Happiness above income

Studies show that once basic needs are met, more money generates little, if any, additional happiness. Business school students should therefore take a cue from recent research in hedonic psychology - the science of happiness - suggesting that a reorientation of purpose makes people happy rather than a hot pursuit of money. Thus argues Robert A. Prentice, a professor of business law at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas in Austin in the “Chronicle of Higher Education”.

Prentice also suggests that business schools should be judged by the happiness they generate for their graduates. To stress his point he quotes Jonathan Haidt, an associate professor of social psychology at the University of Virginia, who has found that people who strive primarily for status and wealth are less happy, on average, than those who focus on relationships, spirituality, and contributing something to society.

People with a strong sense of moral purpose even tend to be more prosperous than others, according to Richard Layard, an economist at the London School of Economics. It seems that doing the right thing is its own reward in more than one way. All this research, though, does not show up in analysis of business schools. MBA programs are currently ranked by starting salaries for graduates and salary differentials pre- and post-business school. Rankings have such an important impact on MBA programs in their intense competition for students, faculty members, and resources that schools often try to influence them, for example by admitting students not because they are the strongest applicants, but because they are interested in finance and consulting, which have historically been the highest-paid jobs.

Professor Prentice proposes to replace short-term measures of starting salaries or salary differentials in MBA rankings by those of long-term happiness of former students. Measuring happiness ten and 20 years down the line after graduation would encourage business schools to focus less on training students for the highest-paying jobs and more on preparing them for careers they will find satisfying in the long term.

Surely high pay correlates with types of work that many students would enjoy. Many will go on aspiring to be consultants, or financial titans working long hours under extreme pressure. But business schools should teach students that people are often poor judges of what will make them happy, and that if they think the answer is money, they are probably mistaken. “Schools must convince students of the simple but lasting pleasures of relationships with family and friends and of serving others, contributing to the common good, and leading a moral life,” Prentice writes. “Valuing happiness above income would align two goals - securing a strong institutional reputation and creating a meaningful life - and more fully measure the value that MBA programs are truly adding to their students' lives.”

www.chronicle.com

• McCombs School of Business, Univ. of Texas at Austin
  Full-Time MBA