thirteen of the eighteen-are private schools. Unlike Texas, the private schools can charge what the market will bear for their MBA programs, as long as they deliver the best quality. Thus, they can afford the best faculty and the best working conditions. The rest of us play in the same league, but with salary caps-limited state appropriations and, in the case of Texas, tuition caps set by the Legislature. Our faculty do not have the same amount of time or as favorable working conditions in a given year to pursue research, and they teach more classes than their colleagues at the private schools. The same is true of all the public flagship schools, some of which cannot sustain top twenty-five performance in both research and program quality.
Speaking for the Texas Business School, size and a competitive faculty keep us in the game in terms of overall research impact. Values keep us in the game of program excellence. We remember that, in founding UVA, Thomas Jefferson was not only looking for new knowledge; he wanted that knowledge transferred to the young for a more competitive Virginia. We feel the same way about Texas. We strike a balance and do our best in both research and in academic programs. And we look forward to a day when we can ease our funding constraints and concentrate on delivering the best educational value anywhere.
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
