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Bulldoze the business school

theguardian.com

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Re: Bulldoze the business school

#91

Post by cjalmeida »

gaius wrote: post #65
baybal2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience. The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to begin with

If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour for MBA grads is ridiculously.

Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are utterly incompetent and lacks common sense.

Or, more likely,

a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school even by non experienced people;

b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years being part of a team reporting directly to the C-level executives of Fortune 500 corps, solving quite complex problems.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#92

Post by [deleted] »

Meegul wrote: post #48
throwawayjava wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#93

Post by mdorazio »

speleding wrote: post #40
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.

Source? HBS has no such requirement (a friend got in with just 3 years of management consulting experience). Here's a quote straight from the Stanford GSB page: "Work experience is not required for entry to the Stanford MBA Program." Work experience isn't even listed as a requirement on the Wharton application. Etc.

Perhaps you're referring to European programs?

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#94

Post by willbw »

I agree with many points in the article, but it seems to me his core point is that alternatively economic and political models to capitalism should be taught in business schools.

It isn't clear to me that this is a job for graduate business education. The author clearly has an agenda to change either some aspects or capitalism, or to change economic systems entirely. I don't know why he thinks educating business school students differently is going to be something of a catalyst for change of this magnitude. People are studying these degrees with the sole aim of advancing their careers within a capitalist system. If you want political or economic change, these ideas are going to have to be spread throughout the general populace, as most of us here live in democracies.

I also don't think its clear what system would be better than capitalism, despite its flaws, and asking a curriculum to give focus on some alternative system which is completely unproven is a big ask.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#95

Post by mdorazio »

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…

To be fair, though, there is a world of difference between business school and medical school. The latter is a combination of academically rigorous coursework where grades matter and de-facto apprenticeship in actual hospital environments, usually culminating in a specialization with additional training. If business school was at that same level, it would deserve a lot more respect.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#96

Post by Fomite »

factsaresacred wrote: post #49
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…

> 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…

"The conceit of the MBA is that you don’t need to have any substance at all. It’s just this management science, and you can apply that equally well in a software company or an oil drilling company or a fashion company or a rocket company."

Ironically, this has become, in some ways, the conceit of Silicon Valley. That the techniques and patterns there can apply equally well for social media and fashion, and oil drilling and healthcare.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#97

Post by coryrc »

cjalmeida wrote: post #91
gaius wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course. All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience. The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to begin with

If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour for MBA grads is ridiculously. Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are utterly incompetent and lacks common sense. Or, more likely, a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school even by non experienced people; b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years…

Or, c) principal-agent problem in action

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#98

Post by Spooky23 »

jimnotgym wrote: post #81
baybal2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s a great point. Auditors are in a unique position as they observe and measure success and failure without making business decisions.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#99

Post by jaredklewis »

theyinwhy wrote: post #77
purplezooey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

... the downvotes say so. I am wondering about the same. Peter Thiel does not seem to be someone the world should listen to. His politics are anti-human I would say. And yes, by being as influentual as he is I think we can and should talk about his politics here. I am still trying to figure out how two such different world-views like thiel and musk were able to work together.

Just because someone has bad ideas (or ideas you disagree with) in one area, why would that mean all their ideas are bad?

To take an extreme example, Bobby Fischer is easily in the running for best chess player of all time. He was also an anti-semite. Does that somehow make his chess less good? Should we ignore that he was an anti-Semite? No! But should we cut all his games from chess books because of it?

Indeed, if you read many biographies one might quickly reach the conclusion that many of the world’s most accomplished men and women are also among its most flawed. Science, literature, and art would be set make many centuries if we had to discard all the work of those not meeting modern standards of decency.

To be clear, I don’t think Thiel is anywhere near as extreme a case as Fischer. I disagree with his politics (just the ordinary libertarian Baloney), but I think he is right on this point.

My advice to you would be to learn to separate ideas from the people that originate them, or you’ll miss out on so much great thought.

Re: Bulldoze the business school

#100

Post by mmirate »

theyinwhy wrote: post #77
purplezooey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

... the downvotes say so. I am wondering about the same. Peter Thiel does not seem to be someone the world should listen to. His politics are anti-human I would say. And yes, by being as influentual as he is I think we can and should talk about his politics here. I am still trying to figure out how two such different world-views like thiel and musk were able to work together.

> anti-human

No moreso than Galileo or Copernicus could have been called "anti-Earth", for "refusing to properly grant the Earth its sacred superiority to all other celestial objects".

At the end of the day, we humans are all just squishy machines, that happen to have one sole component between-the-ears that can't yet be duplicated (let alone bested like any other aspect of us) by artificial means. Like any other machine, humans are all means not ends (barring the silliest sentimentality).

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