Wednesday 25 March 2009

The/That SOB



So many years on, and SMU is still all about its business school. Sure didn't help when the vice bigwig committed the latest faux pas during the dialogue session by saying that there are indeed 'lesser schools' around that should be easier to get a degree from.

I've never disapproved of SMU as a school with a business slant - it is a corporate management university after all - but what really riles me up is that the business faculty still holds on to a deliberately ignorant and baseless perspective that other faculties are useless, impractical, worthless of one's time and basically pathetic, and by virtue of the university's fiercely business standing holds these values and perspectives to be presumably true.

On the premise of intellectual rigour alone, social sciences and research is the basis of any theoretical standing that business practices may wish to stem their discipline upon. Any social science student can do as well as the average student in business, and I am confident that not any business student can do well at all in a social science course. And face this - your business degree has an expiry date, unlike a social science degree.

I am of the opinion that not every business student is unenlightened - there are a good deal of students who know what they're in it for and are respectful of what others pursue - but a significant number of people, however small, is enough to create the impression that business is a better faculty, and worse if they have the backing of the administration and the impression the university gives as well to hold their ignorant prejudices.



A friend of mine recently tried to apply for Unilever, which advertised 40 vacancies, and got rejected with the notification that more than 1000 applicants signed up for it.

Wake up!




Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
- Mahatma Gandhi

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TobyMac - New World

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