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consider that the author's program was an undergraduate program and try to remember how experienced or useful you were at 18-21.

This is important. I got an undergrad business degree and I got a nice background in accounting, finance, marketing, and to a lesser extent IT.

When I think back on it, either it doesn't seem useful or I've forgotten the useful bits (had some great classes on branding that taught me a lot more than what you'd learn from reading blogs or articles on it; but I couldn't write an insightful paper on it now).

But then, I've dealt with people with no background in these things and watched them make some pretty stupid mistakes that could've been prevented with basic knowledge of these subjects. (I once got a sick feeling--justified--when asking a partner about our finances after he insisted on handling them, and getting an email where he referred to "the books" in scare quotes).

On the MBA side -- the MBA program at my alma mater has placed several of my friends in jobs that were a big jump in salary and growth potential from where they were coming in -- and none of them were bankers.

I heard someone say once that an MBA is a great preparation for an entry-level CEO job, but no such job exists. That's why real world experience matters; not only do you gain perspective that will benefit your MBA education and post-MBA career, but it also helps you "know thyself" so that you don't bother with an MBA if it's not the right move for you.

Last thought: business education doesn't really prepare you for entrepreneurship, but entrepreneurship can help you benefit from a business education. Best example would be an entrepreneur who has had some failures and moderate successes, but now has the experience and skills to command a 100K+ salary and is ready to further prepare (or for the cynical, get credentialized) for a job at that level.

"On the MBA side -- the MBA program at my alma mater has placed several of my friends in jobs that were a big jump in salary and growth potential from where they were coming in -- and none of them were bankers"

But I think this is what the author was trying to say. An MBA (I'll talk about the MBA since undergrad business degrees seem really terrible) is a way of gaming the corporate structure (and getting a raise in salary and so on , as you point out) more than acquiring any real skills or insights, which is why most MBA students become Management consultants vs entrepreneurs. One job is about talking the talk and the other is about walking it.

As an enginner/hacker I am a bit dubious about how business school professors can actually teach anything business related. (By and large) They have never run businesses, so how can they teach you how to run one? If they could build or run a multimillion dollar businesses would they be teaching? ( Not snark, I am genuinely curious. Can someone who has done an MBA explain how this works out. What value do these professors add. Couldn't you just read the books yourself?)

I think a lot of the comments in this discussion, yours included, seem to be misunderstanding what business school is about.

Business schools are teaching management, which by definition is about reducing risk and optimizing existing operations in a running business, hence the emphasis on accounting, finance, etc. The idea is that looking at the whole picture, an MBA is able to more efficiently manage an existing corporation. The comments made about MBAs seeing people as "tools" is spot on and in recent years the organization behavior subject has made a lot of progress in reversing this damaging trend, started during the industrial revolution.

On the other hand, entrepreneurship is all about taking an invention and turning it into an innovation and a sustainable company, and in the process mitigating various business risks (e.g. is there anyone to buy the product, how to make the product, what product to make, etc.). The two (startups vs. companies) are fundamentally different (I elaborate on this here: http://www.deyanvitanov.com/entrepreneurship-foundations/sta...). Very few business schools make the claim to be catering to the entrepreneurial crowd, and even fewer do it well - I can speak only for Stanford GSB, although I have heard similar for Berkeley and Babson, among others I am sure.

So the comment about talking the talk and walking the walk sounds nice, but the assumptions behind it simply fall flat.

FYI, I have an MBA from Stanford and I am basing my comment on my experience there. At the same time, I came to business school specifically to start a new company, so I am hardly the typical MBA I think.

They have never run businesses, so how can they teach you how to run one? If they could build or run a multimillion dollar businesses would they be teaching?

Several of the better teachers at my university had consulting gigs on the side where they worked on real world projects that interested them. A few had worked many years in industry and now wanted to do something different. Some genuinely preferred the more theoretical and research aspect of the field and felt that a university was the best place to foster that. And yes a few where useless, could probably never cut in industry and just hung around because for some reason no one had fired them yet.

Conversely, having running a business will teach you many things, but there are other things you can only learn by having studied and carefully analysed and compared hundreds of businesses and the people who work there. So just because you have never run a business yourself doesn't mean you have nothing to teach, and just because you happened to be in charge of a business that happened to successful doesn't mean you know all there is about all aspects of running a company.

If they could build or run a multimillion dollar businesses would they be teaching?

Business school professors are very well paid and live the life of leisure. Starting a business is risky and is hard work, and business PhDs aren't generally recruited to work as CEOs.

Agreed on the first point. That's why my example is more like someone who for whatever reason (kids probably) is ready to trade the ups and downs of entrepreneurship for a steady high-level job.

To your second point: Is that true of most b-school professors? I honestly don't know, but I think some if not most have some good experience. The guy who taught me finance rocketed up the ranks for Coke, ran the operations of a multinational region, and retired to teach while in his 40s.

My international business professor, however, was an insufferable douche who had no real-world experience that I know of.

UChicago teaches business differently that basically every business school in the country, so take this anecdote with a grain of salt. The have a quantitative/scientific focus that many other schools lack. Your example shows this perfectly, as the professor presented real data to you instead of fictional data.

On the whole, there is still a large problem with undergraduate degrees in business.

Actually, I'd argue that among the top 7 business schools, there are certain distinctions between them that will appeal to different people with different professional goals.

MIT, UChicago, and Stanford all seem to appeal more to engineering types and offer a more quantitative / scientific focus.

Wharton is known for their emphasis on finance and is usually ideal for people wanting to become IBankers.

Columbia has its roots in Benjamin Graham-style investing and you'll see a lot of students there go on to those types of hedge funds.

Harvard is more regarded for its emphasis on management and heavy use of case studies, and the people that go there tend to seek out consulting or rotational programs within the F500.

Fair point, but you have to consider where the distinctions come from. For example, at MIT I'd be willing to bet the quantitative focus comes from the fact that many engineers who go there pick us business as a second degree as an undergrad. At Chicago, the quantitative/scientific focus stems from the fact that the department truly believes in it as a method of investigation. Chicago is all about the raw data and real life case studies. It's my understanding that many other business departments differ in this respect.

Of course, this is all anecdotal evidence I've gathered from talking to Chicago alumni, so take it for what you will.

Accounting, supply chain, and finance are fairly empirical and solid skill based everywhere. Actuarial science programs are practically straight-up math. Sure, in general undergraduate business programs are less rigorous than engineering or physics, but some are certainly based on legitimate hard skills and knowledge; you can't write them off as wishy-washy BS.

I am studying at a top Master's program in Europe at a Business School and it's oh-so familiar undergraduate or not. I also took a whopping 1 course at the business school during my undergraduate before switching to computer science because it was mind numbingly stupid. The lack of math skills, the type of people it attracts, the teaching style is all accurate for undergraduate. For the master's level I see more motivated and smarter people but the teaching, goals and end result is pretty much the same and leaves so much to be desired.

In one way, it feels nice to know most schools suck just as bad, but in another way it's a shame for humanity that this seems to be the norm.

The experience of being there when a room full of really bright and really accomplished kids learned that the company that 9/10 had passed on became a multi-million dollar success was priceless (and vice-versa). The message was unmistakeable.

What was the message?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1125031

I wonder though, why is entrepreneurship devoted to a single class? Doesn't that kind of reinforce the idea that most of business school is just training for middle/upper management in established companies?

It isn't, the parent probably just didnt know the name of the course being taught (or didn't reference). I'm a current UChicago Booth student. My bet is that the parent poster was auditing a class of Building the New Venture. The following classes are Entrepreneurship or Venture Capital focused (in no particular order):

  Building the New Venture
  Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity
  New Venture Strategy
  New Enterprise and Small Business Management
  Special Topics in Entrepreneurship: New Venture Challenge
  Entrepreneurial Internship Seminar
  Commercializing Innovation
  Social Entrepreneurship
  Entrepreneurial Selling
  New Venture and Small Enterprise Lab
  Private Equity/Venture Capital Lab
  International Entrepreneurship Lab - China
  E-Business Technology
  Developing New Products and Services
  Laboratory in New Product and Strategy Development I
  Technology Strategy
  Designing and Leading the Entrepreneurial Firm
  Statistical Insight into Marketing Consulting and Entrepreneurship
  Innovation in Energy Markets and Opportunities in Renewable Energy
  Structuring Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Entrepreneurial Transactions

You'll note that many of those are Lab classes - meaning that we work with real companies/firms on real issues they are dealing with. I'm likely missing 2-3 classes.

One of the people responding to the parent noted about how different the UChicago method is: focus on real data, real experience, and hard analysis. I'd say at least 30% of our class has some sort of hard math/science/engineering background.

What exactly does your story prove? Even YC and successful VCs guess incorrectly frequently. Was the unmistakable message that the future can't always be predicted?

Whereas the author's experience was that "[they were being] designed to be investment bankers and management consultants", this Booth professor had designed a lesson around the unpredictability and inadequacy of the standard analytical techniques. That is the difference.