Why Most MBAs Don’t Get It
October 25th, 2005 • Business, Education, Rants
Yes, I know the title is a bit inflammatory. Especially given the fact that I’m currently in school getting my MBA. Before starting school, I had some folks that encouraged me to come back to school. Others asked why I would want to spend the time and money getting an MBA given that I had co-founded a company. The reasons are varied and personal but one of them was my desire to see exactly what kind of people got MBAs and what they were taught in business school. Clearly that isn’t the only reason that I came to business school because if it was, I just wasted a lot of money and time.
Although I totally haven’t figured out what kind of people (and for what reasons) people get their MBAs, I have figured out one thing. Most MBA students are totally disconnected from business reality. Wow, that sounds harsh. It isn’t meant to be as harsh as it sounds. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of students getting their MBAs do not have practical operating experience before getting their degrees. There are some exceptions like folks in my one year MBA class which explicitly requires some four or five years of business experience for admittance. Even then, there are some folks in my one year class that, shall we say don’t have the necessary abilities to properly apply lessons learned.
So how did I come to this (probably obvious) realization about the intellectual capabilities and backgrounds of business school students? Obviously, I’ve been observing my fellow classmates inside and outside of class. Recently some classmates made a presentation in one of my classes about a new hotel concept. In fact, three different teams of students made presentations. Out of the teams one clear recommendation made during the presentations was to charge clients $500 per night for a dating concept hotel. Now, I’m married so I can’t speak with total authority but $500 per night?!? I can’t imagine anyone being so desperate to meet someone that they would shell out $500 per night to stay in a hotel. Oh yes, there was also a require 7 day stay. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
On one hand, I see the value of the education - at least for me. But I wonder how much value is being driven to folks if their recommendation for a new hotel is so obviously flawed from an economic perspective. The scary part of this is that these folks will move on and take supposed leadership positions in various industries and companies. And from these leadership positions, MBA graduates don’t ever see the work “in the trenches” which is exactly where you need to be to understand how a business runs.
The lesson learned from this? As I learned when I was looking to hire folks in my last company, education might mean that you are capable (to some level) of learning but it doesn’t really reflect your ability to apply those lessons to the real world. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks who don’t understand this concept and I would advise you to avoid this mental trap. A stellar educational background and/or a “big Rolodex” don’t translate into an effective leader.
4 Responses (Add Your Comment)
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Yep.. I realy think the people who hire MBA grads need to look at other factors besides the GPA they get.
Good luck with yours..
I’m also doing my MBA, and I have had a completely different experience. maybe this is due to me doing mine part time, where most people there have several years of experience, maybe our admittance criteria is more strict on expeirence, or maybe I’m just clueless.
What I have found is that most of them are very educated in their field of expertise, but not in general management, or other fields (I guess if they were they wouldn’t be taking the course)
The $500/night does sounds a bit out of touch with reality, but if you pitched the idea at single millionares it might work.. you could say the $500 (or even $5000) is a signal to say those people are committed to finding relationships, as well as creating a barrier to entry for non millionares, making it more of a elite club than a tawdry affair. you would be then pitching the networking benefits as well the chance to get laid.
BTW.. you might also want to look at where the job propsects are for all the graduates as well. Most of those places don’t care about your prior experience they just care about your scores. So while I agree with you that experience is important, there are whole industries (mainly finance related) out there which say they don’t care, and previous experience is of no value, just your GPA. until you can convince the consumers of MBAs that prior experience is also valuable you will have to be content with people entering with no experience.