Like the New Republic, yesterday’s Times also posed the question of whether American business schools contributed to the current economic crisis.

…with the economy in disarray and so many financial firms in free fall, analysts, and even educators themselves, are wondering if the way business students are taught may have contributed to the most serious economic crisis in decades.

“It is so obvious that something big has failed,” said Ángel Cabrera, dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz. “We can look the other way, but come on. The C.E.O.’s of those companies, those are people we used to brag about. We cannot say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our fault’ when there is such a systemic, widespread failure of leadership”

It’s obvious that business schools and their professors need to have ties to the institutions and people they’re teaching about.

The question is really, have those ties gotten too cozy? Are the profs so financially entangled with the private sector that they lost all perspective on what they were supposed to be teaching?