Will the MBA Degree Become Less Valuable in the Near-Future?
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Every major business publication, in the recent past, has featured articles on the importance of an MBA degree. Business schools have become a thriving growth industry. Of late, many have contended that the university has become a credential cartel controlling the rights of entrance into the job market. Further, many are beginning to question the value of an MBA.
Typical criticisms claim that the traditional MBA curriculum ill-serves and ill-prepares the student because of its transparent neglect of the requirements of the business practitioner. According to critics, doing well in an MBA program at best shows the student's promise for performance.
Peter F. Drucker once commented, "In the academic disciplines a student cannot perform...he or she can only show promise…"He extended this observation by asserting there was no correlation between academic tests and actual performance on the corporate battlefield.
Doing well on tests only proves you can take tests. It often happens that the promising "A" student turns out to be a mediocrity. On the other hand, the "C" student sometimes turns out to be a star performer because of his/her ability to concentrate on the task and get things done.
The popular methodologies of case studies, business games, simulations and the like are often so remote from the world of decision making that Drucker equated them with going to war with toys.
It should be mentioned—indeed, emphasized—the hard-core business specialties (accounting, finance, statistics, taxation, computer science, etc.) in the curriculum, at least, provide the benefit of a solid foundation of knowledge competency, assuming the individual is willing to take responsibility for learning after graduation.
Misdirected Faculty Contribution
John Flaherty, a true Drucker scholar and synthesizer, revealed in an unpublished manuscript Drucker's criticism of the role of business school faculty. Interestingly, Flaherty shows Drucker's intense interest in the field of medicine, and why and how throughout its history it has been intertwined with the feature of professional practice.
Drucker ascribed a good deal of the university's failure to deliver the goods, in the way of meaningful results, to the misdirected focus and the composition of the faculty. He specifically faulted academic preparation for business on two counts—the excessive concern with theoretical concepts and undue emphasis on tools and techniques. Particularly incomprehensible to Drucker was how academics addressed theoretical concepts devoid of any concrete organizational experience.
Drucker further argued that academics imagine that a business career was a purely pristine activity apparently isolated from the pressure cooker travails of business life.
In order to dissuade them from this idyllic 'Eden' divorced from crises, tensions, turbulence and the uncertainties, "Drucker recommended and urged" that they take a lesson from the medical profession which through its internship and other training programs demanded that the practitioner gain experience by confronting operating realities... "
Many business school graduates reflect their professors' teachings. Drucker believed the typical MBA student—after being inundated with their school's excessive emphasis on rationality—graduates with the false expectation that top management actually knows what it is doing.
Then again, the right curriculum targeted to the right people (experienced executives/managers) can be a marvelous experience. Mature individuals are more responsive to theoretical concepts that enable them to organize their past experiences and have the savvy to evaluate the usefulness of what is being taught.