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The Eroding Power of the MBA
creepycoug
Member Posts: 23,635
“An MBA has become a two-part time machine,” entrepreneur Seth Godin famously wrote. “First, the students are taught everything they need to know to manage a company from 1990, and second, they are taken out of the real world for two years while the rest of us race as fast as we possibly can.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulinaguditch/2021/03/17/the-mba-meaning-is-changing-what-business-school-signals-after-covid-19/?sh=45d913567663
@Tequilla true? They make some interesting points in the article.
There's also a shocking take on the white male angle in there that all the Tug guys will want to read @RaceBannon .
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulinaguditch/2021/03/17/the-mba-meaning-is-changing-what-business-school-signals-after-covid-19/?sh=45d913567663
@Tequilla true? They make some interesting points in the article.
There's also a shocking take on the white male angle in there that all the Tug guys will want to read @RaceBannon .
Comments
Some folks need degrees. I won't judge
Then that meany Bannon got involved.
I want my doctors and lawyers highly educated and proficient. Worth it
Benny is right you can do it at night but why?
I do agree with the article in the sense that there's some reimagining of what a MBA education looks like. Looking at business cases from 30 years ago doesn't necessarily provide the best representation of what a student is going to walk into. A good example is that as an undergrad at UW I took a finance case study class (I forget the exact name of the class) that I was super excited to take. I ended up going to maybe 3-5 classes total for the quarter (not to mention making an enemy out of the professor for not showing to the class and when I did often leaving during the break). The reason being that most of the case studies were tied to the 1970s and included a ton of facts and circumstances that really aren't super applicable to what we'd encounter in our careers (think companies basically going bankrupt because they were overleveraged with double digit interest rates as part of their debt structure). You needed maybe one business case to realize that high interest rates are bad for highly leveraged companies and moreover that as a finance professional, a good way to torpedo your business is to leverage yourself to a point where you don't have an abundantly clear path to being able to repay the debt in the future (the corporate equivalent to the rainy day fund that we as individuals encounter). Long story short, case studies are great for teaching lessons and getting students to identify problems before they become critical ones. That said, the solutions for how to solve problems can be vast and there isn't necessarily a one sized fits all solution. That's something that business education needs to really do a better job of fixating on is working through the decision tree of what options are available and having students go down the path of what the outcomes are for those paths. Much more valuable.
When I was looking at getting a MBA, one of the primary reasons was because I graduated at a terrible time where an undergrad degree wasn't getting you in the door of companies. When I went to UW as part of the application process they effectively asked me if I thought coming back and getting my MBA at 28-30 years old would be a better idea. I'd definitely consider that a mindset that falls into the elitist mindset that the article called out with respect to MBA programs.
That said, at TCU we had a ton of diversity in not only ages but ethnicities. We had people from countries throughout Europe, Asia, and South America. We had undergrads that were business focused and those that weren't. We had people young and old. It was a very diverse cross section. When TCU did that I personally appreciated was that so much of their education was as much out of the classroom in teaching you how to be a professional as it was in terms of the books. For me coming from UW, my book education was spot on. But anybody that has gone through Foster knows that there's not (at last 20+ years ago) a huge focus on preparing the soft skills of being a professional. At TCU they didn't rest until everybody had summer internships because that was a critical part of your education. As a 2nd year student most of us had internships during the week around our classes.
One of the things that I know TCU did after I left (and I'm pretty sure that they still do it) is they effectively have their MBA students operate as consultants to area businesses (particularly those that are heavily tied into the program). It's effectively like a faux internship that gets teams into companies working on specific problems or issues. It's great real world exposure for the students not only with the company itself to make an impression, but great to put on a resume as not everybody coming out of a MBA program has a high end resume (it's a fair call out by the article of 2 years in the classroom vs 2 years in the office).
Here's where I really do disagree with the article though. It's absolutely true that there's a lot of value being in the company for 2 years. But companies, particularly at more entry level positions, aren't actively really training employees on how to be good managers and grow into roles going forward. Most managers/companies are less invested about your career growth than they are about can you do the job that is asked of you today. If you're good at what you do, you moving on is often not viewed positively because you're effectively fucking over that manager. There's a ton of lip service paid to this but it's really hit and miss. Politics really become a factor.
Politics within a company are really unique depending on the company. One of the biggest things that I find coming out of a MBA program is that I have a very high sense of morality and ethical conduct. I disagree that MBA students come out as entitled. I think that's a poor way of wording it. Are MBA students confident? Yes. And honestly, they should be. Getting into a MBA program isn't easy as it requires some degree of academic success coming out of undergrad with characteristics that make you a good bet for the school to invest time and resources in. As a MBA student not only are you getting a very wide breadth of experience, but you're also putting that to use with companies where if you're good at what you do you find during your internship time your responsibilities continue to expand. So what you really have isn't arrogance but confidence from MBA students knowing they can get the job done. But with high level of thought and ability, you also become much more difficult to mold and control. The politics at a lot of company are looking for certain people that are willing to jump unquestioned. I can't tell you how many times in my career I've been in spots where there have been disagreements or just flat out questionable at best actions. For those that understand what I'm saying, I think you have probably experienced it in your careers. If you don't really understand what I'm saying, then I don't know how to really explain it in a short and concise manner.
It really just comes down to how the game is played. There's a number of companies that want to mold the clay the way they want to. Amazon is pretty infamous for it. There's obviously downside risk to this because after a while what ends up happening is that you begin to think you're the smartest person in the room, you'll eventually get stale, and somebody that is willing to think differently will pass you. That's also not me saying that I know all the answers ... in fact far from it in the grand scheme of things. You learn the most by taking your knowledge base and laying on best practices from others that you work with that challenge or give you a different way of looking at a problem, how to present something, etc.
MBA programs will continue to adjust. Eventually there will become leadership voids within businesses as they realize that the people they are promoting don't really have the foundational base to be a well versed business professional outside of just their siloed knowledge base. Companies will continue down the path of promoting people and throwing them to the wolves with the expectation that they'll just figure it out. But for most of these people, when it comes to understanding concepts like change management and knowing when to push/pull in those situations they'll almost assuredly fail not because they aren't capable but simply because they just don't know better. Everything is cyclical and MBA programs will find ways to partner with businesses in time ... both will evolve to meet the existing needs in the market.
Abortion and religion have no place in this gentleman's finance club, do they?
Unless there's money to be made.
What's the margin on coathangers and communion wafers?