The Students Who Work Hardest Are Being Cheated
When progression becomes automatic, effort loses its value.
Business schools pass too many students.
I do not say that lightly. I say it after years of teaching across several schools and watching the same pattern repeat itself.
Some students turn up, participate, take risks, struggle with difficult ideas and improve. Others miss classes, spend sessions scrolling through their phones, contribute almost nothing and submit work they barely understand.
Most of them still graduate.
That is where business schools have got things wrong. We have confused giving people an opportunity with guaranteeing their progression. Once the tuition is paid and the student is inside the system, failure becomes an administrative problem rather than an academic consequence.
I know because I am often the problem.
When I fail students, the calls begin. Grades are reconsidered. Marginal cases suddenly become exceptional circumstances. Some schools impose medians that make genuine failure statistically awkward. These conversations rarely happen in writing.
The message is obvious. Retention matters more than standards.
ECTS should be earned. They should not be received for attendance, negotiated after the fact, or treated as part of the purchase price.
The worst damage is done to the students who work. They see classmates coast towards the same diploma and quickly understand that effort has been badly priced. Why push harder when the system protects the people who do not?
We accept real cutoffs elsewhere. Sport has selection. Medicine has consequential assessments. The military has selection and progression gates. Not everyone who starts should automatically finish.
My proposal is not a fixed failure quota. That would be lazy and easily gamed. I want published progression standards, externally audited grading distributions, and real gateways between years. Students who fail should get another chance, but they should rejoin only after meeting the standard of the next cohort.
I am already testing this in my courses. Attendance has consequences. Individual contribution is visible. Decisions must be defended. Polish cannot rescue empty thinking.
A business school diploma should expand opportunity.
It should not certify attendance.
Every argument published here begins with my own experience inside business schools, my observations and my point of view. I regularly use AI as an editorial partner to challenge my argument, help research supporting evidence, and improve the structure or wording. But I review, reshape and stand behind every sentence. The ideas are mine. So is the responsibility. Period.