A single tweet made me make up my mind about this article. The tweet from Rahiel ?@RahielT said: ‘I have so much more to learn about growing and sustaining a business but experience is often the best teacher. Life has been my Harvard MBA.’ I then searched a bit more and came up with a few more tweets that appeared to unveil a lot of mystery out of MBA.
Michael Jurewitz ?@Jury said: ‘The power’s out. We’ve lost control. The MBA’s are on the loose. God help us…’ ‘What is it,’ I asked myself, ‘that makes an MBA the most coveted one and at the same time fit enough for all the satirical jabs that can be mustered?’ Mr. Eric Sir ?@mrericsir had his own unique interpretation: ‘1. Buy a MacBook Air from the Stanford bookstore. 2. Tell everyone you got an MBA from Stanford.’ The truth is that we have been face-to-face with the demons of recession for a long time in a world that is literally over-flowing with MBAs and scholars who go around lugging fat tomes on economic theories. No wonder then that another perceptive tweeter, Alex Thompson ?@RayburnThompson added: ‘So we have a ticket with a JD/MBA and an econ degree… and a horrible, stagnant economy? Is the choice really not common sense?’ There has been a steady mistrust in the wisdom that was initially associated with a Masters in Business Administration. Now they are simply taken to be dolts who, as ?@techrsr tweeted: ‘Hahahaha, some worthless MBA guy is talking about people who visit Engadget and Gizmodo not being geeks. GTFO.’
One of my friends gave me his home-made definition of an ‘MBA: Masters in Bekaar Academics’, which, when translated, pointed out the futility of a branch of study to really solve anything.
Problems need perceptive intelligence, informed involvement, and a heartfelt surge to discover solutions… and most of those who go for an MBA end up with just a load of unlearned theories and half-baked concepts. Is this why we see bright young engineers stepping into finance and making an utter fool of themselves? Is this why the not-so-bright engineers carry on marking their presence in courts of law for buildings and bridges that failed to bear their own weight?
Let me clarify here that the problem is not with MBA as a mere branch of study. The problem is with the number of third-rate MBAs being churned out in thousands. These are the professionals who we need to be afraid of. They are real and yet are just characters in a story of debacles and declines!
2012_09_03_The Education Post_Lifting the veil off MBA
Arvind Passey
Written on 30 August 2012
Published in ‘The Education Post’ dated 03 September 2012
