First let me state I have no MBA. In fact I had just one course in economics as a undergrad. But I spent a year at Columbia as a visiting Professor at the Business School and a couple of years at NYU/Poly. Now how did that happen?
Simple, I think. In the late 70s at I was at COMSAT and Gene Jilg, a VP of Satellite Systems, asked me to write his business plan. Never did one. Especially the financials. So one Friday I went to a local bookstore and bought a book on Finance. Read it over the weekend and on Monday I started the financials. You see as an MIT EE PhD these were just simple equations and I just asked around for the data. Done in a few weeks.
At Warner I had plans for interactive video, managing a staff of a few dozens, marketing, tech, valuation. Then deals. Again not a single business school class.
The NY Times notes:
The modern business school is designed to promote dealmaking, simplification and optimization. This mind-set has escaped containment and has spread to the wider world. Business-educated elites increasingly populate political leadership, bringing with them a transactional view of public life. One investigation found that out of 45 current heads of state who had studied in the United States, 10 were business majors, and six of those also earned M.B.A.s. President Trump, a Wharton undergraduate, has treated foreign policy and government itself as extensions of deal making and personal gain. Surely, not every business graduate governs this way. But recent research by the Nobel laureate economist Daron Acemoglu and colleagues shows what tends to happen when you put an M.B.A. in charge. In both the United States and Denmark, firms that appointed managers with business degrees cut wages and reduced labor’s share of income. Yet these companies didn’t become more productive, nor did they grow sales, investment or employment any faster. What registers as managerial acumen turns out to be wealth transfer — value moved away from workers and toward profits, shareholders and executives.
In contrast I have seen High School Grads in retail have a better understanding of the customer, inventory, and turnover than many a B School grad. I gained more insight by doing than by studying. It was getting in the line of fire and surviving. The most complex one is selling a new business. One has to be a dream merchant of sorts, and then defend your proposed valuation. I do not think you get that in class.
It is a bit like Med School. Two years of "theory" then two years of real people, death, fear, mistakes, and cures. There are no pre-cooked case studies. There is a 2AM ER case of a 65 year old mother and her 38 year old daughter, her pain but more so her fear. It is the 12 year old with Leukemia and you must tell the parents, see their horror about their child. Creighton wrote a great book, 12 Patients, his last two year at Harvard. It was not academic class, it was life and death. There is nothing like that in B School.
Thus one wonders if B School has value.
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