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Bulldoze the business school

theguardian.com

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Re: Bulldoze the business school

#31

Post by ghaff »

maxxxxx wrote: post #10
lordnacho wrote: post #5

He's got a point, and I studied at a top business school. The points he makes are mostly valid. Not sure if he mentioned this one, though: The existence of business schools gives society the unjustified idea that there are positions for which business graduates are better suited than most other people. To compare, medical schools do the same but it is justified. I wouldn't have surgery performed on me by someone who…

"So why do I think this? When I studied the business school, it was just very weak intellectually. Kinda like watching documentaries all day; interesting, makes you think you understand something, but ultimately superficial. Reading about Betamax vs VHS is the same; you think you're gaining insight as you do it, but there's nothing really deep in there. There's not really a method or organising principle to decision…

Add me to the list. There are also any number of books you can read about weak in math liberal arts major struggling through year one of biz school.

And I saw it first hand as a tutor. I had someone ask me to explain graphs to them.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#32

Post by Anirudh25 »

The problem doesn't lie only with business schools but with complete higher education. Being a CS senior at Indian University, I have heard about from so many industry experts railing about the huge difference between industry and academic skills.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#33

Post by vostok »

baybal2 wrote: post #20
walshemj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original idea of bschools where they where for mid career mangers where considered high flyers. Now it seems the higher level degree status is used to game visa applications. Maybe a MBA should only be issued if you can prove 10 or 15 years real world work experience which would return the MBA to its roots as a course for experienced people

No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. Unfortunately, it looks that more than a half of big name universities are happy to admit people without such, or even no undergraduate studies background.

In the US typical average age at matriculation is around 27-28 at top business schools and they have formal/informal work experience requirements.

People who get in straight out of college are typically doing 2+2 or similar programs although I know that submatriculation is technically possible at Wharton.

To your comment about people getting in with no undergraduate studies, this is extremely uncommon. The exceptions tend to be people like Blake Gottesman who went on to be very successful.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#34

Post by jadedhacker »

bkohlmann wrote: post #3

I graduated from business school last spring. It’s not that they need to be bulldozed, but rather, treated as a trade school. Our highest rated classes were taught by practitioners - those in the Arena, leading men and women, making the difficult ethical choices, then posing them to us to wrestle through. These were the classes we all wanted to take, but were deeply oversubscribed and only a fraction of us got to tak…

I appreciate your experience, but your comment does not engage with the criticisms that are in the article. The author discusses how people are taught greed and top down control in the service of shareholders at all costs. People are taught to diffuse the responsibility for their actions to the organization etc.

Another way of organizing production would be through democratic workplaces with the people that work there being the shareholders for instance.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#35

Post by seanahrens »

eric_h wrote: post #29
ukulele wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had several instances of the opposite while across the Bay: put ethics above profit always. It sounds like you just had a bad professor (which you already know).

"But this professor frequently shouted down students or used ridicule to make people regret raising their hands" Pretty much the definition of a bad professor, IMO.

Yeah he definitely was a bad professor. Sad that he was the finance professor (for this required, main track course) every undergrad my year had. Which meant, I think, 300-400 students received his indoctrination that semester. I use him as an example because that moment was so, well, exemplary. Other courses weren't as extreme, but they generally echoed the core tenet: your goal is "maximize profit" with sometimes an explicitly added "above all else". It generally gave me the impression that the corporate social responsibility club was the window dressing to this tenet--and the place in the business school for liberals to get out of the way and still fit in.

But to zoom out a second, in America, it's not just a "tenet", it's a legal responsibility of the CEO of a corporation to maximize shareholder value. The professor, and school, are preachers of something much larger than themselves, and so I don't want to point my finger so strongly at just this professor, and just this school.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#36

Post by Meegul »

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #23
bkohlmann wrote: post #3

I graduated from business school last spring. It’s not that they need to be bulldozed, but rather, treated as a trade school. Our highest rated classes were taught by practitioners - those in the Arena, leading men and women, making the difficult ethical choices, then posing them to us to wrestle through. These were the classes we all wanted to take, but were deeply oversubscribed and only a fraction of us got to tak…

This is largely the duality between a school of engineering, and a school of technology as well. Purdue University has both. Engineering is this 150 year tradition that literally made Indiana the crossroads of America. Top 5 in most of it's disciplines year after year. But that consistency has brought the hordes. Thus, freshman engineering is this gauntlet to run. Profressors are busy with reasearch, TAs are just rec…

There's a lot of similarity between the Computer Science program at Purdue University and the Engineering program. The professors are quite swamped with work outside of their teaching responsibilities and that leaves most of the teaching left to TAs who are, more often than not, terrible teachers. But the curriculum is still decided by the professors with ample experience. Actually graduating with a Computer Science degree shows an ability to self-teach, not an ability to be taught. The first two years are a constant sprint to stay on top of the coursework with little outside help. It's made most of my peers who've managed to stay in the program quite adept when working, but I'm not sure if this is the right way to go about building those skills. Surely you shouldn't need to struggle in the dark so much to learn.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#37

Post by throwawayjava »

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #23
bkohlmann wrote: post #3

I graduated from business school last spring. It’s not that they need to be bulldozed, but rather, treated as a trade school. Our highest rated classes were taught by practitioners - those in the Arena, leading men and women, making the difficult ethical choices, then posing them to us to wrestle through. These were the classes we all wanted to take, but were deeply oversubscribed and only a fraction of us got to tak…

This is largely the duality between a school of engineering, and a school of technology as well. Purdue University has both. Engineering is this 150 year tradition that literally made Indiana the crossroads of America. Top 5 in most of it's disciplines year after year. But that consistency has brought the hordes. Thus, freshman engineering is this gauntlet to run. Profressors are busy with reasearch, TAs are just rec…

I've seen something similar at other institutions.

The School of Engineering, in this case, is trying to teach something more than just domain knowledge about engineering disciplines. The goal is to take those "18 year-old polyglots" and turn them into world-class problem solvers.

You see this is every elite educational program. Mathematics at Chicago. Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. Engineering at MIT. Their programs have a difference in kind, and are very intentionally not built for "the average college student".

It's good that there's an alternative path within the same institution for those students who need to focus their efforts on baseline competence. But it's also good that strong programs expect more out of their students.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#38

Post by throwawayjava »

Meegul wrote: post #36
flyingcircus3 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is largely the duality between a school of engineering, and a school of technology as well. Purdue University has both. Engineering is this 150 year tradition that literally made Indiana the crossroads of America. Top 5 in most of it's disciplines year after year. But that consistency has brought the hordes. Thus, freshman engineering is this gauntlet to run. Profressors are busy with reasearch, TAs are just rec…

There's a lot of similarity between the Computer Science program at Purdue University and the Engineering program. The professors are quite swamped with work outside of their teaching responsibilities and that leaves most of the teaching left to TAs who are, more often than not, terrible teachers. But the curriculum is still decided by the professors with ample experience. Actually graduating with a Computer Science…

> Surely you shouldn't need to struggle in the dark so much to learn.

You have it all wrong, IMO. Successfully clawing their way out of the dark is by far the most important skill they're learning.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#39

Post by giardini »

seanahrens wrote: post #21

My finance professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley preached that maximizing profit was our ultimate service to the world---so much so--that he taught that if we were running a company and had an option to maximize profits by producing a product that would seriously harm the health of people (eg. give them a medical condition), we should undoubtedly DO IT. Because we would have maximized profit for sha…

Would your professor have espoused the same actions were the costs of medical payments for harmed employees greater than the profits to shareholders? I doubt it.

The purpose of a business model is to simplify the truth. Actual implementation is up to you. In any business, people get hurt and profits may be used to compensate them or may be re-invested into the business to reduce the harms. By quitting business you unfortunately removed a more measured business graduate from the pool. Had you stayed, corporate policy today might be more enlightened a bit.

BTW sounds more like "British Victorian-era capitalism" than "modern day American capitalism."

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#40

Post by speleding »

mbesto wrote: post #6

Drucker, the person most attributed with founding modern management, himself stated that you cannot teach management: Prof Drucker expounds: "Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can't teach them management." His view is that management is neither an art nor a science…

The top MBA programs require that applicants have at least 4 years of work experience.
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