Medical education, since long, is being provided through a system that combines classroom and hospital. In classroom students are lectured and are taught the theories about the functions (and malfunctions) of human body while in the hospital they learn to apply that knowledge in real-life scenarios under the guidance of their mentors.
Why similar methods have not become popular for business and engineering education? What can be the possible pros or cons of adopting such methods for business education?
In some universities business students visit firms and in some, they also work at firms during their studies and get credit points for this. So, to some extent, such methods have been already used. Maybe some universities do not do that because they wish to give only 'academic' (articles- and textbooks-based) education, do not have staff interested in co-ordinating such studies (or have too much teaching staff, so they wish to keep them occupied) or have not found suitable firms (many firms are not interested in inviting students... they may be afraid that this is a waste of time, or that students may tell their business secrets to their competitors...).
Vissak thanks for your comment we do take our students to industry for study visits and also send them on internships of several weeks length. These activities certainly provide students valuable learning opportunities and a close interaction with real work environment. But what I was talking about is something different. I was talking about the live business environment where students and teachers work together on real business problems just as doctors and medical students work in hospitals.
Some universities do that, too. For instance, our faculty has a marketing club: students and lecturers solve real problems of real firms (e.g. develop marketing campaigns for them).
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