Even in academe, trends, fashions and fads come and go. But what happens when student demand for a given subject starts filling up classrooms faster than universities can adjust? Law schools across the continent are struggling with just this issue as a decades-old, formerly dusty subject is suddenly all the rage among their students: corporate governance.
In the past year, almost every law school in the province has introduced or re-introduced courses and seminars dealing with corporate governance and “white collar crime,” and students are enrolling in droves.
A University of Ottawa seminar entitled “Whistle Blowing” reeled in over 250 attendees; the demand for a Queen’s University corporate governance seminar necessitated a waiting list; and U of T Law’s new course “Corporate Governance: Legal Institutions and Corporate Performance in Comparative Perspective” course has filled up fast in each of the two years it’s now been offered. But corporate governance? On the surface, it doesn’t seem to be likely fodder for academic trendsetters. Besides, the field is hardly new, as U of T Law professor Edward Iacobucci points out: “This is an area that’s been growing for the past 10 years,” he said.
In terms of employment, Toronto-based lawyer Shaun Lotts says he doesn’t foresee any sudden growth that would parallel a sudden interest in the field.
“I’m not aware of any significant growth in Canada with respect to corporate governance” said Lotts. “I suppose I can understand there being a greater interest, but I don’t think this is a field that’s exploding with new jobs.” So then, why all the interest?
Some have attributed the sudden explosion of interest in “white collar crime” to influences of television, such as the prime-time hit The Practice and the dramatic showcase trials of Enron, WorldCom, Martha Stewart, and most recently, the troubles of Conrad Black’s Hollinger International.
Professor Iacobucci admits, “when people turn on the TV and see these high-profile cases, this may in fact be motivating a greater interest”. He warns however, against buying into the media frenzy, adding, “there is a sense that with some recent failures of corporate governance that this has made it more important. One must be cautious against making grand conclusions from a few spectacular cases.”
U of T Law professor Ian Lee is quick to state that U of T’s new courses are not just responses to the whims of the student body.
“It seems questionable to assume that professors or deans are designing their programs around the storylines of television shows,” he said.
While Iacobucci says that highly publicized scandals like Enron are “good marketing tools” for the courses, he adds: “I don’t think that it’s a reason to offer a course. There needs to be intellectual meat aside from a simple interest. This has been an area of tremendous growth over the past ten years because of the discovery that there’s been a great intellectual payoff.”
But will students continue to buy into the payoff? When the dust has settled, when Martha Stewart is back to baking cookies and out of prison, and when Enron and WorldCom are nothing more than historical footnotes, will students continue to dine on corporate governance’s “intellectual meat?” Or is this simply a flash-in-the pan, in-one-minute-out-the-next phenomenon soon to be forgotten?
Iacobucci concedes, “it’s too early to tell” if the interest in white collar crime can be sustained. As it stands now however, corporate law has never seemed so fashionable.
