Bailout

MBA, RIP

By Felix Salmon

Philip Delves Broughton on what you really learn at Harvard Business School:

Everyone knows what they’re best at, but often they think it’s of no value. I felt like that when I graduated from HBS, and I was wrong.

Broughton’s memoir of his experiences at HBS is now out in paperback, and I can recommend it: he nails the tone of delusional self-congratulation that seems to pervade HBS alumni.

I suspect that the heyday of the MBA — the extremely expensive piece of paper which pays for itself through massively inflated earnings after graduation — is now a thing of the past. The finance-heavy courses, in particular, should surely be ripe for what their students might like to think of as “consolidation” — what the rest of us would call shuttering. It’s clear, in hindsight, that they did more harm than good. So why perpetuate these things?

Full post as published by Macroprudential on June 30, 2009 (boomark / email).