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Bulldoze the business school

theguardian.com

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Re: Bulldoze the business school

#81

Post by jimnotgym »

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 UK there are MBA programs in every town that are willing to admit anyone who will pay. A provincial backwater I know of has recently opened a University (with various associations with other real institutions) and the first thing they opened was a business school.

A person I know well with a poor academic background, no management experience and no-undergraduate degree joined an MBA program at a similar school. This person had just come into the finances necessary and wanted to jack in their job. After a year they realized that they were wasting their time, and this was not the route to management they were hoping for. In fact the school was packed with people from similar backgrounds, people trying to fill a few years. I advised them to do something else at the beginning which the subject took as me saying they were not capable.

And this points at the fundamental dishonesty of the MBA at an institution like this. These people took this guys money in order to fill seats when they knew he was ill prepared for post-grad study and that the MBA, even if he got it, was not going to open any doors to him.

It interests me that if you look at the CV's of board members at UK companies, take the FTSE 100 for instance and I don't see a lot of MBA's. Overwhemingy I would say the normal route into top level management in the UK is to do any undergraduate degree at a decent institution, then to join one of the Big Four accountancy firms as a trainee auditor. Throughout my career, in private business, listed companies, and private equity, I see people who are ex-Big4 in top positions. Outside of that there are lawyers, a few engineers and a few sales people. But if I were to be advising a 16 year old how to get into management, I have no doubt that I would be suggesting doing a degree they enjoy and using it to get into a Big-4 auditor.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#82

Post by Meegul »

ams6110 wrote: post #61
Meegul wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to write a scheduling algorithm for our home-grown operating system. I was running into some very difficult to debug issues, so I asked my TA for help. They had no clue and told me to consult the professor. The professor wouldn't help. Our textbook offered no guidance. We're not allowed to discuss projects whatsoever with other students. So after north of 5 hours spread over a few days of trying to fig…

5 hours over a few days is nothing. You gave up too soon.

5 hours on a single issue. I had spent north of 20 hours on my implementation before that. This was for a semi-weekly lab project.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#83

Post by wpietri »

laurentl wrote: post #45

I recently finished an executive MBA at a top European B-school. To echo some of the comments, it was overall way easier than my initial studies (eng school), with some exceptions such as a brutal strategy assignment. There was also a sense of entitlement from some of the participants, especially those who were financed by their company. “Entertain me and give me my diploma” so to speak. On the other hand, due to the…

I know somebody who studied aerospace engineering and then went to business school later. He also thought it surprisingly easy, saying that he only learned one thing that he couldn't have easily figured out on his own: the principle of comparative advantage. [1] He said for him the main benefit was building a good set of connections.

[1] It's indeed tricky, and important. Without it trade makes little sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#84

Post by wpietri »

purplezooey wrote: post #67
factsaresacred wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime crisis Brings to mind this from Peter Thiel (exclude the length): Q. You’ve written that you doubt the efficacy of MBA programs to prepare future business leaders. What would an effective MBA program look like? A. The question is, what substance of business are you focused on? The conceit of the MBA is that you don’t need to have any substance at…

And we should listen to Peter Thiel because....

I am definitely not a Thiel fan, but I strongly agree with him here. The best managers I've had were always ones who deeply understood something besides management. The supposed universality of management theory, plus the training toward slick presentation and glib self-promotion, makes it very easy for people to not only not know what's going on, but have a strong personal interest in not knowing what's going on.

This definitely leads to short-term gains as people work the obvious levers to make the profit graph go up and to the right. But I think it's antithetical to the sort of deeper investment that builds real businesses and provides sustaining innovation.

Toyota, for example, was run by engineers, who came up with a deeply different theory of business. It was so fundamentally strange to American MBA thinking that US car companies were unable to comprehend it despite many attempts to learn it in the 70s and 80s. Toyota went from Japan's post-war decimation to become the world's leading car company, while US carmakers have needed government bailouts just to stay afloat.

This stands in deep contrast to the way MBA-style approaches kills established companies by over-extracting short-term profits in ways that destroy long-term value. Toys R Us is a recent example, and Simmons is a good historical one: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmon...

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#85

Post by flyingcircus3 »

Meegul wrote: post #82
ams6110 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 hours over a few days is nothing. You gave up too soon.

5 hours on a single issue. I had spent north of 20 hours on my implementation before that. This was for a semi-weekly lab project.

I feel like there's always a little crotchetyness in older engineers. I remember being in school right when companies were putting all of their literature online. For electronics, that was such a huge leap forward from having to buy entire books of data sheets for integrated circuits. People on the other side of that divide had the same complaint about a different subject.

"You only looked through the data sheet for 4 hours? Back in my day it might take 4 hours to get the thing to even turn on!"

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#86

Post by Meegul »

bsder wrote: post #71
Meegul wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had to write a scheduling algorithm for our home-grown operating system. I was running into some very difficult to debug issues, so I asked my TA for help. They had no clue and told me to consult the professor. The professor wouldn't help. Our textbook offered no guidance. We're not allowed to discuss projects whatsoever with other students. So after north of 5 hours spread over a few days of trying to fig…

Not being able to discuss your project with other students in an operating systems class is insane . You need to get input for the subtle bugs that are going to occur. There is a reason why operating systems and compiler classes are notorious. However, if 5 hours debugging is too much, I'd get out of the field now. Try debugging something for MONTHS while your bosses are all hanging over your shoulder. In addition, 5…

I agree - 5 hours really isn't that much. I've spent much more time than that on single issues in the past, and it's by no means something that's scaring me out of the field. I should've spent more time in a single session hunting down the issue, but I didn't quite have the time (or motivation after seemingly making no progress) when it was only one of a few things I had to work on that week. One of my issues with that class in general was the complete lack of guidance on how we should go about debugging our operating systems' issues. The only method mentioned by my TA was to print more variables, which isn't incredibly useful if the kernel won't boot or if the print function isn't working. And the issues would compound as the projects were often dependent on previous projects. One of the tasks was to implement asynchronous signal handling through registered callback functions, which is quite difficult to do if you didn't get the scheduling algorithm working properly in the previous project. It felt like the class was designed to be difficult and not designed for me to learn. I was pretty excited to take an Operating Systems class, despite what I'd heard, and it was the class that left me feeling let down, not the content.

I would personally love a debugging class to get some more varied ideas on how to approach difficult problems. Seeing someone's thought process when debugging something like a kernel would've been really useful.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#87

Post by analog31 »

kolbe wrote: post #18

An MBA, much like most schooling, is all about signaling. Anyone who frames our educational system in any other way is missing the point.

In my view, there is a grain of truth to the "signaling" hypothesis, but it also sounds like:

1. A legitimate grievance from people who didn't get an education and are having it arbitrarily held against them.

2. Sour grapes from people who got nothing from their time spent in school.

Higher education is whatever you make of it. You're legally an adult, and can make your own choices. No two people will experience it in the same way. My kid will start college next year. I've given her a couple of analogies (roll your eyes after each one):

1. It's like going to California during the gold rush, and being handed a shovel and a bag. You get to keep the contents of the bag in four years.

2. It's a tiny elite college hidden inside a giant Big Ten party school. There is intense social pressure for you to join the party school. You decide.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#88

Post by askafriend »

yuhong wrote: post #80

What is fun is CEOs like Jack Dorsey who leads two companies.

What is the difference between Jack, who leads 2 companies, and Sundar Pichai who arguably leads an order of magnitude more "companies"?

or Tim Cook who leads multiple multi-billion dollar revenue products some of which could be Fortune 500 companies on their own?

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#89

Post by flyingcircus3 »

throwawayjava wrote: post #37
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…

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 pr…

You've simply recited the fallacy. You've framed the very debate in terminology that assumes you are correct.

But that's what all entrenched interests do.

Schools of technology are not simply teaching baseline competence. They teach the theory of the same subjects, with a more hands on approach emphasized.

They are showing up to civil war reenactments with tanks and planes. The old timers are in a huff about it, but what else is new?

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#90

Post by flyingcircus3 »

paulie_a wrote: post #60
throwawayjava wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

While those are big name schools. When I review a resume I never even look at the education section. I will never be impressed by that.

I would say, to firm that up even more, every school can point to their accomplishments, and the graduates/professors that worked on them, as to why they are in rarified air. You can look through Wikipedia at all of these renowned scientists, and who their advisors were, and who their students were. So you can say they stood on the shoulders of giants, and also stood tall for others to perch even higher.

But not a single one of those heroes of science should rightly be remembered primarily or even secondarily because of where they studied.

The underlying fallacy is that you can only learn the best skills from the best people in a short window if time in your early adulthood.

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