Complaining Students: "Why Do We Have to Know That? It's Not Related to this Class."

Wow, I just had an amazing accounting class. This is a terrific way to end a semester. And it began with an unlikely article.

One of my students selected an article about the growth in sales for expensive jeans for toddlers from Weekend Journal section in the Friday paper. I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about the value of this particular article, but I always give my students freedom to fail or succeed. She discussed the basics of the article and how it would impact the financial statements as these sales grew. She also brought in the economics concept of the profit maximizing price point. We were all amused by the topic, as well as informed.

Now it becomes more interesting. One after another, other students chimed in with other, unrelated articles and connected them with the article about high-priced jeans for kids. None of these articles were directly related to denim, toddler clothing, or high-priced clothing. Instead they covered a variety of other topics, but the student still were able to connect the ideas.

One student discussed an article regarding the huge increase in consumer debt over the last 10 years, and she related how that could impact sales in the future, how companies should be careful about expanding (operations management!) and incurring additional fixed costs, and wondered whether debt could continue to fuel consumer purchases of these high-priced items.

Someone else jumped in with an article about the housing market cooling and suggested that home equity debt was not going to be available to fund extravagant purchases forever. He added that the resulting drop in demand would cause a decrease in price (more economics!), and therefore a decrease in revenues.

Another student brought up an article about Wal-Mart relegating its smiley face to second string advertising behind lifestyle ads. The connection he offered was the attempt by the discounter to polish up its image to seem more high-end and the anticipated higher profitability (marketing!).

Another article discussed related to the production scheduling of cyclical pattern in seasonal or faddish-type products (operations management again!).

The discussion continued on for several more articles.

I was thrilled and impressed! My students were able to take unrelated business articles and see connections. Major themes emerged. Concepts from other disciplines were related. They are remembering and applying concepts, so their comprehension and retention is greatly increased. Mission accomplished!

Contrast this with this statement made to one of my colleagues by a student. 'Why do we have to know return-on-investment for this class? This is a management information systems class, not a finance class.' This frustrates me to hear a student more interested in limiting his learning than seeing the connections. I salute this excellent professor for showing his students the importance cost-benefit analysis and payback periods for hardware and software purchases. Unfortunately, despite his valiant efforts, this student missed the point completely.

Using the Journal is a great way to show the connections between business disciplines and helping students to see the big picture. Education is not just memorization of facts and formulas, but more importantly, it should result in the development of thinking processes that utilize that information and see connections.

And my class 'got it!'