Why don't the top MBA Programs in the world (really) offer a strong Human Resources track?

You don't have to look much farther than the depersonalization inherent in the very term "human resources." When you start managing people as "resources" instead of people, you are lost already.

Easy: there's no demand for it. A student perceives that he will command more money and get more glory by doing deals or building campaigns than managing an HR department.

As many other things, it's a pendulum... it'll swing back... on the margins, it has already begun to.

Charlie,
I think that we as an industrial society are still uncomfortable with accepting the fact that "soft skills" like communications and setting appropriate expectations and building trust are as or more important as the "technical" skills . I think we also still buy into the myth that leaders are born rather than developed.
Most of our human relations models are compliance based systems. They try to break things down into numerics.
That being said in my mind the aquisition and deployment of talent in my mind is a business skill. HR executives who do not have a grasp on finance, accounting, marketing, etc are doomed to fail.
I think as Jason points out as more businesses understand the importance of true engagement (alignment not morale) there will be a recognition and demand for this skill set.
I don't think this defficiency is just in HR. Most of the MBA curriculums I see these days have become "trade schools"- they focus on tactical disciplines rather than integrative or systemic thinking.
I remember the old days when college was intended to shape your mind and prepare you to think systemically and integrate concepts. A liberal arts background at the undergraduate level with an MBA was great preparation. I still like that model.
I believe that Master's levels programs in HR should share the same curriculum in the first year as other "tracks". Then in your second year we focus on the context of applying the discipline in the total model.

MBA programs attract candidates from a range of other disciplines, so they don't appear to have a special incentive to go strong in HR. Many grad schools have another income stream offering 3 day or week long "strategic" or "leadership" HR courses/certificates outside the degree -not sure if that's driven by non-HR or HR demand.

As a profession we've said for 20+ years HR needs to know business. So Charlie I'm curious, what do you think constitutes a strong HR track, what courses would you include?

I think the main reason is that great HR leaders think more like their counterparts in operations and finance then the people in HR.

I think the answer is found throughout Focus debates. I have just been engaged with (and disappointed by) a discussion where thought leaders were justifying organization culling where the the low 10 to 15% 'perceived' performers are eliminated. The term "deadwood" was being used in these discussions.

My view is this is lazy leadership, or maybe an act of some form of clinical depression where leaders who no longer care about their organizations, and maybe their company, fall into the trap of thinking "deadwooding" stimulates new growth.

While this practice becomes ever more common we must also recognize that the role of HR quickly becomes one of "the gun that fires the bullets". If this is the kind of HR businesses need there will be insufficient intellectual meat to justify an MBA program.

As you will guess, I am not a proponent of "deadwooding" and I am a believer that investment in your organization offers a huge payback potential.

Them weren't "thought leaders", by definition. Churning your bottom outliers is the kind of shallow superficial thinking I'd expect from a Finance MBA. There are very few truly bad or incompetent people, but most organizations are filled with round pegs crammed into square holes and suffereing other Mager&Pipe dynamics. Skill-matching is tough and easily avoided by the lazy.

That specific winnowing process also permanently taints your performance appraisal system, as well. Supervisors ain't dumb, by definition, and when managers realize that a low score is a cross-hair, they will contort, distort and manipulate to deliberately lay the badge of doom on those they don't like or want rather than play it straight. Better to immediately implement a KSA-matching study to insert the worker into an appropriate slot or begin an alternative remedial plan for mutual benefit. THAT is HR management, rather than absence thereof.

That semantic debate was lost many decades ago when they abandoned "Industrial Relations" and "Personnel" as functional labels. At the time, the argument was that HR emphasizes the value of the individual people as humans with bottom-line impacts who constitute the organization rather than lumping them into passive expense categories like the terms IR and Personnel do. Better to be identified as a thinking/breathing resource than as a neutral class or expense item.

I am a firm believer that true HR cannot be thought out of books only . One must learn from life, other managers, staff and students and yes, having a background other than HR is very helpful especially if you manage people with the same background as you are then understanding their needs and skills best. Thus, HR cannot be thought in college only.

@ Don Babcock in answer to his most recent comment (you can't respond to a reply): I don't disagree and fought it tooth and nail back in The Day, but was no more successful then than I was when trying to keep the American Compensation Association name alive instead of the idotic meaningless label it now carries. Re CSL, do an internet search for "rewards that don't, by h. r. screwtape" for an inside joke or ten.

In a nutshell, it's because they aren't designed to be HR degrees. Instead, they're intended to provide a "taster" of each of the different functions of a business so that graduates will be ready to enter into mid- or mid-high level executive positions. It could probably be renamed a Survey in Business Administration, because that's really what it is, albeit on a little deeper level than an undergraduate business degree.

There's probably a very good second reason why there isn't the emphasis on HR, and that is the dearth of HR representation in the board room. Many companies see people, who allegedly are their greatest asset, as far less important than other functions that are represented. The implication is that if you want to get on the board, then you'd better concentrate on something other than people.