
Bulldoze the business school - merraksh
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school
======
laurentl
I recently finished an executive MBA at a top European B-school. To echo some
of the comments, it was overall way easier than my initial studies (eng
school), with some exceptions such as a brutal strategy assignment. There was
also a sense of entitlement from some of the participants, especially those
who were financed by their company. “Entertain me and give me my diploma” so
to speak.

On the other hand, due to the executive nature of the program (average age was
something like 38-39) the classes were much more nuanced, especially on topics
such as HR, management and so forth - when everyone in the room has some
degree of managerial experience and a few war stories to share there’s much
less room for indoctrination. This was also due to European culture, which is
a big part of the school’s DNA and reinforced by the mostly European cohort.

I did learn a lot of stuff; what will stay with me the most is what I learned
about myself, through introspective assignments and interacting with other
students, most of whom had very different backgrounds. But I would never have
been able to do this had I taken the program as an undergrad or right after
eng school. It’s true that you can’t teach common sense, you must learn it
through practice. However having the opportunity to reflect on that practice,
formalizing it and sharing it with likeminded persons was tremendously
helpful.

EDIT: to constrast my experience with the content of TFA, I crossed a few MBA
students in NY during a seminar. The discussion went something like this:

Me: so what business do you guys want to work in after graduating?

One of them: real estate!

Me: cool, any particular reason why?

Him: to make lots of money and retire early! (Rest of the group nod in
agremeent)

Me: ...

This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime crisis.

~~~
factsaresacred
> _This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime
> crisis_

Brings to mind this from Peter Thiel (exclude the length):

Q. You’ve written that you doubt the efficacy of MBA programs to prepare
future business leaders. What would an effective MBA program look like?

 _A. The question is, what substance of business are you focused on? The
conceit of the MBA is that you don’t need to have any substance at all. It’s
just this management science, and you can apply that equally well in a
software company or an oil drilling company or a fashion company or a rocket
company. That’s the bias I’d want us to cut against. So for the degree, people
would learn substantive things and then on the side you’d pick up some
business skills. But you wouldn’t treat the business degree as the central
thing.

I think one challenge a lot of the business schools have is they end up
attracting students who are very extroverted and have very low conviction, and
they put them in this hot house environment for a few years — at the end of
which, a large number of people go into whatever was the last trendy thing to
do. They’ve done studies at Harvard Business School where they’ve found that
the largest cohort always went into the wrong field. So in 1989, they all went
to work for Michael Milken, a year or two before he went to jail. They were
never interested in Silicon Valley except for 1999, 2000. The last decade
their interest was housing and private equity.

So there is something about the way in which business school is decoupled from
anything really substantive that I’d want to rethink._

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-
leadership/wp/2014/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-
leadership/wp/2014/10/10/peter-thiel-on-what-works-at-work)

~~~
purplezooey
And we should listen to Peter Thiel because....

~~~
theyinwhy
... the downvotes say so.

I am wondering about the same. Peter Thiel does not seem to be someone the
world should listen to. His politics are anti-human I would say. And yes, by
being as influentual as he is I think we can and should talk about his
politics here.

I am still trying to figure out how two such different world-views like thiel
and musk were able to work together.

~~~
jaredklewis
Just because someone has bad ideas (or ideas you disagree with) in one area,
why would that mean all their ideas are bad?

To take an extreme example, Bobby Fischer is easily in the running for best
chess player of all time. He was also an anti-semite. Does that somehow make
his chess less good? Should we ignore that he was an anti-Semite? No! But
should we cut all his games from chess books because of it?

Indeed, if you read many biographies one might quickly reach the conclusion
that many of the world’s most accomplished men and women are also among its
most flawed. Science, literature, and art would be set make many centuries if
we had to discard all the work of those not meeting modern standards of
decency.

To be clear, I don’t think Thiel is anywhere near as extreme a case as
Fischer. I disagree with his politics (just the ordinary libertarian Baloney),
but I think he is right on this point.

My advice to you would be to learn to separate ideas from the people that
originate them, or you’ll miss out on so much great thought.

~~~
theyinwhy
Why promote a chess player who is anti semite if you could promote another one
who is not?

~~~
briandear
He isn’t getting “promoted” — he won a hell of a lot.

~~~
theyinwhy
As did others.

~~~
sattoshi
I suspect you are trolling at this point.

~~~
theyinwhy
There are many chess players. There are many chess players playing very good.
You don't need to promote the anti-semite chess player. You can also promote
the one who does not propagate fascist world views.

Let' use the analogy for the sentence from Peter Thiel:

The statement that managers should know something besides management is not
original at all. There are hundreds of people telling you that. It is common
wisdom. I heard that 20 years ago and I am still hearing it.

So why promote Peter Thiel for saying that? There is no need at all to quote
him. The quote is not original, nothing new, nothing special.

Nevertheless, the commenter decided to quote Peter Thiel on that and give him
praise.

Make up your own mind about that.

------
mbesto
Drucker, the person most attributed with founding modern management, himself
stated that you cannot teach management:

 _Prof Drucker expounds: "Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me
as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can
teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can't teach them
management."

His view is that management is neither an art nor a science but a practice -
in which achievement is measured not by academic awards but by results._

[https://www.ft.com/content/5e78a9cc-3732-11d9-a8bb-00000e251...](https://www.ft.com/content/5e78a9cc-3732-11d9-a8bb-00000e2511c8)

~~~
walshemj
The original idea of bschools where they where for mid career mangers where
considered high flyers.

Now it seems the higher level degree status is used to game visa applications.

Maybe a MBA should only be issued if you can prove 10 or 15 years real world
work experience which would return the MBA to its roots as a course for
experienced people

~~~
baybal2
No respectable business school should admit people without substantial
existing work experience into any graduate course.

Unfortunately, it looks that more than a half of big name universities are
happy to admit people without such, or even no undergraduate studies
background.

~~~
gaius
_No respectable business school should admit people without substantial
existing work experience into any graduate course._

All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years
investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience.

The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to
begin with

~~~
cjalmeida
If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour
for MBA grads is ridiculously.

Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are
utterly incompetent and lacks common sense.

Or, more likely,

a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school
even by non experienced people;

b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years being part
of a team reporting directly to the C-level executives of Fortune 500 corps,
solving quite complex problems.

~~~
gaius
_either the CEO is stupid_

He or she might be; plenty get those kinds of jobs on their personal
connections rather than their track records.

But a more usual scenario is that the CEO wants to fund their next bonus by
slashing jobs, and paying management consultants - with the company's money -
to facilitate that is, to that sort of person, a shrewd move.

~~~
cjalmeida
>He or she might be; plenty get those kinds of jobs on their personal
connections rather than their track records.

I'm yet to see a stupid person as the CEO of a large corp. Sociopath maybe,
but hardly stupid.

Now an unpopular opinion: maybe the slashed jobs were no longer necessary and
letting people go was needed for the company to remain competitive?

~~~
gaius
Those people were hired for a reason; if the CEO literally cannot think of
anything useful for them to do then they have utterly failed as leaders. But
they are lavishly rewarded nonetheless.

------
bkohlmann
I graduated from business school last spring.

It’s not that they need to be bulldozed, but rather, treated as a trade
school.

Our highest rated classes were taught by practitioners - those in the Arena,
leading men and women, making the difficult ethical choices, then posing them
to us to wrestle through. These were the classes we all wanted to take, but
were deeply oversubscribed and only a fraction of us got to take.

The practitioners were sidelined by the academics. The theorists and mere
paper-writers - many of whom either utterly failed at business or never spent
a day outside the university environment.

Not one of my MBA classmates planned to teach - yet we spent most of our
required class time being taught by those in power with the least relevance to
the real world.

The real revolution in business education will occur when the academics
relinquish control, and let those who’ve learned through hard fought
experience take the reins.

My experience was incredible - my classmates were the most impressive folks
I’ve ever met. And the value there was incalculable. But the education was
easily replicable, aside from the phenomenal courses taught by practitioners.

~~~
flyingcircus3
This is largely the duality between a school of engineering, and a school of
technology as well. Purdue University has both. Engineering is this 150 year
tradition that literally made Indiana the crossroads of America. Top 5 in most
of it's disciplines year after year.

But that consistency has brought the hordes. Thus, freshman engineering is
this gauntlet to run. Profressors are busy with reasearch, TAs are just
reciting teleprompters. If you make it through, it's because you were self
sufficient, and didn't rely on the university for much of anything.

The school of technology, on the other hand, requires professors have 15 years
experience in industry. No research is performed. Every single core class has
a lab section. It is literally disrupting the school of engineering by taking
the students who aren't yet polyglots at 18, and actually teaching them to be
engineers.

It is effectively a bypass to the same destination of becoming an Engineer.
But there's more lanes, better signage,its well lit, more efficient
maintenance, and I arrive at my destination refreshed, instead of frazzled
because of all that big city gridlock.

~~~
throwawayjava
I've seen something similar at other institutions.

The School of Engineering, in this case, is trying to teach something more
than just domain knowledge about engineering disciplines. The goal is to take
those "18 year-old polyglots" and turn them into world-class problem solvers.

You see this is every elite educational program. Mathematics at Chicago.
Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. Engineering at MIT. Their programs have a
difference in kind, and are very intentionally not built for "the average
college student".

It's good that there's an alternative path within the same institution for
those students who need to focus their efforts on baseline competence. But
it's also good that strong programs expect more out of their students.

~~~
paulie_a
While those are big name schools. When I review a resume I never even look at
the education section. I will never be impressed by that.

~~~
flyingcircus3
I would say, to firm that up even more, every school can point to their
accomplishments, and the graduates/professors that worked on them, as to why
they are in rarified air. You can look through Wikipedia at all of these
renowned scientists, and who their advisors were, and who their students were.
So you can say they stood on the shoulders of giants, and also stood tall for
others to perch even higher.

But not a single one of those heroes of science should rightly be remembered
primarily or even secondarily because of where they studied.

The underlying fallacy is that you can only learn the best skills from the
best people in a short window if time in your early adulthood.

------
lordnacho
He's got a point, and I studied at a top business school.

The points he makes are mostly valid. Not sure if he mentioned this one,
though:

The existence of business schools gives society the unjustified idea that
there are positions for which business graduates are better suited than most
other people.

To compare, medical schools do the same but it is justified.

I wouldn't have surgery performed on me by someone who hadn't been to medical
school, but I would be indifferent to hiring a manager who hadn't gone to
business school. (One interesting line of thought I did learn at business
school was that in the Germanic world, they are less likely to accept the
Anglo-Saxon view that management is a separate skill to working. So they get
more people stepping up from the ranks.)

So why do I think this? When I studied the business school, it was just very
weak intellectually. Kinda like watching documentaries all day; interesting,
makes you think you understand something, but ultimately superficial. Reading
about Betamax vs VHS is the same; you think you're gaining insight as you do
it, but there's nothing really deep in there. There's not really a method or
organising principle to decision making, other than "try to think about it in
an organized way, keeping in mind relevant precedents" (like SWOT). Basically
just common sense as a degree.

That's mostly the strategy part I'm addressing there, which is probably the
piece most people associate with business school.

The other parts are also better taught by other departments. Finance can get
very interesting when it comes to derivatives and investment strategies, but
you're never going to learn this without having a strong applied math
background. Organization behaviour and Human Resource Management, there are
scientific departments that reach into the same space. Again, there's a big
gap between what we can learn about human psychology and how you should use
that information practically.

Worst of all is the philosophical angle. So many times I thought to myself
"how do you actually know this" with very little answer.

If you want to learn how to solve business problems, there is a course that is
uniquely suited for this. Software Engineering. You look at business problems,
look at what resources you have available, see how other people solved them
(hashmap, quicksort), and cook up your own solution using the same tools that
professionals use (git, IDEs, terminals).

~~~
maxxxxx
"So why do I think this? When I studied the business school, it was just very
weak intellectually. Kinda like watching documentaries all day; interesting,
makes you think you understand something, but ultimately superficial. Reading
about Betamax vs VHS is the same; you think you're gaining insight as you do
it, but there's nothing really deep in there. There's not really a method or
organising principle to decision making, other than "try to think about it in
an organized way, keeping in mind relevant precedents" (like SWOT). Basically
just common sense as a degree."

That's one thing I have heard from several people who have STEM degrees and
also an MBA. They all say that once you got into business school it was by far
the easiest degree they got.

~~~
ghaff
Add me to the list. There are also any number of books you can read about weak
in math liberal arts major struggling through year one of biz school.

And I saw it first hand as a tutor. I had someone ask me to explain graphs to
them.

------
seem_2211
I have an undergrad business degree, and a lot of the criticism in the piece
is fair. Most of what you learn is common sense. There's a reason there are
plenty of people in history that have been able to build multimillion dollar
businesses without very little formal schooling, it's simply not as difficult
as engineering or chemistry.

I was a marketing major, and really there is no value in the credential past
an undegraduate level. The journals that professors publish in have no
relevance to people working in the field, and are borderline gibberish. To
have a masters or PhD in marketing is entirely useless unless you want to
become an academic.

There's also a lot of make work in the business school. I studied political
science as my minor and found the papers had a lot less "work" from a volume
point of view, but I learnt a lot more and was challenged to think a lot.

------
olivermarks
Gary Hamel has been very effective in calling out the emperor's lack of
clothes in business 'education' for years - I was at an event in 2009 when he
went on an epic rant after the banking 'crisis'.

[https://www.london.edu/faculty-and-
research/faculty/profiles...](https://www.london.edu/faculty-and-
research/faculty/profiles/h/hamel-g#.WuSUpvdFVE4)

Ironically both Mr Parker and Mr Hamel are being paid well for teaching at the
institutions they despise.

I see an analogy with the vast 'San Francisco Academy of Art University', now
the largest property owner in San Francisco. It's a highly successful business
teaching all sorts of art courses, but a common criticism is that it's a mill,
taking young people's money to 'learn art' in an expensive, beautiful city.
The fact it is there is demand and it's hugely profitable, just like BSchool.
Doesn't mean you are a good businessman or artist at the end of it - I believe
like Drucker you have to learn as a trade in context not as a theory - but
highly successful businesses cater to demand...

------
factsaresacred
Anybody who found this interesting will like 'The Management Myth':

> _The thing that makes modern management theory so painful to read isn’t
> usually the dearth of reliable empirical data. It’s that maddening papal
> infallibility. Oh sure, there are a few pearls of insight, and one or two
> stories about hero-CEOs that can hook you like bad popcorn. But the rest is
> just inane._

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-
man...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management-
myth/304883/)

And previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931270)

------
macawfish
We don't need rich bosses. We need hands-on leaders who aren't afraid to make
the world a better place and who respect the integrity of all their
collaborators.

Replace business schools with institutions that foster leadership,
collaboration, and inclusive positive project management skills from a wide
variety of alternative forms of organization.

For example: cooperatives are a legitimate, sustainable form of business, so
_why aren 't they being taught and innovated in business schools?_

Also, project management skills should be something everyone gets. Every
working person should be afforded opportunities to grow in their ability to
lead.

------
seanahrens
My finance professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley preached
that maximizing profit was our ultimate service to the world---so much so--
that he taught that if we were running a company and had an option to maximize
profits by producing a product that would seriously harm the health of people
(eg. give them a medical condition), we should undoubtedly DO IT. Because we
would have maximized profit for shareholders, made something great for our
customers, and (if we needed) we could take the extra profits and make medical
payments to the people harmed to make it whole.

He made this argument in front of 150+ person lecture class. I was so
dumbfounded and shell-shocked at the argument that I couldn't believe what I
just heard. I looked around at the undergrad business finance students around
me, and it looked as if they were absorbing it in.

That was the day I knew I chose the wrong major.

I really did think about raising my hand in that class to respond to the
hellish ethics he just espoused. But this professor frequently shouted down
students or used ridicule to make people regret raising their hands, and I
didn't have the worldview I now have to be able to tell him precisely and
irrefutably why what he was teaching us was so so wrong.

The real trouble, however, is that this professor was just a preacher for the
doctrine of modern day American capitalism. I just expected to hear the
doctrine in a much more sugar-coated and digestible form. He literally read
the doctrine to us right out of the book.

UC Berkeley allows undergrads to study at their Haas School of Business and
earn a BS (bachelor of SCIENCE) in Business Administration. This is what I was
studying. Luckily I had enough time left in undergrad after this lecture to
switch to studying computer science at the College of Engineering--where I
then felt like I was learning real skills.

~~~
dba7dba
I was a student at the great institution called UC Berkeley and I remember
well the teenagers walking around in suits/ties and skirts/blouse. These were
undergrad Business school students and I remember well the air of superiority
they showed. They seemed so proud.

~~~
seanahrens
I was in classes with these kids. Many of them were smug AF and wanted to
start tech companies, but didn't know a thing about software engineering. I
just felt they wanted to manage/direct the people and make the money.

Since I had been coding since a young age, building web apps in my spare time,
when I was in classes with these people I started to actually realize I had
this superpower they valued.

But truth was I didn't want to work with any of them. I didn't see the value
in someone whose studies were about learning how to harness my value.

------
ngrilly
On the same topic, I absolutely recommend reading "Confronting Managerialism:
How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance" by
Robert R. Locke and J.-C. Spender.

[https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-
Ec...](https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Economic-
Controversies/dp/178032071X)

------
amoorthy
I'm a Stanford business school grad and harbour no fanatical love for it. I
penned a public letter to my Dean [1] five years ago suggesting changes to a
curriculum I saw as myopic.

But this article strikes me as a diatribe against capitalism rather than
business school alone. And the author's track record of railing against an
industry he taught in for years sounds a bit like a publicity effort.

Fwiw, my experience at Stanford was very positive and I found some of the
academics to be quite useful even ten years later. And my classmate are
incredible and many remain close friends and advisors.

[1] [http://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/120424/Reform-
Stanfor...](http://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/120424/Reform-Stanford-
Business-School-or-keep-paying-lip-service-to-motto)

~~~
kolbe
> my classmate are incredible and many remain close friends

That's a more significant aspect of business school than the classes
themselves. In fact, I suspect the curriculum are designed more to maximize
the creation of friendships (i.e. fairly easy and communal) than it is to
actually fill people with knowledge.

~~~
dba7dba
An acquaintance of mine who graduated from USC MBA said basically you will do
well if you can carry on good conversation over beer.

And another who went to Harvard Law said everyone at Harvard Law viewed folks
at Harvard MBA as idiots.

------
kolbe
An MBA, much like most schooling, is all about signaling. Anyone who frames
our educational system in any other way is missing the point.

~~~
analog31
In my view, there is a grain of truth to the "signaling" hypothesis, but it
also sounds like:

1\. A legitimate grievance from people who didn't get an education and are
having it arbitrarily held against them.

2\. Sour grapes from people who got nothing from their time spent in school.

Higher education is whatever you make of it. You're legally an adult, and can
make your own choices. No two people will experience it in the same way. My
kid will start college next year. I've given her a couple of analogies (roll
your eyes after each one):

1\. It's like going to California during the gold rush, and being handed a
shovel and a bag. You get to keep the contents of the bag in four years.

2\. It's a tiny elite college hidden inside a giant Big Ten party school.
There is intense social pressure for you to join the party school. You decide.

~~~
kurtisc
That grain of truth was enough to win a Nobel prize.

~~~
analog31
Indeed, but like many social science results, "signaling" has taken on a life
of its own in the popular consciousness.

In the post above mine, signaling has gone from being an interesting and
potentially measurable effect, to being the _entire_ effect of education.
Emphasis mine:

>>> An MBA, much like most schooling, is _all about signaling_. Anyone who
frames our educational system in any other way is missing the point.

------
macspoofing
You can substitute a number of humanities programs and all the criticisms
would be equally valid.

------
Anirudh25
The problem doesn't lie only with business schools but with complete higher
education. Being a CS senior at Indian University, I have heard about from so
many industry experts railing about the huge difference between industry and
academic skills.

------
Jedd
John Ralston-Saul, writing in The Doubter's Companion in 1994:

> BUSINESS SCHOOLS: Acting schools which train experts in abstract management
> methods to pretend they are capitalists.

> The graduates of these institutions have dominated Western business
> leadership for the last quarter-century. This corresponds exactly with a
> severe economic crisis in the West, which has included runaway inflation,
> endemic unemployment, almost no real growth, record levels of bankruptcy,
> and a collapse in industrial production. Manufacturing, the sector which
> they have been trained to manage, has suffered more than any other.

> This raises two questions:

> 1\. Is there any indication—practical, statistical, philosophical or
> financial—that training future business leaders in specialized management
> schools has benefited business or the economy?

> 2\. Has this new élite — approximately a quarter of the university
> population — been able to communicate to society any convincing program for
> ending the crisis?

> Not surprisingly, an education which above all teaches the management of
> structures is impervious to failure. Those within the structure continue to
> define the economy’s needs in their own terms and so seek out successive new
> generations of business school graduates.

> In 1993 the Harvard Business School reacted to growing criticism of its
> methods by announcing a new curriculum. In the future students would “focus
> less on specific disciplines and more on combining skills to solve
> problems.” But it is precisely their obsession with problem-solving that is
> the heart of the problem. To organize the training of business leaders from
> the point of view of the corporate executive is rather like training
> athletes to compete from the point of view of the team’s office manager.

> The outside observer might conclude dispassionately that these schools
> should be shut down or their methodology revolutionized. The graduate will
> argue, like the World War I staff officer, that failure could be turned into
> success if only there were more of his own kind in positions of power. Just
> one more wave of bodies heaved out of the trenches for a charge and the war
> will be won.

------
fwn
> Take finance, for instance. This is a field concerned with understanding how
> people with money invest it.

Actual finance is mostly concerned with pure money management, agnostic of the
entity holding the money. If it's not a person, company or administrative body
it's probably a mixture of those.

> [...] it also assumes substantial inequalities of income and wealth.

This is not true. For the most part it assumes that there is some need to
allocate capital. Whether it is from a pension fund, an evil dictator or the
Red Cross is mostly only a concern regarding specific constrains like
regulation, objectives, etc.

> The greater the inequalities within any given society, the greater the
> interest in finance, as well as the market in luxury yachts.

No. The more capital to allocate, the greater the interest in allocating it.
An economy with a greater financialization therefore requires a greater amount
of financial knowledge and services. One can argue that such developments
might be bad - completely fine. It is however awfully inaccurate to describe
financial services as Veblen goods (luxury stuff where demand increases with
price).

I like the general attitude of the article and I believe that there might be
some benefit in questioning the study of management. I just do not like
beating strawmen.

------
jprissi
Does it apply to other countries aswell ?

In France, we have a pretty specific system called "classes préparatoires"
where you spend 2 years before accessing business/engineering schools. As far
as I know, the ones intended for business schools give a lot of importance to
philosophy, history and geopolitics. This seems to differ a bit from how other
business schools are described throughout the article.

In the meantime, our business schools seem to follow and try to mimic the
American ones.

Do other business school teach similar topics ?

------
baybal2
I, under great pressure from my parents decided to go for one. Through my
youth I dreamed of doing some hardcore engineering work, yet me taking a look
on the job market made me reconsider (that was right in the middle of credit
bubble,) engineering job at that time looked like a great lottery where you
pay 80k for 6 years of uncertainty, and 2 in 3 chance to not to get a
substantial job in a year. Yet, your studies take much dedication, and leave
you no chance to earn properly while you study.

Given all above, we settled on a compromise solution, I were to go for a 2
year intensive BCIT undergrad business course with as much edge in tech as
possible, and to which I will get as much study credit transfer possible from
Russian PTU and courses I did as an exchange student in Nanyang, Singapore.

In total, it took $60k of living expenses and study fees for 2 years. I was
able to work while I study more or less freely, though with arguable legality
with my student visa. I found my first job through the company I was interning
with. I never went into debt besides $20k I took from my parents at the very
end of my studies, when fees were finally closing on to eat through my savings
(they never did, but I had just $1.9k by the time I graduated).

In the end, by tech background took me back into tech, and my second job after
graduation had close to no business side, aside from what I learned on
marketing courses (I was a webmaster for an electronics startup with a lot of
liberty in what I put into marketing drivel.)

My thoughts:

1\. Some base skills like financial modelling/planning, bookkeeping, doing
accounting reports, business law do have genuine value. I regularly see tech
managers nearing C-Suite positions who have great trouble when it comes to
comprehension of such basics.

2\. The further you go, the more ephemeral and metaphysical do your studies
get, the thicker the coolaid, the harder they try to persuade you into
believing into value of such studies. By the time you get to writing
"executive case studies," if you have not realized that, then, with all
respect to you you are a lost cause.

3\. People who endure and get through, by the time they graduate, have their
view of reality warped. No red pill will help them. Even if some do come close
to realisation of errors in their ways, and can ask for feedback, it takes
extreme effort to persuade them to adopt proper ways. You need to show them
that they don't only concede their position on a particular issue, but make
them accept that their original reasoning that leads them to their erroneous
position is not working.

4\. In China, I saw great great many youngster coming back from America after
B-School, putting the knowledge they were taught to a level nearing an
ultimate religious revelation. My short relationship with TCL's (a Chinese
electronics company) product group was like that:

Me - man, this is not a lifestyle brand no matter how you twist it, and it
will not be one no matter what the marketing dept. think they can do. You are
not becoming a lifestyle brand through any actions of a marketing dept.

Product manager Joe - but this is not how it is supposed to be, a guru of
management studies B said this, so we will be doing so. This is the trust our
company's supreme leadership puts into progressive Western ways! ...

After the end of the gig, I decided to not to accept their new offers. For the
next few months after that, their above standing managers were contacting me.
All of them sounded rather surprised with my reasoning for me not willing to
work with them. I think, all of them asked me something like "were we _really_
doing something wrong there?"

------
megamindbrian2
Is this what they are teaching people to do?
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6c...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263daf)

~~~
ItsMe000001
Click on the link.. and I get no content, only

> Make informed decisions. Become an FT Subscriber.

Okay - no.

------
mbagraduate
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.

------
tzm
Companies should stop treating an MBA as a technical requirement for
employment.

------
willbw
I agree with many points in the article, but it seems to me his core point is
that alternatively economic and political models to capitalism should be
taught in business schools.

It isn't clear to me that this is a job for graduate business education. The
author clearly has an agenda to change either some aspects or capitalism, or
to change economic systems entirely. I don't know why he thinks educating
business school students differently is going to be something of a catalyst
for change of this magnitude. People are studying these degrees with the sole
aim of advancing their careers _within_ a capitalist system. If you want
political or economic change, these ideas are going to have to be spread
throughout the general populace, as most of us here live in democracies.

I also don't think its clear what system would be better than capitalism,
despite its flaws, and asking a curriculum to give focus on some alternative
system which is completely unproven is a big ask.

------
pcmoney
1\. He makes a good point 2. Its not the point he thinks he makes 3. Full
disclosure one of my degrees is a B.S in finance but I work as an engineer.

He makes a point that "At the end of it all, most business-school graduates
won’t become high-level managers anyway, just precarious cubicle drones in
anonymous office blocks." But isn't that true of most degrees? I would argue
even most STEM grads end up in the cubicle farm. I saw plenty there working
for a defense contractor. I also think him saying this is objectively bad is a
little elitist. Depending on background and family socio-economic status the
cubicle farm might be a step up and even a point of pride.

All of his criticism is from the point of view that people in business schools
take advantage of others, how about people go to business school to not be
taken advantage of? To know how to negotiate a salary, to know the rough rules
of the game. If you don't come from a family of means I would argue a decent
business school and STEM are about equivalent in terms of increasing your
income and providing a long term career. Some don't have the aptitude or
inclination to do STEM. Just like many STEM grads couldn't sell someone a $100
bill for $95.

Another claim is that: "Another suggested that the likelihood of committing
some form of corporate crime increased if the individual concerned had
experience of graduate business education, or military service. (Both careers
presumably involve absolving responsibility to an organisation.)" How about
people who know a field and are in the field are more likely to commit a crime
in it? I am sure the number of blue collar embezzlement is dominated by
plumbers/electricians etc. Not even going into criminal medical issues such as
corrupt doctors being opioid prescription factories.

I am not saying all business schools are useful, or that they do the job
perfectly but his opinion seems shockingly naive. Also business school might
not be a good place to be if you don't have some degree of faith in capitalism
(the single greatest eradicator of poverty over the past 50 years), it would
be like being a flat-earther in an astrophysics department.

Finally, I would much rather be managed or HR-ed by someone with at least some
formal training on how to treat people with dignity in difficult complex
situations. I have seen conflict/layoffs/firings etc. handled absolutely
atrociously by (albeit young) STEM grads. Admittedly having a degree in
Management/HR doesn't mean you are automatically good at this, but education
helps.

Personal anecdote: My first year in finance taught me a lot about debt, I
changed my whole college strategy to graduate debt free. My finance degree
also taught me most of the wealth management industry is exploitative of the
average investor and have no demonstrable gains over just buying low fee
indices. These 2 bits will save me hundreds of thousands of dollars if not
over a million dollars throughout my career. Sure they may be obvious but
millions of students every year make egregious financial mistakes to get other
degrees that may land them in the same cube farm.

~~~
zrobotics
"How about people who know a field and are in the field are more likely to
commit a crime in it? I am sure the number of blue collar embezzlement is
dominated by plumbers/electricians etc."

I think you entirely missed what the article said. The claim was not that most
white-collar crime is committed by managers, but that the individuals most
likely to commit a crime were either b-school grads or veterans. In your
example, this would be like union electricians committing more fraud than
their non-union counterparts.

~~~
pcmoney
Fair point, I wonder if union electricians do commit more fraud since they
feel more secure/less touchable etc a clearer version of the point I was
trying to make is saying a correlation between business school grads and white
collar crime does not imply that business school is the cause. Could have many
kinds of selection bias there. I shoulda just stuck with the ol correlation
doesn’t imply causation bit.

------
ismail
Not sure what the curriculum in the USA/EU is like. Would love to understand
what the US/EU model is?

Here is some perspective from some of the top business schools [0] in South
Africa:

> ‘What can I do to make the most money?’ and the manner in which faculty
> members teach allows students to regard the moral consequences of their
> actions as mere afterthoughts.”

and

> "The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are
> subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school,
> and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans"

Not really the general case. Ethics is done right up front. All the major
philosophical ethical theories are covered including: Virtue ethics,
Utilitarianism, Duties and rights, Justice, Caring

The consequences of actions is a thread that runs throughout every single
course. For each assignment/paper submitted you are required to conduct an
ethical analysis of your actions or decisions. This is done to identify any
implications or negative consequences.

> " If we want those in power to become more responsible, then we must stop
> teaching students that heroic transformational leaders are the answer to
> every problem, or that the purpose of learning about taxation laws is to
> evade taxation, or that creating new desires is the purpose of marketing."

From what i have seen this is very far from what is taught here in South
Africa. You will find lively debates on the purpose of marketing, is it to
create demand or to fulfill demand?

> " In terms of the classroom, they expect the teaching of uncomplicated and
> practical concepts and tools that they deem will be helpful to them in their
> future careers. Philosophy is for the birds."

Philosophy is actually covered. You are expected to submit a
dissertation/thesis as part of the requirement to complete your MBA. In the
past the MBA was academically rated lower than a masters from another faculty.
You could not even gain entrance to a PHD programme.

There has since been a complete overhaul with the academic requirements
significantly increased. The current qualification is rated the same as a
masters from another faculty in terms of academic requirements.

> "Why then do we assume that degree courses in business should only teach one
> form of organisation – capitalism – as if that were the only way in which
> human life could be arranged?"

Some B-Schools are known to have very 'socialist leanings' in the guise of
social innovation/sustainability. With a very strong emphasis on this. The
only way i can describe it it is like socialism and capitalism mixed. They
pretty much teach you that Friedman [1] is not correct and one needs to move
beyond this.

Students that complete typically end up with a bunch of mental models to
reason about the world. A student coming out of B-School is faced with a
choice:

(A): The B-School perspective becomes their primary perspective on seeing and
reasoning about the world

(B): It is only one of the perspectives available to you, that you can pull
out when the appropriate situation arises.

The schools themselves help you to identify this and it is up to the student
which of these options they take. As one grad described it to me:

> "They teach you all the mental models, then they break them all down and
> show you how they are incorrect and the negative consequences of them"

> "The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are
> subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school,
> and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans "

Are schools in the US/EU still teaching social responsibility?

The schools here teach you that social responsibility is BS. You are thought
that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is not the answer, but really
'window dressing'. What you really need to do is embed sustainability
practices[2] throughout your organisation. It is not an afterthought, but
should be a core part of business.

[0] [https://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/](https://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/)

[https://www.gibs.co.za](https://www.gibs.co.za)

[http://www.usb.ac.za](http://www.usb.ac.za)

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/240845-there-is-one-and-
onl...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/240845-there-is-one-and-only-one-
social-responsibility-of-business-to)

[2] [https://embeddingproject.org/](https://embeddingproject.org/)

------
ilamont
_The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are
subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school, and
as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans – as if talking about
ethics and responsibility were the same as doing something about it._

At the business school I attended, there was a soaring mission statement that
mentioned "high ethical standards" and "improving the world." And there were
some people (faculty, students, program managers) who really did try to live
up to the statement in terms of the focus of their studies, the special
programs they launched, and the cross-campus collaborations that they took
part in.

But it was also abundantly clear that some parts of the school could care less
about the mission. They were there to make money, period. Roll out the red
carpet for Wall Street recruiters, management consultancies, and private
equity firms. Sign multimillion dollar academic "collaborations" with cash-
rich countries run by dictators and monarchies. Treat ethics as an
afterthought.

I remember in our microeconomics class (taught by a tenured professor who had
been at the school for decades) the very first week we had to read a case
about a team at Harrah's who designed a loyalty program for frequent gamblers.
I remember the professor or someone in a video interview we watched crowing,
"it was like printing money." The "big question" at the conclusion of the case
reads:

 _When asked about the company’s long-term vision for its RM system, a member
of Harrah’s RM team became thoughtful for a moment. He responded that, while
all of the near and longer-term developments described above were critical, he
thought there was one important aspect of all RM systems that needed further
development. "What I’d really like to know — and I pose this as a question for
researchers in revenue management — is how to integrate information about
price elasticity into these systems. Clearly, changes in price affect the
level of demand we experience. However, none of the systems we are familiar
with capture this effect."_
([https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/ited.1090.003...](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/ited.1090.0031cs))

Neither the case nor the instructor had anything to say about the fact that
this was basically a technology-driven scheme to extract as much money as
possible from members of the public, including gambling addicts and other
vulnerable populations. I regret not raising my hand at that point, and
asking, "WTF?"

Later in the program, we did get exposed to professors with moral and ethical
compasses, and wanted to impress upon us the real risks to human life and
well-being. They included instructors teaching macroeconomics, finance,
innovation, and management law. In other academic units, people most
definitely were attuned to doing the right thing (one faculty member famously
has her incoming students watch "Black Mirror").

I went in knowing almost nothing about business or the way to navigate certain
situations, and came out the other end a lot more comfortable about creating a
successful business based on high ethical standards. But some other
experiences -- not to mention the obvious conflicts between the school's
mission and the way it pandered to some of the most ethically challenged
elements of global capitalism -- left a bad taste in my mouth.

------
kapauldo
I am a business school graduate. It's a little shocking to read this but also
hard to argue. I think many degrees have no value except for serving as a
requirement for entry into a career.

~~~
jaclaz
>I am a business school graduate. It's a little shocking to read this but also
hard to argue. I think many degrees have no value except for serving as a
requirement for entry into a career.

I would add a further element of uncertainty, that applies not specifically to
business schools only but to a number of schools/universities.

The professors/dean/etc. may control what is _taught_ at the university, but
rarely they can control what the students actiually _learn_.

If the student perceives the degree as a mere requirement for entry into a
career, he/she will not study to learn, he/she will study to pass the exams,
which is not at all the same thing and learn and participate as little as
possible.

If this is the case, there is no real incentive to teach "better" or teach
"more", and what is taught little by little starts diverging from what the
industry expects from a graduate, reinforcing the feeling (IMHO correct
nowadays) that the degree is just a sort of badge to allow the entry to the
club.

The job market however insists on asking these qualificatons even for jobs
where they make no sense whatsoever, fueling this perverse mechanism.

------
yuhong
What is fun is CEOs like Jack Dorsey who leads two companies.

~~~
askafriend
What is the difference between Jack, who leads 2 companies, and Sundar Pichai
who arguably leads an order of magnitude more "companies"?

or Tim Cook who leads multiple multi-billion dollar revenue products some of
which could be Fortune 500 companies on their own?

~~~
yuhong
The point is to joke about random MBAs that leads companies they know almost
nothing about.

------
galacticpony2
So, an article in "The Guardian" laments the immorality of teaching capitalism
to future would-be capitalists. Color me shocked!

What should we teach them instead? The importance of social responsibility,
sustainability, diversity and warm feelings and how capitalism is really evil
and how they should feel bad about employing its principles? In other words,
shall we turn them into sheep to be let loose among the wolves (and charge
them for it)?

There's an argument to be made against many practices taught to MBAs, but
those arguments better be supported by some science (like behavioral
economics). It all has to make sense and support the bottom line.

Let's take the example of the manager who fires a hundred workers and who pays
himself a 500,000$ bonus (half of which will fall to taxes). He's in it for
the money, just like those workers. Should he give up on his bonus and save
ten employees for one year? Will that increase productivity or is he better
off increasing his own wealth? We're talking about a man who rose to the top,
someone whose education (or indoctrination) will _not_ have destroyed his
sense of self-interest.

~~~
Jedd
> So, an article in "The Guardian" laments the immorality of teaching
> capitalism to future would-be capitalists.

Hmm. From TFA, the author laments that:

 _Within the business school, capitalism is assumed to be the end of history,
an economic model that has trumped all the others, and is now taught as
science, rather than ideology._

And then:

 _The business school assumes capitalism, corporations and managers as the
default form of organisation, and everything else as history, anomaly,
exception, alternative._

Reasonable, and substantiated, concerns around economics _as a subject_
(rather than pretending to be an actual _science_ ).

> Let's take the example of the manager who fires a hundred workers and who
> pays himself a 500,000$ bonus ... We're talking about a man who rose to the
> top, someone whose education (or indoctrination) will not have destroyed his
> sense of self-interest.

Your commitment to the masculine is probably merely a habit, but you've
inadvertently highlighted one of the problems exacerbated by the teachings of
the average _business school_ \-- self-interest at any cost is acceptable,
because it's an _inherent property of capitalism_.

Self-interest is fine and dandy, but the example you're citing -- dispense
with a hundred people in order to obtain a half a million dollars -- is not an
overly _productive_ practice for most societies.

~~~
galacticpony2
> Your commitment to the masculine is probably merely a habit, but you've
> inadvertently highlighted one of the problems exacerbated by the teachings
> of the average business school -- self-interest at any cost is acceptable,
> because it's an inherent property of capitalism.

I'm not committed to anything, would you have preferred I chose a woman to be
put into the role of (from your perspective) "the villain"? What about a
transgender person of color, would that not completely change the power
dynamics of the situation? How about literally a red herring that somehow made
it through business school?

The point is, if you want to just push an ideology into the heads of students
in order to "fix capitalism", without any regard to the actual socio-economic
environment, you're doing _them_ a disservice and you will fail at your goal.
These people will not survive in the market based on what you teach them.

"Self-interest at any cost" is a naive caricature of capitalism. You're
probably indoctrinated too much for me to make an impact here, but just keep
in mind that if you only ever fight a straw man, you're never winning an
actual battle.

> Self-interest is fine and dandy, but the example you're citing -- dispense
> with a hundred people in order to obtain a half a million dollars -- is not
> an overly productive practice for most societies.

Unfortunately, you weren't even able to perceive the scenario as the dilemma
that it is: In this scenario, either 90 or 100 workers will be fired for
economic reasons. The question is, does the manager give up on his bonus to
save 10 people for _one year_ , voluntarily. If he does, it may have an impact
on morale, boosting productivity, possibly leading to even higher long-term
gain. If he doesn't, he immediately gets to be more wealthy. There's no
obviously right or wrong answer even from the point of self-interest.

Contrary to what one might like to believe, productivity is not the same as
_production output_. If there's a surplus, production must be decreased to the
point where it meets demand, not well above. Laying off workers then can
_improve_ productivity, because revenue relative to cost increases. These are
basic economic principles that exist even outside of capitalist systems,
especially socialist systems (used to) struggle with this issue. As far as
society as a whole is concerned, widespread misallocation of labor makes
_everyone_ poorer, because it creates a discrepancy between what is produced
and what is necessary.

