Harvard Business School, NYU Stern, Cornell... What Are They Teaching At These Places?!

wowOwow:

Here's a question, fellow 401K-robbed victims of the meltdown: Exactly where did this toxic batch of bankers and businesspeople -- who engineered the economy into the ditch, the stock market into free fall and frittered away the fortunes of our country and maybe even the world -- learn their craft? Which MBA, economics and law programs produced the perpetrators of the calamities that have befallen the great Wall Street institutions and, now, Main Street Americans as well? Which schools are the Academies of the Apocalypse, and who and how many went to each?

Read the whole story: wowOwow

Comments

[Sonya Lee]

They should teach ethics at these MBA mills.

[FreedomCorpse]

Friedmanite economic theories started infiltrating universities in the 1950's and has gone unabated since then. When I took economics it didn't make sense in terms of how they moved numbers around to manipulate balance sheets, I changed majors to engineering, loved it and if the theory isn't sound whatever it is you work simply will not work. In economics, all they were concerned about was perception of the numbers not the truth about the numbers.

[funkalicious]

Yes the ties to Harvard Yard and the Harvard Corporation.. they transcend party lines Pug Winkour and Rob Ruin, I mean Rob Rubin all tied to Enron. Rubin was trying to secure government bailout money for Enron so Citi wouldn't lose their investment I guess that was the 100 million dollar ripoff I mean payoffer umm pay was for. And How did Harvard endowment make so much money and the man in charge of it was lauded as a financial genius...why he was short Enron stock.. and let us not forget our favorite Economist from Princeton Paulie Krugman was an Enron employee too.

An incestuous bunch of greedy self serving thieves, It started well before Enron but the deregulation during that Clinton allowed written by the Republicans allowed the rape and Pillage.

Add in some calculus Theorem (Mixed Derivative Theorem) and a smattering of Latin.. Quod erat demonstrandum, and an entitled attitude and swagger.........Viola Greed Personified to the nth degree.

[Nolana]

Here is a most excellent article on this subject by Jeff Danziger:

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=print

[SaltySaltillo]

Random thoughts:
1) There is a reason why Harvard built its business school on the literal and proverbial other side of the river.
2) It is not fair to turn Harvard Law School into a scape goat just because Raines went there - if Deborah Barrow were serious about her assertion she would have to take reckoning of the fact that Harvard Law School for the last 30 years has been the premier place for leftists to study law in this country, despite former dean Clark's efforts to "corporatize" the place. There is a long string of noble public servants that have come out of HLS. I cannot say the same thing about business school.
3) As a graduate of both MBA and JD, I assure you, what is taught in MBA programs is a shame and given a choice between an MBA and a JD for a job opening, TAKE THE JD!!! The mere fact that the applicant chose a JD program instead of an MBA shows good judment.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

FWIW, one B-school I applied to had an essay question: "Which CEO do you most admire and why?"

Knowing (back then) that they'd get more than their share of Lee Iacocca's and Robert Crandall's and Jack Welch's, I wrote a dead-serious essay on: Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise

He's decisive. He delegates. He trusts his experts. He takes chances. And, he's not afraid to break a rule, but only when necessary. And he always gets the girl, or at least the female alien.

Needless to say, I didn't get in. But I did marry a woman who's out of this world.

[gsuescum]

I got my MBA at Columbia after working for 7 years as an mechanical engineer.

I remember sitting in all those finance classes and thinking that when you applied all the theory to valuing stocks, the market prices made absolutely no sense. Back in 1995 they made no sense and have made even less sense since then.

Needless to say I never got into investment banking/trading and went the entrepreneur route and now make movies.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Didn't make since in 1986-1988 either (after I'd worked 5 years as a civil).
Black Monday hit during one of my B-school's job fairs, of all things.
The DOW dropped 23% in one day.
Class was fun on Tuesday.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Didn't make SENSE didn't make sense. Eek.

[SaltySaltillo]

The problem with financial theory as taught in business school is that it presupposes a lot of the current status quo as given. Change one presupposition and the whole theory collapses like a deck of cards.

[kimi6]

I'm an MBA student and two weeks ago our Professor showed us the WalMart documentary "The High Price of Low Cost." You should have heard the comments from some of the students. One guy said that WalMart had no obligation to provide affordable healthcare benefits to its employees and the CEOs' sole responsibility is the bottom line.

It tried to explain that we are all human beings, and whenever we make decisions we should always look at it from a human perspective; that surely WalMart could afford to contribute a bit more towards employees' healthcare costs. Sometimes I feel like dropping out because it seems that to be successful in the business world you have to be cutthroat and heartless, and it's just not in me.

[gsuescum]

Don't more people like you are needed.

[CitizenFarmer]

Hillary was on the Board of Directors of WalMart. She agreed with your classmate about no need for WalMart to provide healthcare.

[SaltySaltillo]

Amen. That's why I voted Obama.

[RGKahn]

Hillary Clinton was on the board of WalMart when the old man, Sam Walton, was the head of the corporation. He was a big supporter of buy american and so forth. His children have changed the corporation into what you see today.

[SaltySaltillo]

Might I suggest you apply to law school during your second year of MBA?

[CitizenFarmer]

They teach the same basis of morality that is taught at all top B-schools and top law schools. A Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc. MBA or JD have about the same moral convictions. An interesting point is that the professors at most of these top universities are pundits of the left. The question posed is also applicable to the teaching profession - the predominate type of college professor in the school of education is similar to Billy Ayers - what is being emphasized is not math, science, and the things that are marketable in the world.

[SaltySaltillo]

Glad to see you have had your head up your rear. Please explain how Ellen Kagen (Dean of Harvard Law School) is promoting the "same moral convictions" as in the MBA programs. You cant... not without making yourself look more ignorant.

[FreedomCorpse]

I see you've got the programming downloaded in your mind, you are controlled by your own ignorance.

[blowhard]

Harvard is a completely overrated University. It is a breeding ground for arrogant, know-nothing rich kids.

[RobinSeattle]

Two things:

One, business majors tend to have the lowest academic performance of any group on college campuses except for PE majors.

Also, they cheat more:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/424103/academic_cheating_and_academic_dishonesty.html

Now can we just start calling a Harvard MBA what I have long suspected it is: a box top degree.

[blowhard]

I couldn't have said it any better. At MIT the Professors always remind the students who can't cut it in engineering or the sciences that there is always the business school. And MIT students never regard the business school as part of MIT

[drymartini1]

check the ranking of the Sloan School !! its in top 10...geez..where do people come up with these retarded stuff !!

[dadw5boys]

Teaching them to protect the status quo mostly.


.

[loki]

They are Greed mills , pumping out replicas of their beloved greed driven ideology. Share the lose, privatize the profit, all for the rich, screw everyone else they are useless, people are tools to make the elitist richer, type of schools Id rather have a grade school drop out over seeing my saving than a Ivy Greeder. He might not make it look like I am making huge profits when Im not, but I also can be much safer knowing that my money is probably not being stolen from under my nose either.

[RobinSeattle]

Business schools=greed mills?

Congratulations Loki, you just coined a new nickname for them. And your characterization is spot on.

Cheers.

[Progress08]

I only ever had one great professor. He ran a charitable workshop for the blind and is a pillar of the philanthropic community. He was a bigwig at Wellmark too. I'd love to find out his take on universal healthcare.

[Rule Of Law]

What are they teaching at these factories? Nothing you couldn't learn for a lot less at any state college, without the elitist indoctrination that goes with it.

The Ivy League Schools are primarily farm teams for the Bigs--Wall Street and K Street. It's an old boy's association where contacts and family are more important than performance or ethics. The whole system should be torn down along with the banking industry.

[RobinSeattle]

More and more, I am coming to believe that the Ivy League is little more than the world's most expensive networking opportunity for young adults.

[uglyhumanbeing]

teach methods to subvert American Law in order to make a penny.

who teaches American Law?

america's laws subverted.