Gerald Weinberg's book The Secrets Of Consulting IMO is a much better view of the give and take of giving business advice. Grad school has become far more popular than it used to be and a lot of people seem to promote it as worthwhile to students (paying large tuition, and spending extra years in school) and business (paying high initial salaries and rapidly promoting the grad school graduates). The book "The Big Test" talks about a new class of "Mandarins" - people who have high test scores, get advanced degrees and get high end jobs in business or government as a result. Bill and Hillary Clinton are two of his examples.
Weinberg's book is excellent. It saved me all kinds of trouble. I recommend it to anyone doing any kind of consulting or even just interacting with other human beings.
It's also a nice antidote to the Dogbert kind of consulting described in the OP.
