[padastra]

I think (5) is the weakest point, and also the major reason for getting an MBA.

With respect to the other points:

(1) Most '20 year old aspiring tech founders' can hardly be thought of as either a specialist nor experienced, but that doesn't make it any less a valuable experience.

(2) Hiring is an extremely difficult process, and most startups can take risks on experience and tangible contributions primarily because they can fire more easily (and the applicant pool is self-selecting) when it doesn't work out. At a large company signals are proportionally more important because you can't rely on interviewers, etc. to have high accuracy in judging candidates (I recognize this should be improved, but it's not currently).

(3) This is generalizable to all schooling except for e.g. chemistry labs or other things requiring expensive equipment and not specifically to MBAs.

(4) I would argue that more African-Americans have demonstrated "leadership qualities" and "emotional IQ in social settings" than have excelled at algorithms, and their representation as VPs or SVPs of a generic corporate function is higher than their representation as quants.