This year’s Sumantra Ghoshal Conference, held at London Business School, debated whether strategy research has become irrelevant to the practice of management. The late Mr Ghoshal published a paper in 2005 scolding business schools for pouring "bad theory" on their students. That same year Warren Bennis and James O’Toole, both at the University of Southern California, published an article in the Harvard Business Review criticising MBA programmes for paying too much attention to "scientific" research and not enough to what current and future managers actually needed. Business schools, they argued, would be better off acting more like their professional counterparts, such as medical or law schools, nurturing skilled practitioners as well as frequent publishers.
However, business school professors have a tendency not to change. Since universities take journal rankings into account when awarding tenure, academics are rewarded more when they publish in research journals. (Popular media rankings of MBA programmes, although not The Economist’s, also take research output into account.)
In 2008 the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) took up the debate, publishing a report on making business research more useful. It suggested that tenure committees become more flexible. A scholar dedicated to popularising management ideas, for example, should be evaluated on book sales and attention from the news media, not on articles in research journals. This would allow faculty to reach out to wider audiences, rather than be, as Messrs Bennis and O’Toole put it, "damned as popularisers".
But that might also risk granting tenure on the basis of trendy but ultimately unhelpful ideas. In any case, some argue that the relevance of business research is understated. Jan Williams, vice chair of AACSB, argues that doing research allows faculty members to stay at the forefront of their subject, and that in turn improves their teaching. "We can’t teach students outdated material," he says.
What is more, a paper in Academy of Management Learning & Education suggests that faculty members’ research productivity and their students’ earnings after graduation may be positively linked. Certainly, the best known schools often have p research reputations to match their recognition in the wider world. So, should a student worry about a faculty’s research ability when applying to a school If business schools with better researchers produce better-paid graduates, then perhaps they should. But only up to a point: what MBA students most need is skillful teaching and help in developing their critical thinking skills first; access to frontier research comes afterwards. As Messrs Bennis and O’Toole put it: "Business professors too often forget that executive decision-makers are not fact-collectors; they are fact users and integrators.
It can be inferred from the passage that（）
A. the best schools in the popular media rankings guarantee graduates high salary
B. doing research may help students to be better paid later
C. professors should be evaluated on the basis of popularity
D. Jan Williams may not agree with AACSB on the issue about doing research
参考答案：D
解析：
[试题类型] 推理引申题。
[解题思路] 第三段提到AACSB认为，对教授的评价应该以其著作的销售量及其受媒体的关注度为准，而不以其发表的学术文章的数量为准(A scholar...should be evaluated book sales and attention from the news media, not on articles in research journals)，即AACSB认为教授不应该过于重视科研。而在第四段中作者指出，一些人认为商业研究的实用性没有得到重视，并引用Jan Williams的话，他认为从事科研活动可以使教授始终站在本学科的前沿并提高教学水平(doing research allows faculty members to stay at the forefront of their subject, and that in turn improves their teaching)。由此可见，Jan Williams认为科研活动对于教学来说很重要，即在科研活动的重要性问题上，AACSB与Jan Williams存在分歧，故正确选项为[D]。
[干扰排除] 第五段虽提到这样的观点：教职员的研究能力与学生的收入成正比，但后文If business schools with better researchers produce better-paid graduates...表明作者认为学校研究能力与学生收入不一定是成正比的，故选项[A]“排名最好的学校一定可以使学生们收入高”，选项[B]做研究可帮助学生获得更高收入都是不正确的，故排除。第三段指出，AACSB认为，授予终身职位时，应该参考教授的著作销售量以及受媒体的关注度，教授的受欢迎程度只是评价标准的一个方而，故排除选项[C]。