Random thoughts

I'm in a meeting with extended education and one of the heavy themes at the moment is collaboration between colleges in order to fill in holes in programs in order to be able to offer them online.

It strikes me that it would probably be healthy for an institution to look at programs of study and their components from time to time to look at the overall makeup of the institution. It seems like threads like public policy, law, technology and business are underlying and sometimes foundational themes that are interwoven into nearly any course of study. Would it be better to replace a generic program of study in business with a strong core of competence in pervasive issues like business, public policy, planning, or technology for any and all degrees?

It seems that, to be competitive, an institution needs to have a great MBA program because labels like those allow you (and potential students) to compare institutions based on pre-set criteria. On the other hand, a broad, abstracted study of business may be less pragmatic than the intricacies inherent in the needs of a particular industry. On the other hand, that level of abstraction is valuable to help a student prepare for work in any industry, without regard to where they initially hope to focus. Interesting, anyhow.