Posted on 07/27/2025 9:11:34 AM PDT by libh8er
Stanford Graduate School of Business stands at the center of Silicon Valley, surrounded by the companies and technologies driving the AI revolution. But according to multiple current MBA students who have spoken this summer to Poets&Quants, the school is not keeping pace with the sweeping changes these tools are bringing to business education — and the consequences could be long-lasting.
“I think educators and the school have not modified the curriculum to really match up with the tools that are out there, especially during the first year,” one student tells Poets&Quants in one of a series of candid, wide-ranging interviews. “The assignments haven’t changed, but the tools have gotten very powerful. You could spend most of your time socializing or job-hunting and still complete your academic work with AI.
“That calls into question whether we’re actually learning the skills employers expect — and whether the Stanford MBA brand is being diluted as a result”
A CURRICULUM MISALIGNED WITH A GENERATIVE WORLD
The student, pursuing an MBA to pivot to a new sector, says AI has fundamentally altered how students engage with coursework at GSB — especially in classes requiring coding or analytical skills. Speaking under condition of anonymity, they describe a troubling shift: “You’re not learning to code. You’re learning how to prompt ChatGPT. Some courses have become pointless. That’s not what anyone expects from Stanford. AI is devaluing the MBA.” Illustrating the point, they add: “There are several classes where the class average on an exam is 99” — proof, they say, that the exams are pointless.
The student says their concerns are widely shared by others in their cohort. Those concerns are not just academic, however. They are reputational.
(Excerpt) Read more at poetsandquants.com ...
The MBA is the most common graduate program in the country. Available in residence at the top colleges and by remote access from a large number of accredited and unaccredited schools.
So called AI (over-hyped as usual) will not replace a single plumber, carpenter, auto mechanic, machine tools operator, police who guard us, firemen who show up when house is on fire, Fedex driver who delivers stuff at my front door, machine designer for new custom mass production or single function machines, mailman who delivers stuff in my locked mailbox, airplane pilots, 2500 crew members on large cruise ships who clean my cabin and serve me delicious food, cemetery workers who digs holes to bury caskets, welders, road repair workers, short order cooks, jewelry makers, pizza delivery drivers, etc etc.
Universities and other schools, should be training students to become chatGPT specialists. ;)
What would an MBA in chatGPT be worth in first year salary?
“I think educators and the school have not modified the curriculum to really match up with the tools that are out there”
really, that’s pretty much always the case with pretty much ALL degrees except STEM degrees ... my own personal experience has been that tenure = ossification ...
There’s a very scientific term for this.
MBA grads don’t know “Doodley Squat”.
Much of the basic analysis can be done by AI. Think “how many of this, how much of that” and feed the data into a matrix/model for analysis. I have started to see analysis on market trends done by AI as well.
Agree on the manual work - we have decades before robots prepare food, drive vehicles, load trucks, manage stocking and stowing, etc. A more likely scenario is human/machine teaming in the coming years.
“we have decades before robots prepare food, drive vehicles, load trucks, manage stocking and stowing, etc. “
Sorry friend, ALL of this is being done by machines right now.
Or is your post missing a SARC tag?
What the prospective MBA’s are getting closer to figuring out is that the product they are purchasing from Stanford is overpriced and of poor quality. They are worried the prospective employers will figure it out. They would be better served by cutting their losses and using their minds to figure out how to improve their productivity.
The two largest departments in any company are sales and production. Select one to specialize in, get a job, and continue your education the rest of your life.
From Space Cowboys:
Frank: Look kid, I’ve done everything short of calculus instructions to bring you up to speed. What do you want, a picture? Connect the dots?
Ethan: Excuse me. I hold two masters degrees from MIT, Dr. Corvin.
Frank: Maybe you ought to get your money back.
Oh sure, I can see this. AI can string together business school buzzwords and write “analysis” better than any MBA, even those in Mumbai. ‘At the end of the day’...it’s all bullshit anyway.
And generally one of the most useless. Look at all the companies destroyed by MBAs who have never worked a day in the industry they’re running in their lives.
Well there’s an AI side effect I can get behind. Yes PLEASE devalue the middle management BS degree that’s been choking productivity and wages for decades.
So called AI (over-hyped as usual) will not replace a single plumber, carpenter, auto mechanic, machine tools operator, police who guard us, firemen who show up when house is on fire, Fedex driver who delivers stuff at my front door, machine designer for new custom mass production or single function machines, mailman who delivers stuff in my locked mailbox, airplane pilots, 2500 crew members on large cruise ships who clean my cabin and serve me delicious food, cemetery workers who digs holes to bury caskets, welders, road repair workers, short order cooks, jewelry makers, pizza delivery drivers, etc etc.
—
Quite a list but I don’t think totally accurate.
Combine AI with a machine that is mobile (robot) and with the and many jobs could be replaced.
I would guess we are less than 50 years from having fully functional robots walking among us doing a lot of routine task. A robot may not be able to do a particular task the way a human would so the task will be adjusted to the limitation of the robot what ever that may be.
I am in my 70 and I have seen many “jobs” go away when a machine took over. These were dumb machines that usually only had one function and had to be specifically “programmed” to perform that function. Combining AI with a machine is the game changer.
The biggest problem facing humanity in the next 50 years is what to do with unemployed humans and I dread what the elite have planned for us. (Fortunately for me, I am old and will not live to see this.)
The trades and trade schools are very appealing to young people, that don’t have the time or financing to figure out a “maybe career” as a post college graduate.
They will start making decent money as a producer rather quickly.
With low debt, plenty of employment choices, and an immunity to the AI revolution that is going to drastically change global employment for the next 20 years.
Many young people in this group are headed in the right direction for future prosperity.
“MBA grads don’t know “Doodley Squat”.”
I received my MBA in 2023. I now teach level 400 project management, to supplement my regular position. With the University, I use ChatGBT to provide with me information on the papers I grade. I use it to build models on projects I am working on. I use it primarily as an efficiency generator. It provides me feedback on some of my continuous service improvement programs.
If you want to learn it or any other AI tool, open a book and learn to code. These are Stanford MBA’s without a clue. It isn’t a technology issue. It’s a Gen Z/Millennial issue. I’m 65 and know this stuff only because I took it upon myself to learn it. AI should be part of undergrad studies.
You are completely wrong. People can sometimes correct and update their world views when they are a little bit wrong, but very hard if you are completely wrong. Every single example you gave is wrong. Robots enabled by advanced AI are already being developed to do every single thing on your list. We did go to moon, and now robots about to take your job. Denial is waste of time, and it looks bad, too.
“I’m 65 and know this stuff only because I took it upon myself to learn it.”
Excellent, that’s what education if for, teaching you how to go learn what you need to prosper in an ever-changing world.
Third-world and hard-core communist countries do their thing without a middle class.
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