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Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

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Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#41

Post by tossaway1717 »

kyle_v wrote: post #20
duxup wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were some good articles that seemed to indicate a serious imbalance in the number of high quality students headed to Wall St. to play with numbers and get rich there there, and in theory this was to the determent of the rest of the economy where their skills were not producing anything.

"where their skills were not producing anything" If this is the case why do so many companies seek going public?

Do they?

==About 3,600 firms were listed on U.S. stock exchanges at the end of 2017, down more than half from 1997.==

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-09/where-...

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#42

Post by brixon »

dpflan wrote: post #28
breitling wrote: post #13

Hasn't there always been an inverse correlation to people going back to school and the economy? Currently, the economy is doing very well, so people are less inclined to go back to school. Once the economy turns and unemployment rises, then I'm sure the MBA applications will rise.

This seems like a good point; ( speculating ) especially if an MBA is viewed asa means to earn more in a declining economy. I don't know much about the programs and the expected increase in salary upon completion.

MBA or other Master's degrees are ways to buy time to wait out a bad economy.

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#43

Post by nimz »

bitL wrote: post #21

Funny that UIUC's online iMBA on Coursera is exploding. I've read they went from >100 to >2500 students in 4 years. That could have some effect on the market?

In addition, UIUC closed their in-person MBA program not long ago. Maybe a sign of things to come?

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/05/28/illinoi...

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#44

Post by bitL »

Vaslo wrote: post #18
rswail wrote: post #6

Good. The rise of the MBA has seen the downfall of quality. "Business Administration" is not something that can be taught in such a generic way that an MBA qualifies you to actually run a business. In particular, the rise of Financial "Engineering" has led to huge inequality and the total disconnection of "Wall St" from "Main St" such that their relationship has been completely inverted.

You clearly have no idea what is being taught in Top 20 MBA programs. Many MBA programs are graduating people that get both heavy technical training in their program (stats, data engineering, coding, etc) as well as learning how to properly manage individuals with technical skills.

C'mon. My Top 10 CS school expected me to put in 60h/week and was pushing me beyond my limits most of the time. My "quant-heavy" MBA required me once to spend 8h/week. If you find MBA difficult, you are probably doing something wrong. Old-school MBA is about networking (basically drinking buddies for life), new trends are about connecting tech people with VCs to use each other to build something new and profitable.

MBA is useful to get overall picture of individual areas from 10,000ft so that you don't need to re-invent everything and have some semi-automated way to process things that are thrown at you while building/managing some organization. You should walk away with knowledge about what financial instruments are at your disposal, how not to completely mess up your organization with one's stupidity or lack of leadership, how to recognize phase of a company you are in etc. This is important when you get under permanent stress while running a company when quality information will be scarce and obfuscated, people's motives will be a mixed bag, and only subjects you mastered and networking circle you built will be with you.

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#46

Post by darkcha0s »

rswail wrote: post #6

Good. The rise of the MBA has seen the downfall of quality. "Business Administration" is not something that can be taught in such a generic way that an MBA qualifies you to actually run a business. In particular, the rise of Financial "Engineering" has led to huge inequality and the total disconnection of "Wall St" from "Main St" such that their relationship has been completely inverted.

Amen.

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#47

Post by jcomis »

spamizbad wrote: post #32
duxup wrote: post #15

I was ready to rant about my own experience with MBA students put in pseudo management situations who can't iron their own shirt or couldn't schedule people's hours at a Wendy's... but then I realized this article is about Elite programs. So I wonder are the Elite programs significantly different than other programs? One of my biggest problems encountering MBA students released into the wild is that so many have limi…

Not to defend MBAs here, but doesn't a big portion of the blame fall on organizations that are clearly putting too much weight on their candidate's degree and placing them in jobs they're not (yet) qualified for? In an alternate scenario: an MBA gets hired to fill a position below management and the higher-ups get a clear picture if they're cut out to manage operations, only awarding the MBA a promotion to management…

This is true, however typically the people who make that call are from the same background (MBAs themselves).

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#48

Post by close04 »

luc4sdreyer wrote: post #10

Applications are still growing, the highest was Canada with 9.4% growth between 2018 and 2019: > Applications to U.S. business schools, including M.B.A. programs, fell sharply, while rising in Canada, Europe and China. just not in the US: > “There’s perception, which we absolutely pick up in our data, that the U.S. is not a welcoming environment,” said Sangeet Chowfla, GMAC’s chief executive.

After working with so many MBAs from prestigious schools I find it very hard to take this kind of title at face value, before seeing the person in action. Most had an MBA at 23 years old, basically jumping straight from university classes to MBA classes with nothing in between. At best the MBA did not bring anything. At worst it made some feel so entitled that they actually performed far worse. I fail to see the added value in this and most of them failed to show it.

Given that this was happening in very large companies and involved studies in prestigious schools but nothing practical to show for it, in the end I can only assume many of these are just CV fluff.

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#49

Post by sailfast »

rswail wrote: post #31
kyle_v wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"where their skills were not producing anything" If this is the case why do so many companies seek going public?

Becoming a public company is a way to get equity investment. That is the purpose of the stock market. It was the original purpose of "investment banks" as opposed to "retail banks". However, that is not what the bankers of Wall Street now focus on, they are more involved in producing "financial products", packaging arcane structures primarily to encourage trading and thus fees from mindless turnover.

Packaging arcane structures and securitizing them has a huge impact on overall risk in the market and enables pretty significant cost reductions downstream (generally) in the markets that can offload the risk via the security.

I understand there are bad actors as well as people making the trades that make money, but there is also an underlying reason the trades get made, typically that is often discounted by your argument and should be factored in.

The reason we can click a button and get a loan is because it is not extremely risky for the company to make the loan, because of said instruments (as an example)

Re: Elite MBA Programs Report Steep Drop in Applications

#50

Post by aoveri »

Having started my own company and done everything from doing coffee runs for my team to writing investment briefs, I'm not sure what an MBA would teach me?

Not being snarky, genuinely curious as to what benefit I could derive as I've always seen as something that I'd eventually pursue.

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