Biz School Research Add Value to Student Degrees

Newswise — A four-person team that includes two faculty members at The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Commerce has had an article accepted for publication later this year that will shed some light on the thorny issue of the relevance and value of the research activities of business school faculty.

The paper, “Does Business School Research add Economic Value for Students?” was accepted late last year by a top business journal, Academy of Management Learning and Education, (AMLE) published by the Academy of Management. AMLE's Thomson Reuters Impact Factor is 2.889, ranking it eighth out of the 89 major management journals covered by Thomson Reuters.

The paper’s authors are Paul L. Drnevich, assistant professor of strategic management, and Craig E. Armstrong, assistant professor of entrepreneurship, both in the management and marketing department at The University of Alabama, and Jonathan P. O’Brien, Lally School of Management and Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and T. Russell Crook, College of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee.

The bottom line: Faculty research productivity means a larger post-graduate paycheck for graduate students, but teaching is important too and faculty shouldn’t be excessively pre-occupied with research.
“The scholarly research conducted by business school faculty has long been the subject of intense criticism for lacking relevance and value to practice,” the authors say in the article’s abstract. “In contrast, we theorize that such research is relevant and valuable in that it contributes to what is arguably the most critical metric of relevance for B-school students: the economic value they accrue from their education. We investigate this counter argument on a sample of 658 business schools over an eight-year period. We find that research adds significant value in that it can potentially enhance student salaries by an average of $24,000 per year. However, we also observe that “excessive” research activity can lead to diminishing or even negative returns for students, and a research focus solely on elite journals might rob students of the benefits of exposure to a broader array of new ideas.”

Misconceptions over the lack of relevance and value to practice of business school research have become a thorny enough issue to prompt some universities to de-emphasize or discontinue the research focused tenure process and/or create faculty tracks that focus solely on teaching. These “clinical” professors are hired based on their professional experience and promoted primarily on their teaching and service performance, with a minimum focus on research and/or a touch of grant-raising. Such dual tracks allow “research” faculty to focus on their areas of expertise while non-research faculty spend more time in the classroom, but can short change the student if they take research faculty out of the classroom. Consistent with the study, students benefit the most from faculty who actively create new knowledge (through research and/or practice) and make it available to students in the classroom.

The study focused on 658 major business schools world-wide with a graduate (MBA) program, including several universities in the state of Alabama. The study covered an eight-year time span, using advanced statistical techniques to rule out alternative explanations for the impact of faculty research productivity on student salaries.

“One of our main goals at The Culverhouse College of Commerce is to combine research and teaching to provide the best education experience possible,” said J. Barry Mason, dean of the business school. “We are constantly striving to recruit and retain top researchers, but we are also always looking for top teachers as well. Sometimes the answer can be found though adjunct faculty and people who bring several years of real world experience to the classroom.”

The paper notes that “faculty who are actively engaged in research can likely provide value for their students by transferring to them new knowledge gleaned from their own research. In addition, even if an individual faculty member’s own research has little relevance to practice, being actively engaged in research helps faculty keep abreast of, and involved with, ‘cutting edge’ knowledge developments in the field.”

Source: http://newscri.be/link/1074901

US says China has rare-earth materials monopoly

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned about China's power over supplies of rare-earth materials on April 14, 2010.

According to the GAO, China controls 97 percent of the rare-earth materials vital to the military, mobile phone and clean-energy technology sectors – a situation that could put the United States in a perilous strategic position if it is not remedied.

GAO also said the United States previously handled all stages of the rare-earth material supply chain, but now most rare-earth processing is performed in China, giving it a dominant position that could affect worldwide supply and prices. On top of that, rebuilding a U.S .rare-earth supply chain could take up to 15 years.

Rare-earth materials are used in many applications for their magnetic and other distinctive properties and include 17 elements with names such as lanthanum, lutetium, neodymium, yttrium and scandium.

Some U.S. government and rare-earth industry officials think China increased export taxes on all rare-earth materials to a range of 15 percent to 25 percent and in the future China will only export finished rare-earth material products with higher value, according to the GAO.

A company called Molycorp Minerals, owned by Chevron Corp (CVX), has a large deposit of rare-earth elements at its Mountain Pass Mine in California. But the mine lacks manufacturing assets to process the ore into finished components. Also, it doesn't have 'heavy' rare-earth elements necessary for many types of industrial and military hardware.

Other deposits exist in the United States and elsewhere, but it could take nearly 10 years just to get production online.

By People's Daily Online

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Prospective U.S. Cyber Commander Talks Terms of Digital Warfare

For years, the military has worried about the vulnerability of the United States to cyberattack — and how and when to return fire in digital warfare. Now, the issue is taking center stage, as the Senate considers the nomination of an Army general to head the military’s first four-star Cyber Command.

In a hearing this morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee will review the nomination of Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander to be the head of the Pentagon’s new Cyber Command. It’s a chance to get a closer look at the kind of capabilities for waging network warfare the Pentagon thinks it needs. But it’s also likely to raise questions about just how far the military is willing to go in attacking foreign networks.

Last year, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered the creation of U.S. Cyber Command to coordinate all of the military’s online activities. Alexander is in many ways a logical pick. He comes from the world of electronic intelligence: He is director of the National Security Agency (NSA), the super-secretive military and intelligence outfit at Fort Meade, Maryland, that is charged with code-cracking and foreign communications interception. And he will head an organization that, in large part, will be an important line of defense against cyberspying. (He’s a classmate of Gen. David Petraeus, West Point class of ‘74.)

But Alexander will also have to answer questions about how the United States might retaliate if it comes under online attack. Military planners are mindful of incidents like the massive cyberassaults against Georgia in 2008 and Estonia in 2007. In both cases, fingers pointed to Russia, but experts questioned whether the Russian government had a direct hand in events, and pointed instead to the role played by patriotic volunteers (or “cybermilitias”) who orchestrated the online assaults.

In both of those cases, cyberattacks threatened civilian networks and the financial system. It’s unclear if the military could retaliate in kind. In a series of written answers to questions from senators (.pdf), Alexander said, “It is difficult for me to conceive of an instance where it would be appropriate to attack a bank or a financial institution, unless perhaps it was being used solely to support enemy military operations.”

And the scope of responsibility for the new commander is also quite sweeping (Alexander will also be “dual-hatted,” staying on as head of the NSA). In written answers, Alexander said the organization’s new missions would include “integrating cyberspace operations and synchronizing warfighting effects across the global-security environment; providing support to civil authorities and international partners; directing global-information grid operations and defense; executing full-spectrum military cyberspace operations; serving as the focal point for deconfliction of DOD offensive cyberspace operations; providing improved shared situational awareness of cyberspace operations, including indications and warning.”

In other words, everything but the kitchen sink. We’ll be watching the hearing, and will hope to get more answers on Alexander’s vision for the new command

• By Nathan Hodge
• http://newscri.be/link/1073631