Its nice to have your beliefs confirmed.
Several times I have considered going to get my MBA. Each time I decided not too. It hasn’t hurt me so far, and from this recent The New York Times article, I was right.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford’s business school, published a study in 2002 based on decades of data to determine what the M.B.A. degree actually did for students. Internal studies by leading consulting firms and investment banks of their M.B.A. and non-M.B.A. employees showed that the degree had no impact beyond helping them get the job.Professor Pfeffer concluded: ”There is little evidence that mastery of the knowledge acquired in business schools enhances people’s careers, or that even attaining the M.B.A. credential itself has much effect on graduates’ salaries or career attainment.”
and there was this gem..
Roger L. Martin spent 13 years at Monitor, a top consulting company based in Cambridge, Mass., where he was responsible for recruiting. He tended to recruit almost entirely from the Harvard Business School (of which he is a graduate). Harvard, he says, ”is a magnificent vehicle for extracting out of the global economy those people who are destined to be great business leaders and motivated and smart.” But beyond that, he believes, Harvard adds nothing.”If you gave me a choice of recruiting with the admissions list or the graduating list, it would take me a second to decide — I’d go with the admissions list,” says Mr. Martin, now dean of the business school at the University of Toronto.
”If people were smart,” he says, ”they would apply to Harvard, get in, and then send their admissions letters out and use that to get jobs.”
Unlike most other professional schools, you don’t need an MBA to do well at business. Its not like law or medicine. In fact, if you look at who the movers and shakers are in business, the vast majority do NOT have an MBA because they were too busy starting their company. Its only use is for corporate ladder climbing.
4 replies on “MBAAAAAAAAAA”
I think it’s the opposite, that law and medicine are the only professional schools that purportedly prepare you for your actual profession, and it’s mainly because they are covariate with licensure requirements (urban legend has it that if people taking only the intensive bar prep course can pass the bar, though I have no idea how those pass rates compare with people who went through the whole JD program- could be a marketing myth:)). Other degrees are just for signalling and networking- and it sounds like the signalling effects are not inconsequential for the Harvard folk.
I think that could be possible for someone to practice law without having gone to law school. It would require on the job training. It used to be that way back in the day for both law and medicine.
Licensing is fundamentally a way to artificially restrict compeititon, be it in law, medicine, taxi cabs, or hairdressing.
That being said, I’d be more comfortable with a lawyer that didn’t go to law school, than a doctor that didn’t go to medical school.
All MBA I believe.
I wonder if there wouldn’t be a market for something that would substitute for admissions to somewhere prestigueous.
Basically, a MENSA type organization. You need to take the GMAT and submit GPA. Its highly selective, but nothing more than a club, and way cheaper than getting an MBA. You develop the brand and use the brand to reflect the membership, and vice versa.
Was the study for Stanford MBA’s, or all MBA programs? There’s a drastic difference, of course.
Though, my friends who went to Stanford business school have confirmed to me that it really is all about getting in rather than what you do when you get there.