Posted on 10/05/2010 7:10:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
If Josh Kaufman had gone to business school, he probably would have graduated this year with an MBA from Harvard or Stanford. But Kaufman, a 28-year-old entrepreneur and former assistant brand manager for Procter & Gamble, thinks business school is pretty much a waste of time and money.
MBA programs, he says firmly, have become so expensive that students "must effectively mortgage their lives" and take on "a crippling burden of debt" to get what is "mostly a worthless piece of paper." Kaufman believes that MBA programs "teach many worthless, outdated, even outright damaging concepts and practices." And if that's not bad enough, he insists that an MBA won't guarantee anyone a high-paying job, let alone turn a person into a skilled manager or leader.
In an era when MBA bashing has become almost fashionable, Kaufman is emerging as business school's most unforgiving critic. Founder of PersonalMBA.com and the author of the forthcoming book "The Personal MBA," he's a passionate advocate for what he calls self-education. Instead of paying up to $350,000 in tuition and forgone earnings to go to Harvard, Stanford or Wharton, Kaufman says a better way to learn business is to open the pages of classic business texts and learn on your own.
His epiphany occurred five years ago, when he was working at P&G (PG, Fortune 500) headquarters in Cincinnati as an assistant brand manager for the company's Home Care division. He had joined P&G straight from the University of Cincinnati by virtue of the school's cooperative education program. Almost all of his peers and managers boasted elite MBA degrees.
To overcome his feelings of intimidation and to prepare for the job, he began reading, and reading, and reading, from textbooks, such as the "Essentials of Accounting," to "Competitive Strategy" by Harvard professor Michael Porter
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
MBA programs were designed for people who wasted their undergraduate opportunities on liberal fluff; a crash course on Business topics. Put that on top of a Sociology or EDU indoctrination, and it's like the white stuff on top of chicken poop (it's still chicken poop).
The J.D. can also be the kiss of death when looking for a non-legal position. Employers think you are overqualified and will abandon ship at the first opportunity. I’ve been following some of the law school “scam blogs” for a while now, and agree that law school is a waste of time for most students.
This is a rather timely posting for our family - husband has a senior military backgrd - very successful - but now seems “stuck” in defense contracting arena. We’ve been discussing wether a MBA would “break him out” of the defense world so he could do something different for the last few decades of working life.
I think anyone in any field would jump at his expertise - he feels they don’t “get” military life and want more specific experience...what to do?
My program was through a state college, but the textbooks and materials were from the Harvard Business School. The books cost as much as the tuition.
“As long as you need to learn something rather than to have a degree, you can do a better job teaching yourself than by going to a school
Once the school convinces you that you need their certification to be successful, their job is done.”
Unfortunately the corporate human resources types think in terms of the latter as well. Although I have a BSEE, HR thinking rules that I am not qualified to work on programmable logic controllers since I have not had a formal course on it. Everything is supposed to be spoon fed, and no one is supposed to figure out things on their own, using the basics as a foundation. It’s a variation of the “not invented here” mentality.
I am now a principle at an industrial controls systems integrator. Small outfit with a lot of “out of the box thinking”.
“The J.D. can also be the kiss of death when looking for a non-legal position. Employers think you are overqualified and will abandon ship at the first opportunity.”
VERY true! I have seen employers reject J.D.s out of hand many times.
The last 3 firms I worked for (all were very large and in business for 50+ years) had been turned over from fathers to their sons who had just completed their MBAs.
Two of these firms were privately held while the third had a majority stockholder turn his controlling interest over to his son.
In all 3 cases, these successful companies went bankrupt in 3 years or less.
Now it is either sons are failures at running a business started by their fathers (some truth to that) or there is something seriously wrong with the MBA programs.
In all 3 cases, the MBAs completely ignored what had made the companies prosper and immediately started to manage strictly by the bottom line.
Customers, who in some cases paid a higher price to do business with these companies simply because of the great service provided, started to leave in droves once the service either deteriorated or eliminated.
I can only assume nothing in the MBA programs teach students to focus on the core values or services of a company.
At this point I have zero respect for MBA programs.
“Everything is supposed to be spoon fed, and no one is supposed to figure out things on their own, using the basics as a foundation.”
Which is logically inane. If that concept was fundamentally true, we would have a species stagnation.
RE: A key selection criteria for entry into Harvard’s MBA program, assuming reasonable GMAT scores and academic record, is reported to be: Will this person be highly successful if he or she does not come to Harvard or an equivalent program? If “no” reject him or her. If “yes” accept the person.
Something interesting I read the other day...
DE Shaw used to be one of the most successful hedge funds on Wall Street. They recently laid off 10% of their workforce (a lot of them Ivy League grads were very highly paid).
REASON : Poor business and huge redemptions from investors who were losing money after the 2008 meltdown.
During the boom years, DE Shaw used to place hiring ads like : “Only Ivy League Graduates need apply.”
That is a fascinating data point.
I think there is something inherently difficult about the second generation running the family business. That rarely works. It’d be interesting to study the “why” of that. I’m thinking that the first generation in your cases was probably aware of that trend...so they thought that having the son get the MBA was a good way to start to make sure that their Empire didn’t crumble.
And look what happened.
Probably it would have been better to start the son in the mail room, and let him work his way up to ownership. Now that might actually work....
Will this person be highly successful if he or she does not come to Harvard or an equivalent program? If “no” reject him or her. If “yes” accept the person.”
From the institution’s perspective, that makes perfect sense. Kudos to the geniuses at the Harvard Biz School who figured that out. Would that the applicants knew that all they were doing was ensuring the survival of the Biz School.....
It's not that difficult.
The son spent the previous 6 or 7 years learning "business" instead of "the business".
“I interviewed a young guy who told me his BA in Theatre Design was “just as good” as a BSME. He kinda flitted out the room in a big huff as you might imagine.”
Was that right after you fell to the floor, laughing?
Not surprised, but the method makes sense given that they are more likely to know and have access to more wealthy people - easy marks! I would include those who went to prep schools like Andover, Exeter, St. Paul’s, etc. even if they did not make it to the Ivy League.
I love that movie!
I think it all depends on the school and the program. While on active duty in Oklahoma I earned an MBA from Oklahoma City University which I have found to be very helpful. Oklahoma City University is slightly unique in there MBA program. First a student cannot enroll in their MBA program directly from a Bachelors degree program, they first must gain real world experience. Second none of their MBA Professors can be full time professors they must work in the real world outside of a University setting. The second I found to be profound on as not only was an MBA student exposed to the theoretical aspects of the program but also the real applications of the knowledge. A big name school may not be the way to go.
Years ago I decided that I would supplement my BS CE with an MBA.
What I learned was most of the MBA direction was not suited to a small family business. I did not finish but did take several courses that seemed to apply to a small family corporation.
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