B-school Confidential: MBAs May Be Obsolete

Yahoo! Finance:

The Master of Business Administration degree has been a holy grail for decades. If you wanted a career that mattered and didn't have the aptitude for medical school, an MBA was a good ticket to prestige and riches.

But things aren't so clear anymore. If the MBA used to be the entrance fee to climb the corporate ladder, there are few corporate ladders to climb anymore -- and people are increasingly experimenting with ways to speed up that climb anyway. One way is to skip the MBA altogether.

So if you're thinking of getting an MBA, you should probably think twice.

Read the whole story: Yahoo! Finance

Comments

[thurd2]

Academia is obsolete. What can one expect from workers who cannot be fired? Inefficiency and corruption. The university system is one of the last great scams. People are finally starting to realize this. Any vestige of intellectual progress coming from universities disappeared a long time ago.

[gstager]

What a thorough and thoughtful article this is.

[kellygrrrl]

spend your teens and early twenties reading everything you can get your hands on and taking creative risks while you are not tied to a mortgage or marriage or parenthood.

You will be a far more interesting person with greater critical thinking and creative problem solving skills than 90% of the MBA grads.

plus, you won't have as much debt.

[Dan]

Heh. I knew that a decade ago. Will be very happy to see them go away in my lifetime (probably sooner thanks to global warming...)

An MBA seems to be a badge that IDs the holder of said degree as a career climbing, sniveling, incompetent, ignorant, self important, arrogant narcissistic asshole. I know that there are some MBAs who aren't like that (especially those who had at least 5-10 years experience before getting one) but it sure as hell seemed like it (especially in the tech industry.)

What blows me away about the MBA mindset in tech is how they don't understand R&D. They seem to think you have to make it efficient. The thing about R&D that they fail to get is that it is not efficient, in fact it needs to be inefficient. For every 100 ideas, 90 of them are really stupid. Of the remaining 10 not stupid ones, 3 are impossible, 4 aren't viable/nor sellable (no market etc.) Of the 3 sellable ideas, only 1 is profitable (and makes up for the other 99 bad ideas.) But you have to plug away because even the failures help you build upon the knowledge base.

I think the one major common failing of MBA schools is their failure to understand the human side of the equation. If they were really "Leadership" programs as they tout in their ads then the majority of the course load would be on real human relations (not Catbert stuff.) Word to the wise, if you push cutting costs and outsourcing expensive well trained talent then don't expect said talent to be happy about it. The MBA that ran the division I work in did exactly that and was shocked, really shocked to see our employee satisfaction tumble from a middling 75% to a well earned 35%. The employee satisfaction result was our only way of flipping him the bird (as his bonuses were tied to it.)

[realitytrumpsbull]

A mind is a terrible thing...

[darker]

Harvard MBA degree program produced Bush-Fool PRESIDENT "the decider" DIVIDER.

If that's how "great" they are,
MAY THEY ALL BE DAMNED!

MBA's are nothing but an academic SCAM to
make more money for the schools. MBAs are WORTHLESS.

[partyofone]

George W. Bush has demonstrated beyond refute the value of a Harvard M.B.A. (and a Yale undergraduate degree for that matter). He is agruably the most uneducated, incompetent, anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-reality president in American history. Kudos Harvard Business School. The first MBA/CEO president. What a GREAT poster boy and what a HUGE fiasco.

[grainger5]

...and what a compelling reason to choose Yale -- home of the Skull and Bones.

[grainger5]

AND NOW...HERE IS MY TAKE!

You don't need college. Period.

Either you know how to make money or you don't.

No one can teach you how to steal, or lie.

Money, money, money.

And finally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx3S5mqvvig

[TimtheDemocrat]

It never was a very good degree. It turns out clones and yes men.

[ggmome]

In a country where 'store brought' degrees or those awarded on line, are get overs for the 'chosen' ones, who have given education a bad name, this information about MBA's is known, by those with an IQ...

Bush has given that degree a bad name...

[unclebucky]

So much for the MBA Presidency.

Clearly, Bush has been a downer in government, education, business, ethics, business, religion, business, entertainment, business, and finally, business.

Ugh.

--UB.

[Saganslegacy]

I don't think this country needs more MBAs, what this country does need are more engineers. In essence, that's where wealth is created.

[dadw5boys]

ENTERPRIZE SOFTWARE MAKING A MASTERS DEGREE IN BUSINESS OBSELETE.
How does it feel to be DOWNSIZED and made Obselete?

[seamusnh]

While many MBA graduates go to careers in investment banking, consulting, and traditional corporate jobs, there are many entrepreneurs in high tech, real estate, etc. as well. I graduated from Harvard with an MBA over 20 years ago and many of my classmates never were on a corporate ladder. I have worked 20 years in startup/early stage software companies...

As for Bush and the MBA, there are 70,000 MBAs granted each year. You may disagree with some of the politicians with MBAs (Bush, Sununu, and Romeny are all have Harvard MBAs), there are Democrats as well. Governor Lynch (D) her in NH is a Harvard MBA. There is no rule that politicians have to be lawyers and career politicians. It would be good to see business people, doctors, etc. go into politics. The country is looking for a leader, not another politican....

[mrcontinental]

Agreed. The lawyers have hijacked the country and need to go. We need more creative and original thinkers in politics instead of double talking lawyers.

[ZingoBonMot]

The name Ross Perot ring a bell?
Little feller with big ears who warned us about that NAFTA-induced "sucking sound"?

[eaglecapri]

I'm an entrepreneur myself. Anything I didn't know, I took a class.

Writing my business plan was all about using resources (I already had the idea and drive to start my business.). The library and the internet served me well. The internet is God, especially at 2:00 in the morning and you need to know how to write a successful marketing plan or how to 'accurately' project sales.

Some people just don't have the entrepreneurial spirit or aren't business savvy. That's when an MBA is necessary.

[mrcontinental]

Good point.

[Fuji]

What kind of business do you have? I have an entrepreneurial itch that I want to scratch. I'm thinking publishing or exporting.

[dadw5boys]

do both