The New Business Prof.

The Chief Learning Officer is redefining business education and deciding on what is meaningful and needed in the economy.

A new frontier on how Chief Learning Officers can collaborate with educational establishments is emerging. Big employers, such as the accounting firm PwC, are teaming up with universities to craft and customize their accounting and business degrees. The Wall Street Journal explains that this should help graduates get the necessary skills in the working world.

The WSJ inadvertently tells its readers that the outcomes of the CLO are more meaningful for the economy than that of the business Professor. Mainly, because the world has been plunged into one of the worst recessions in history. As such, big employers cannot afford to spend months and years helping new hires from business schools catch up to the demands of the job. They need to achieve results, quicker.

Indeed, although Professors and CLOs have very similar tasks (They both oversee leadership and skill development; set learning goals, learning methods, and learning departments; and reshape organizational capabilities and culture), they achieve different internal and external results. For example, the results outside a university - how well a student is doing after graduation - are out of a Professor’s reach.

The WSJ’s article is right to highlight the need and importance of the CLO. However, the piece lacks hard-hitting questions such as these: What if business Professors had relied on a CLO from Arthur Andersen, Enron’s accounting firm, to craft a business education for students? Or, can the agenda of a CLO - in the long-term - really serve the interests of society?