One college at the University of Wisconsin is not like the others; one just isn't the same. The School of Business, centered in Grainger Hall and filled to the brim with eager students looking to succeed in corporate America, seems to have a different idea of higher education in mind than the rest of UW.

I don't know if it's the fancy new building, the top-20 ranking among business schools or the strict entrance requirements, but if appearances are anything, Grainger Hall is churning out a Grade-A batch of graduates.

I'm convinced, however, that the School of Business is missing something. The core curriculum — making up the majority of any Grainger grad's junior and senior years — is full of busywork and Scantron exams, rather than high-level critical thinking and analysis.

As a business student, I've spent countless hours in 1100 and 2080 Grainger Hall, and the business core is full of PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and group projects. I am a senior, but I routinely take core classes — some taught by grad students — with hundreds of other undergraduates. As I leave Grainger and return to plainclothes reality every day, I wonder what it means to take 300- and 400-level classes at a first-rate institution of higher education if half of the time I don't take anything away from lecture besides what I can find in the book.

Grainger High seems more like a technical college than an institution of higher learning: Students learn how to write memos (Business Communication), fill out busy paperwork (Accounting) and stay awake during meetings (Management & Human Resources). Occasionally, a diamond in the rough like Business Law shines through, featuring engaging lecturers and an intangible benefit: The class challenges students to think like lawyers and change the way their thought processes work. And that's exactly what higher education is all about; all of UW should challenge students to think about things differently.

The College of Letters and Science boasts plenty of classes that stretch the imagination. The computer science, philosophy and political science departments, for example, all feature introductory courses that propose concepts challenging what students take for granted. L&S students write essays and work tirelessly on complex projects, answering thought-provoking questions or struggling to apply powerful abstract concepts to real life. Business, it seems, is more about choosing an answer, A through E, and less about complex reasoning.

But maybe that's the point. Maybe the business school is actually meant to mold students into corporate workers rather than encourage critical thinking skills — so they'll fit in better at Accenture or Kohler or PricewaterhouseCoopers.

After all, the Business Career Center advertises business majors' starting salaries almost as early as SOAR and invites students to sign up for limitless employment opportunities throughout their four years. Grainger is host to countless career fairs with representatives from huge corporations lined up in droves just waiting with sign-up binders, informational brochures and free pens. Other majors, it seems, don't get nearly as much attention — there's no push from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication for students to work at News Corp. or the Tribune Company.

L&S could certainly benefit from a more structured recruiting program of some kind, but it should by no means distract from the point of a four-year education.

What other majors dish out isn't so tangible as the ability to structure income statements — most Art History students take more away from 202 than a few artists' names; the class is about the progression of modern art and learning how to recognize and analyze contrasting genres over time. That's why it's higher education; anyone could look at a diagram and learn the basics of a statement of cash flows.

And in that sense, perhaps business students would be better off if Grainger High was a bit more like the others: less concentrated on the inner workings of Kimberly-Clark and more interested in the theory behind what drives its success.

Taylor Hughes ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in information systems.