Anyone even remotely interested in business school knows of a reasonable degree of controversy surrounding the academic establishment that houses it. What shape or form the controversy takes largely depends on who is soapboxing, but b-schools and those that both attend and work at them need not look far to hear something from somebody.
Of course, the credibility of the naysayers is always in question, and rightly so. But when business school professors level criticism at themselves and the institutions writing their checks, all should at least listen to what they have to say. If you’ve not heard of Warren G. Bennis and James O’Toole, then it is time for you to read their 2005 article Have Business Schools Lost Their Way? After that, read Bennis’ 2012 follow-up Have Business Schools Found Their Way?
Now read Should the Gates Foundation Improve MBA Programs by Balancing Research and Reality? And if you want more of the run-up, read The Gates Effect.
In sum, there is a lot of money being thrown at higher education right now. The recipients of this money are those who are devising ways to change it, sometimes drastically, and always with the primary goal of making academia produce better-equipped professionals, regardless of job or industry.
In the above-linked article that inquires as to whether The Gates Foundation has a role to play in advancing business education, author Dileep Rao touches on several facets of modern management training. The overriding issue covered in the editorial piece, however, is that b-schools are often attacked for not producing real-world management-ready professionals. This is where you come in.
All graduate business programs will force a core curriculum on their students. Both during and after this MBA educational foundation, students then move on to focus in areas of interest to them. If, from the very start, an MBA student was provided the whole picture, including future employer pushbacks, then that student could affix an appropriate lens through which to view the experience of graduate business school and then be sure to design an experience that would exploit the degree to the utmost. Moreover, that student would be equipped to develop a narrative that highlights the practicality and value of the degree that they earned, not the one that everyone else earns.
A b-school professor of mine often said that the seven most important words in business are “Now that you put it that way…” The idea, basically, is that anyone can get a ‘yes’ from anyone as long as the pitch is framed in the right way. Whether you are selling a product or yourself, the narrative must resonate. If employers have a diminished view of newly minted MBAs, then those MBAs have the opportunity to legitimately differentiate themselves. Help distill that differentiation right now.
