Are business schools harmful to the economy?
Here is a discussion from the Economist. As a faculty member who is a refugee from a business school, I have to agree with the argument that an MBA encourages arrogance at the same time it does not force its students to master complicated things such as financial derivatives very well. Intellectual rigor does not fit with business school culture in most schools, if not all of them, and certainly the majority of MBAs avoid the really hard classes, as discussed in the article. But they do learn to be overconfident and lead their businesses to disasters via unethical behavior, in perhaps a small number of cases, and via dealing with things they do not understand, in probably a huge number of cases.
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About me
My name is Dimitrios Diamantaras. I live in Abington, PA, and read too many books but I don’t finish all of them. I also enjoy classical music, especially vocal, dabble in computer software a bit, and think about economics a lot (it’s my job).
B-school students were consistently my worst. Consistently. In my vast teaching experience of 2 semesters at a school with a b-school. And guess what: now Drew has one too! No English Ph.D., but a b-school … don’t get me started.
Right! And Temple’s business school is building an enormous new building right now and feeling pretty smug.
What was it Hamlet said? First thing, kill all the … MBAs? The updated Hamlet, that is. *NOTE: This is in no way meant to suggest violence, even against the incorrigibly stupid.
Hey, I’d love to read the updated Hamlet!