| Years after spending close to 200K at an elite MBA program I've come to the conclusion that they are a waste of time for most candidates. While students can be very smart and professors highly acclaimed, the MBA is a failed enterprise. In my opinion, business school only delivers an illusion of achievement and learning. MBA programs are too generic and formulaic to deliver meaningful value. Most notably: 1. Management science is even less scientific than Psychology. Yes, you can apply decision analysis, probability and game theory to business problems, but do these form a cohesive knowledge base? If management science does in fact exist, why do MBA programs' teachings differ so much from school to school? MBA students get exposed to theories and frameworks transplanted from the sciences but they walk away with only a shallow understanding of these models. Are we training managers as confidence artists? As the business school alumni move across corporate ranks they ossify and think they get it, when in fact they are just managing randomly without rigorous understanding of the complexities underlying their decisions. And yes, these business school alumni are to blame for the collapse of 2008 and many others. 2. Shareholder value maximization should not be a way of life. Very few business school graduates can think of businesses in holistic terms. The shareholder value maximization mentality incubates the many destructive forces that turn corporations into sociopaths. 3. Business schools are toxic environments created by mixing a myriad of backgrounds in a room and expecting highly divergent people to learn at the same pace or even to coalesce. In my experience, racism, discrimination, exclusion and backstabbing were the norm. Bankers drank with bankers, white Americans labeled the Chinese as "yet another international student", African Americans were severely under represented and military transplants were systematically labeled. My B-School experience was traumatic but not uncommon. I was literally swimming in a shark tank. 4.You will definitely learn a lot about corruption. I lost my faith in human nature after listening to business students talk about putting profits before lives. This are the type of people that will do anything for that bonus. In sum, business schools are a playground for corporations to shop for high (but not very high) IQ, good appearance, business aptitude and ambitious candidates. Business school is just a runway of highly accomplished students who think they get it but in reality don't. Management can't be taught. It needs to be experienced. Business schools are the most salient cancer in academia and they need to disappear. |