OR/MS Today - August 2002

OR/MS Today - August 2002

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Where is the Beef in Undergraduate Business Education?

By Salwa Ammar and Ronald Wright

Even though we shamelessly use a marketing slogan in the title of our article, we, as OR/MS educators, believe that the "beef" in business education is deeply rooted in the technical and quantitative components. After all, sound and creative OR practices contribute to the success of this fast food chain as much as its aggressive marketing.

Twenty years ago the value of OR/MS in business education was well recognized, and over these years many OR/MS faculty have found homes in business programs. At first, most programs had a clear quantitative management science presence. Although this distinct presence may still exist in large research-oriented (Ph.D.-granting) universities, it has all but disappeared in business programs that do not have a primary focus on research.

This bleak view is also somewhat old news. We have known for some time that OR/MS education is losing ground in business curricula. Much has been written about the fate of OR/MS courses in MBA programs. Some arguments suggest that an autonomous presence is not necessary and may even be inappropriate. Others suggest that OR/MS skills need to be linked to other functional areas of business.

The area in which this link has been most clearly established is, of course, production and operations management (POM). Courses and programs in POM have come to incorporate much of the OR/MS type of knowledge and skills. Because these two areas have been so closely linked in business education, discussion of the curriculum of one usually includes the other.

OR/MS educators have also described links to other business areas. For example, some have described links to information systems (IS) through decision-support system courses, finance through risk analysis courses, and marketing through transportation and logistics courses. These remain isolated examples and are not yet common practice, especially in undergraduate curricula.

For the purpose of this article, and also in the process of reviewing the curriculum of our own program, we set out to understand the current status and trends of OR/MS/POM courses in undergraduate business curricula. To make our task manageable, we decided to focus our study on the masters-granting universities. We were able to estimate that this group serves 60 percent of the undergraduate business student population in U.S. universities. Despite that, they are often ignored in discussions related to curriculum issues. Most such discussions have focused on Ph.D.-granting universities. Further, to ensure minimum curriculum standards, we limited our study to the subset of masters-granting programs that are fully accredited by AACSB. This list of 163 institutions includes small and large, public and private, well-known and less-known universities in all geographic locations within the United States. By searching through that list, we found that only one university offers an OR undergraduate degree and 22 offer a POM undergraduate degree. In contrast, 109 and 107 offer degrees in marketing and finance, respectively. Have we hitched our wagon to another falling star?

To gain more insight into how OR/MS really fits in the undergraduate curriculum, we visited the online catalogs and academic Web pages of the majority of these institutions. In particular we looked for the following information:

What departments, if any, house OR/MS/POM courses?
Is there an OR/MS/POM course requirement in the business core?
Is there an OR/MS/POM area of specialization, concentration or major?
What is the total number of OR/MS/POM courses described in the catalog?

It is important to note that we are treating statistics as a separate field from OR/MS. Statistics is one of the few well-defined curriculum requirements for AACSB accreditation at the undergraduate level. Hence, all these schools require lower level core courses in statistics.

The information we compiled, although not overly surprising for any single item, collectively describes a status of OR/MS education in undergraduate business programs that is demanding of serious thought and reflection. The information also presents a series of questions that require the attention of OR/MS educators.

There is little recognition of OR/MS and POM as fields of study in the administrative structuring of the programs. Specifically, 68 percent of the schools do not have independent departments or administrative divisions that house OR/MS or POM courses. POM departments exist in only 9 percent of the schools. While 15 percent of schools have departments of decision and management science, they include primarily statistics and lower-level quantitative methods courses. Does this lack of administrative presence hurt us? Should we be concerned about the message our absence sends to prospective students regarding the importance or relevance of the field? What is the potential for mergers and partnerships with other departments? Can we, through these mergers, increase our visibility and at the same time maintain a unique identity? An example of such a merger is the department of operations and information management, which currently exists in 8 percent of the schools. This department typically includes a balance of OR/MS and IS courses that coexist within "well thought out" program themes.

Looking closely at the curricula of these schools help us dispel many of the myths in our own minds regarding what AACSB will and will not protect in the business curriculum. POM is a required core course in the majority, but not all, of the programs (84 percent.) MS is a required course in only 18 percent, and most significantly, 13 percent of the programs do not require either course (see Figure 1). Relatively few schools offer students the option of exposure to the field beyond the introductory course. Only 33 percent of schools offer POM as a field of specialization. The list of OR/MS/POM courses included in the catalog is in most cases extremely limited (see Figure 2).

Figure 1

Figure 2

This information clearly exposes the curriculum gaps in OR/MS. It leaves us questioning any claims that areas of POM pick up the slack. It frames a rather gloomy snapshot. But what is the trend? Is the status of OR/MS/POM in undergraduate business education improving? Or is this a bad story getting worse? In an attempt to get a sense of this direction, we tried to identify the top-ranked schools in this list. This group presumably supports aggressive curricula and is in some ways the trendsetters for the other institutions on the list. We used the tier ranking as described in US News and World Report to divide our list into three groups. What we found was rather surprising. The top-tier schools tend to have even less OR/MS/POM presence in their curricula. As we stated above, 13 percent of the schools have no OR/MS/POM requirement in the core. The percentage is considerably higher at 23 percent among top-tier schools including some ranked No. 1 in their regions (see Figure 3). Also, the percent of universities that offer either OR/MS or POM as fields of specialization is less among top-tier schools than in the overall sample. We believe that this added information leaves little room for optimism and raises many more questions.

Figure 1: Representation of the plant location problem.

OR/MS and even POM educators may already be an endangered species in undergraduate business programs. It is clear that AACSB currently has very minimal expectations and is not guaranteed to protect our existence. Should we seek to become more involved in this accrediting process? Our weak administrative presence in our own institutions will not assist us in regaining ground. Should we cultivate new alliances with other departments? Many of our colleagues will not support a stronger quantitative presence and believe that statistics courses provide adequate exposure for business students. Can we better educate our colleagues about how our field has evolved in the last decade? All these reasons, coupled with the fact that generally students perceive the field as "hard," make our battle an uphill one. Ultimately it is by engaging students that this battle will be lost or won. In the end, in order to sell more "beef," maybe we need to introduce "chicken" to our menu.

Salwa Ammar (ammar@lemoyne.edu) and Ronald Wright (wright@lemoyne.edu) are professors of Production and Operations Management at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y.

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