Jobless MBAs Seek Solace in Support Groups
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
Dismal or corrective?
The high MBA entry level salaries of just a few years ago never really made sense to me and I have a feeling we may never see them again. These people don't bring much technical or domain-specfic expertise to the table. Just a lot of theory that is becoming increasingly suspect.
The most important thing I ever learned from a business professor when I earned my MBA was, "A degree in business is a degree in nothing." Sadly a lot of recent MBAs are now learning this, their most important lesson.
- At least 1/3 already have an advanced degree in another subject. (Masters or PhD) Many of these are in engineering, sciences, psychology, medicine, etc.
- At least 95% have worked for at least 3 years, most of them have lead a team.
So these two items provide them with technical, domain-specific, and experiential knowledge upon which to use in bschool.
I dont think many MBA's would argue with you about the content of the degree; it is very different from a masters in computer science or physics. But it is also not intended to be the same.
One gets an MBA for 3 reasons: Networking, Skill Building, and Career Switching. Most degrees focus on just the skill-building aspect. Personally, for me, coming to a top ranked program and access to its huge alumni network was critical to my decision.
Please, before you knee jerk respond about how stupid all MBA's are, it might make sense to think about why so many smart, talented people continue to get them.
2. If "most degrees" focus on skill-building, and those skills are suspect, it's then pretty fair to say that "most degrees" are of questionable value.
3. That leaves us with Networking and Career Switching. Career Switching is more a personal endeavor that an MBA can help with but doesn't necessarily guarantee a successful switch.
4. I would conclude then that the most important part of the MBA is the networking, and this value is proportional to the quality of the program's alumni.
At least provide some examples or references to go along with your comment.
B
I currently attend the Ohio State University. While not bad, the most valuable of the MBA classes are those that are case study or project based. The pure textbook classes on accounting, finance, HR, etc. are valuable, but no more valuable than reading books on the subject without paying the tuition fee.
While I believe in the case-study method, it's not significantly different than if an engineer-turned-MBA simply started his own firm.
The difference between the MBA programs (generally, there are exceptions in areas like finance, logistics/operations, and MAcc for accounting) and Masters in other scientific fields is that in Masters of Science, you're further improving your skills in the field.
Many of the MBAs I know are either non-business people taking the opportunity to learn important business skills that could be learned from experience or former business students learning an incremental amount of knowledge for massive tuition fees.
I'm at University of Chicago. There are pretty much 3 types of classes here, Case-based, Tool-Based, or Labs. Very few of the professors use textbooks at all, if they do they are purely for reference, not for primary use.
Having owned 2 businesses before school, I think you are right that some lessons can be learned through experience. However, this is an asset during discussion because we have a variety of people with a variety of backgrounds adding their experiential knowledge into the discussions - so the value derived is higher than just experiencing it yourself. For example, I have no experience with retail operations or with industrial manufacturing, but some of the lessons they learned the hard way might be useful to me later on as a software startup guy, and some of the lessons I learned during my companies might be useful to them down the road.
The other benefit of University of Chicago is that the MBA program does not have a fixed curriculum, so students craft their own program of study (there are some guidelines), and they can choose to study deep in one area (for example, Econometrics or Analytical Finance) or for those with less business experience to go more broad.
It's also an opportunity to meet people who are sufficiently interested in business, and their careers, to expose themselves to these fundamentals.
As happens with all degrees, some people really seize the opportunity to sharpen their skills for the future, and others simply try to pass the classes. Further, some people are incredibly bright and able to apply the knowledge usefully, whereas others do so clumsily or not at all.
I wouldn't kick somebody out of my office for not having an MBA, nor would I hire them simply because they had one. But that said, I think those disparaging it do so to the detriment of those who listen to them. It's a useful toolkit.
I used to be one of those who disparaged MBAs. Now I have one, and have often been thankful for the breadth of knowledge I was forced to acquire, as well as for the innumerable case studies I read, that really changed the way I consume business news, and the way I think about business strategy.
Dismal.
Right now is a bad time to graduate with an MBA. Or a degree in Engineering, Architecture, Physics, or pretty much anything else.
But I doubt that describes a large number of MBA students. Given that the primary purpose of that degree is to get a high paying job and it seems to have little secondary value beyond that, I would suspect there will be a lot fewer MBA students ove the next couple of years.
There are the career-only people, but their populations are shrinking.
I don't think the study of business administration lacks value, and I have room for the idea of management as a science. Much of the popular cynicism about MBAs stems from the fact that some who pursue that qualification do so in the belief that they can manage effectively a venture effectively without necessarily knowing or caring much about the underlying competency (whether that be making cars or publishing books). Such people are unpleasant to work for to the extent that they have no particular vocation in that field and treat junior employees as interchangeable components, no different from the machinery that they operate.
In the worst case, productivity improves but at the expense of depersonalization for customers and a feeling of dehumanization for employees. Take bookstores. I love small independent and used bookstores - it's not the most efficient way to buy a book, but it is good for discovering books I might not otherwise have read. If I know what I want (and don't want a social shopping experience), I'm more likely to buy at Amazon. I can't stand large stores like Borders etc. - they have lots of books, but none of the people who work there seem particularly knowledgeable about or even interested in books. Indeed, conversations with ex-employees of such stores suggest that a love of books is seen as a liability, because buying decisions are not made at the store level, so literary enthusiasm is seen by corporate as dangerously close to letting the cooks eat with the customers.
The modern MBA is about combining economics, psychology, math, statistics with finance and strategy. It is not about 'efficiency' or 'productivity' alone, those are just a small part of any business equation.
Much of the popular cynicism about MBA's come from anecdotal references to the MBA jerk who people had a poor experiences with, and certainly isn't based on any real data that I have seen. As I posted in an earlier comment, most people in my MBA class have particular industry and technical experience to draw on, and I doubt most would characterize a business in the fashion you described.
My main point is, if you are going to hate, hate the person, not the degree. The degree didnt make the person who they are. Both intelligent and ridiculous MBA's exist, just like any other career or degree path.
True enough, but that is getting off the original topic. Most people who study math do so because they love math. Of course they think about the practicality of getting a job after graduating, but that is a secondary concern.
With MBAs, the reverse is true. Some may study it for the love of the subject, but I doubt this is a large percentage. Most study it because they think they can get a high paying (or at least secure) job after graduating.
This is not a condemnation of either path, but it is a statement about their motivations.
It seems that someone that was genuinely interested in economic theory, buying behavior, etc would be better served studying economics than getting an MBA.
But I am speculating.