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by airstrike 2436 days ago
I don't know. As the son of a High School teacher and an unemployed father from a third world country, I'm probably not what you call "smarter rich kid" yet I went to a top 5 MBA. Many of my classmates came from equally diverse backgrounds and nationalities. I think 30%+ of my class were foreigners.

But go on, it's easy to hate on MBAs. It's the one bigoted view everyone is seemingly allowed to have.
2 comments
headmelted 2436 days ago
It is easy to hate on "prestige" MBAs, but I think it has more to do with there being little to no empirical evidence that it prepares students for business success in the real world.

Also, a lot of people have endured "elite" MBA's entering the workplace into positions of seniority with no prior experience and exactly the results you might expect under the circumstances.

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airstrike 2436 days ago
> little to no empirical evidence that it prepares students for business success in the real world.

I haven't seen much evidence to the contrary, either. All I see is anecdotes from both sides, so I'll give MBAs the benefit of the doubt. Speaking for myself, I am an entirely different person after completing my MBA. I've become an analytical thinker to a fault and maintain my soft skills. Learned a metric shit ton of corporate finance, business strategy and decent macroeconomics.

> Also, a lot of people have endured "elite" MBA's entering the workplace into positions of seniority with no prior experience and exactly the results you might expect under the circumstances.

Shitty people exist everywhere. You don't have the counterfactual to know if those bosses would be even worse without an MBA. Seems to me like that's more of an issue with HR hiring processes than with the intrinsic values of a rigorous MBA program.

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headmelted 2436 days ago
"Shitty people exist everywhere. You don't have the counterfactual to know if those bosses would be even worse without an MBA"

Not at all what I was saying, but since you brought it up: MBA or not, I'd expect the outcome of someone with zero real-world experience being elevated to a position of making executive decisions would be universally shite.

Yes, it's entirely to do with HR processes, but nonetheless the reason MBA programs exist at all is because they offer students the outcomes that they do - outcomes that are entirely unwarranted based on any evidence that currently exists.

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airstrike 2436 days ago
> Not at all what I was saying, but since you brought it up: MBA or not, I'd expect the outcome of someone with zero real-world experience being elevated to a position of making executive decisions would be universally shite.

Where do you get the notion that MBAs have zero real world experience? That is factually incorrect.

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headmelted 2436 days ago
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-mba-effectively-does-not...

"Actually, 40 Years Of Data Show The MBA Effectively Does Nothing -- It Has No Impact" - Business Insider

https://www.economist.com/whichmba/nothing-special-mbas-are-...

MBAs are no longer prized by employers - The Economist

There's a lot more links like that on Google, I'll leave it to the reader to find them. That said, I found this one interesting:

Https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://amp.theguardian.com/education/2018/mar/19/why-the-mb...

It's an article in the Guardian that, to give the tldr version, suggests that MBAs retain usefulness for getting jobs, but with no evidence of impact on capability.

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airstrike 2436 days ago
Strawman. I didn't claim there aren't articles out there about how useless MBAs are.
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iamasoftwaredev 2436 days ago
> I think 30%+ of my class were foreigners.

Because foreign born people can't be rich?

What income percentiles are Harvard MBA students coming from?

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airstrike 2436 days ago
Many of us weren't. You claimed MBAs are exclusively for rich kids. I provided data to refute that baseless claim. The point on how many foreigners there were is just a freebie.

I don't know about Harvard MBA students, I didn't go there. But you can go ahead and google each school's class profile. Maybe that info is out there.

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ohbleek 2436 days ago
That was not data, that was a guess about your class.
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airstrike 2436 days ago
It wasn't a guess. It is real world data based on the class profile that, as I mentioned, is publicly available. I just don't want to dox myself.
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ohbleek 2435 days ago
your wording indicates it is a guess, giving a specific percentage wouldn't have doxed you
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eastWestMath 2436 days ago
The plural of anecdote is not data.
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airstrike 2436 days ago
That phrase stopped being witty ages ago. These days it's mostly a low effort comment.

I don't need a plurality of data to counter his claim that MBA's are "exclusively" for rich smart kids.

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walshemj 2436 days ago
Having a second degree is a big bonus when it comes to visas - you now see people doing a BSA/BA then immediately a MBA for this reason.

Originally MBA's where for 30 year olds on a fast track at big companies.

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