For all of the emphasis on analytical rigor in business schools today, another major recommendation of the foundations’ reports from the 1950s  that business become a true profession, with a code of conduct and an ideology about its role in society  got far less traction, said Rakesh Khurana, a professor at Harvard Business School and author of “From Higher Aims to Hired Hands,” a historical analysis of business education.

Business schools, he said, never really taught their students that, like doctors and lawyers, they were part of a profession. And in the 1970s, he said, the idea took hold that a company’s stock price was the primary barometer of success, which changed the schools’ concept of proper management techniques.

Instead of being viewed as long-term economic stewards, he said, managers came to be seen as mainly as the agents of the owners  the shareholders  and responsible for maximizing shareholder wealth.

“A kind of market fundamentalism took hold in business education,” Professor Khurana said. “The new logic of shareholder primacy absolved management of any responsibility for anything other than financial results.”

Outwardly, at least, business schools look robust. For years, they have drawn some of the most talented students, and many top candidates are still applying. In fact, business school applications typically rise as the economy softens because potential students see graduate school as a haven from professional uncertainty.

Employers are making fewer recruiting trips to business schools this year, given the economy, but newly minted M.B.A.’s are still winning highly selective jobs in finance and consulting. A survey last year of M.B.A. candidates worldwide by the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT, found that 29 percent of incoming M.B.A. candidates were working in finance or consulting, and that 53 percent went into those industries upon graduating.

For universities, business education is a kind of cash cow. Business schools are less expensive to operate than graduate schools with elaborate labs and research facilities, and alumni tend to be generous with donations.