Slashdot Mirror
'The Death of the MBA' (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: U.S. graduate business schools -- once magnets for American and international students seeking a certain route to a high income -- are in an existential crisis. They are losing droves of students who are balking at sky-high tuition and, in the case of international applicants, turned off by President Trump's politics. The once-venerated MBA is going the way of the diminished law degree, pushed aside by tech education. Graduates of the top 25 or so MBA schools still command the elite Wall Street and corporate jobs they always did, but the hundreds of others are scrambling, and some schools are shutting down their programs. Survivors are often offering new touchy-feely degrees like "master of social innovation." [...] In the more than 350 programs that didn't make the top ranks, rising tuition costs and smaller returns in the form of employment and income have forced a rethink of the traditional MBA degree.
They are money-hungry businesses first and foremost. They operate like cults.
I hope universities are the next to go!
Keep your comfort.
I think that part of the problem with the MBA is that for a while it seemed like everybody was fucking getting one. Laws of supply and demand suggest that would cause the value to diminish unless the demand was increasing similarly. I think the market is just coming around to this realization and reacting in accordance to establish a new equilibrium around what everyone believes is closer to the real value of an MBA.
Apologies, English isn't my first language, does that mean we get to shoot MBAs now or do we still have to wait for them to die naturally?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm 28 and I am graduating from college soon with a combination degree in Chinese and Chinese Business, and I am considering an MBA.
Before college I owned a Chinese home remodel business for three years, and I have experience as a supervisor on construction sites. Generally with small crews (normally 1 to 3 chinese). As well as other experience as a laborer on construction sites. I also had a marketing internship while in school for two years at the modern languages department of my college (social media, writing press releases, event promotion, ect). Nothing too impressive, but I do have some leadership experience and experience at full time jobs.
Academically I'm in my senior year of college, graduating on time, I have a 4.0, and test-certified business level Chinese. I've already studied abroad in China once and I am going back in the fall.
I live in the North West and I am considering applying at UW's Foster school of business (among others). They seem to have a good ROI, encourage undergrads with only "leadership experience" to apply, and their after graduation salaries seem somewhat competitive with M7 schools (not sure if this is the case for those without post graduate work experience).
I really want to go get an MBA right out of school, but I have concerns that without post graduate work experience that it might be problematic.
I'm also considering moving to China for a year after graduation to work for the Chinese government as an English teacher, learn Chinese, and take some time to study for the GMAT and apply to business school. Hour requirements are low for those who want to do this, so I think it'd be a good time for me to really boost my Chinese to business level (had it in highschool, and spent a year working as a bartender and traveling in China when I was 21), intensively study for the GMAT, and apply to business school.
The MBA schools promoted the ideology of Winner Takes Everything, Cut All Corners, Cook All Books, Outsource the Universe, Price Over Value, Chare the Taxpayer, and Magic Algorithms will Solve Everything.
May they roast slowly in the hell to which they have reduced our inheritance.
Let's not talk about earning potential, that is the yoke of the capitalist. Instead, let's talk about the true value of education, the power of what you learn.
What exactly could you expect to learn from a "master of social engineering?" Forsooth, you'd be better off in a class of Calligraphy, or locking yourself in a room for a year with The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So if Trump is responsible for fewer MBAs, he was worth voting for.
Graduates of the top 25 or so MBA schools still command the elite Wall Street and corporate jobs they always did, but the hundreds of others are scrambling, and some schools are shutting down their programs.
Come on. It is not dead till all the business schools go out of business.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Not surprised. MBA programs, like Law programs, were setup left and right by universities as cheap ways to raise funds: they command high tuition while requiring minimal in terms of capital expenditures (compared to say, an engineering program that requires substantial capital for labs and whatnot). Now that the market has become saturated with lawyers and MBA's, people are getting more selective, and the programs without strong reputations will wither away. Add on top of that fewer companies are paying to send their talented employees to get MBA's and the general weakening of the i-banking field, and we just simply don't need as many as we used to have.
I was expecting something a little more dramatic. Maybe an MBA who sold off all his earthly belongings in order to build a Bitcoin mining rig only to be cooked to death, surrounded by overheated GPUs.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And they made a minor update to it in June 2017, too. Sure, going from 1.6GHz to 1.8GHz was not much of an update, but still.
#DeleteFacebook
MBAs who are ignorant of what customers need and want generate short term profits at the expense of long term success. They don't know how to measure or put a price on customer happiness, and often trade customer happiness for some increase in profit. They aren't aware that what customers are really buying is happiness.
student loans are going to pop with lots' of hopeless deadbeats.
We have to charge an arm a leg and a testicle for a degree!
Why?
Because the market will bear it!
The market's not bearing it. Revenues are falling off!
Okay, scrap the degree program and come up with easier degrees.
But those degrees don't actually deliver any value.
Shut up! GIMME TOUCHY-FEELY!
People are pissed.
Why?
The touchy-feely degrees aren't in demand because they have no actual utility in the real world.
Tough shit! We got our money!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
"I wouldn't recommend an MBA. I'd say no MBA needed. An MBA is a bad idea. [...] It teaches people all sorts of wrong things. [...] They don't teach people to think in MBA schools. And the top MBA schools are the worst. Because they actually teach people that you must be special, and it causes people to close down their feedback loop and not rigorously examine when they are wrong. [...] I hire people in spite of an MBA, not because of one. If you look at the senior managers of my companies, you'll see very few MBAs there."
Unless you're an Engineer or a Doctor that needs a "reliable" source, you don't need to pay hundreds of thousands in fees to learn anymore. Your MBA is just another burger flipper now, and that it is being automated too.
C: So you want an MBA?
S: Yeah
C: Ok that will be $90,000 and 3 years of your life
S: Fuck that, I'll learn on the job
C: Well done, you've just graduated.
I got my MBA a few years ago from the local Really Expensive Private University, when 40 was just around the corner and I wanted to add another leg to my stool before I became "old" by tech-world standards. I very much value the body of knowledge that I learned, but there are several serious problems with the people chasing and offering it today.
A MBA is like a can of car wax. If you put it on a Corvette, you'll make something great. If you put it on a turd, all you'll have is a shiny turd. I have a STEM degree + 15 years in HPC, and I think the MBA definitely helped me make better, wiser decisions.
By contrast, there were several "MBA's" (in the Dilbertesque sense) in the MBA program right out of central casting. They couldn't write a line of code, couldn't turn a wrench, couldn't do anything useful, but they had executive hair, wore fancy suits, and constantly "networked" and looked for "synergy". They wanted a MBA strictly as a gateway to wealth and power.
They're aided and abetted by universities who are fighting to break into the game. Why shouldn't they? It's relatively low cost (doesn't require expensive labs or facilities like STEM does), people will throw mortgage-size checks at you for the privilege of attending, and you might luck up and get a rich alumni who donates back someday. And they kept raising tuition every year, faster than inflation, faster than salaries grew.
My cousin graduated with a law degree right when the law market crashed, and I recognized similar signs of doom creeping into the MBA field. Just like the bloom in law schools, there was a bloom in MBA schools, from tiny never-heard-of-them-before private universities and on-line schools, taking cash from every marginal MBA student-wanna-be out there.
I don't regret getting my MBA, even though I haven't seen much more than cost-of-living increases since graduation. I learned a tremendous amount and enjoyed it a lot (there can be economic geeks just as much as science geeks or IT geeks). And I made a substantial chunk of change on the stock market using what I knew. But with a MBA from a good school costing $100k nowadays, you're much better off just taking $300 to the local used book store and reading them.
The MBA wasn't a "gateway to wealth" because of the degree itself, but because of the caliber of student trying to attain it. I'm sure the same type of people who chase an IT degree for wealth in the 90's and chased a JD/MBA for wealth in the 00's will find another degree to chase and run into the ground soon enough. My bet is on "data science". I already see a few junior varsity universities in our area offering a degree to any comer who can code in BASIC, and I'm sure DeVry's and University of Phoenix will be offering a degree soon enough.
What does "President Trump's politics" have to do with choosing to get an MBA? Nothing! Fake news!
Couldn't have happened to a nicer degree.
Check your premises.
We've been having a very similar situation here in Germany for quite some time with the fields of business administration - where a higher education is basically free (the tuitions people have to pay are usually negligible like
It's been the go-to for school graduates who didn't know what to do with their lives but wanted to have a higher degree in something that can possibly make a lot of money. However Universities adapted for the influx not by implementing failure rates that force 70% of the students out of class, so that only the best remain, but by increasing the number of possible seats. Which resulted in thousands of BA bachelor degrees and masters (to some extend). All that in an economy that cries for qualified (blue collar) workers and engineers and already had plenty of managers. Well wasted tax money if you ask me, which makes me think that subsidizing all education is not a good idea in the end.
I don't trump has much to do with the failure of the MBA program. But typical of MBA types, they can't take responsibility for their failures.
Seriously, most businesses don't need to be "administered". Administrating is for the conglomerates, and although I'm sure conglomerates need new canon fodder to back-fill their management ranks, it certainly doesn't have the number of chairs to support the multitude of MBA conferring organizations that are out there today. Even among huge conglomerates long McDonalds and Costco, they often draw their executives from line workers not freshly minted MBAs...
For the non-conglomerate business, the reason they often fail is for lack of vision, not lack of administration...
As for the "accounting" MBAs, well, do we need to engineer more Joint Energy Development Investment Limited Partnerships, or ChewCos?
As for the "finance" MBAs, well, do conglomerates need more leveraged buyouts, or engineer more Credit Default Swaps?
As for these second tier MBA schools that can't attract students? Nothing of value was lost...
This is about the best news I could read all day long. MBAs contribute nothing to the economy other than maximizing profits at the expense of humanity. May the MBA die an ignoble death!
Seriously, these ppl are being taught to take short routes as opposed to how to grow companies. As such, we end up with junk like GE, HP, IBM, Google, etc. These companies are dying and it is due to hiring of horribly trained MBAs that only look at how THEY can get big bonuses, and then leave the company.
This is why Musk has less than 12 total in all of his companies.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Slashdot needs to go back to editing submissions into proper shape. The unnecessary snark and pointless dismissive aggression are such wastes of time that the entries themselves aren't worth reading. Maybe the headline story links are best, that way none of the submission is ever read.
The story copy sounds like a shallow desperate tech industry puff piece. "Go to school for tech! If you go for anything, everything but tech is a waste of time and money!"
The best advice I've ever heard is to trust your local want ads the most.
And for many many years now, most of the ads have been for MBAs and nursing positions.
Some places do have a big tech industry, but most don't, and offshoring hasn't helped.
I find my MBA to be a tremendous value, as a supplement to my tech career. If it is all you have, typically not worth much.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Well now... ...And aside from his current round of personnel management woes, there are some far-off fundamental problems with producing HUGE numbers of electric cars/batteries that nobody on this planet can wave a magic wand and fix....
Musk has had a number of pretty big setbacks in his businesses, and he hasn't been doing it all that long. Mostly what he has done is attracted huge amounts of subsidies and investments. He is delivering something which is more than a lot of kickstarter bubbles do, but the most successful venture (the cars) is still a long way from profitability and fame doesn't keep the lights on.
It is very risky to have a (new) executive who wants to "throw all the old ways out the window".
You get people exactly like Trump, who decided to drain the swamp--only to arrive at the new job horribly unprepared, with an inner circle of helpers who themselves had no idea what they were doing. Advisors from the swamp would have been more critical--but overall, a lot more helpful.
"I wouldn't recommend an MBA. I'd say no MBA needed. An MBA is a bad idea. [...] It teaches people all sorts of wrong things. [...] They don't teach people to think in MBA schools. And the top MBA schools are the worst. Because they actually teach people that you must be special, and it causes people to close down their feedback loop and not rigorously examine when they are wrong. [...] I hire people in spite of an MBA, not because of one. If you look at the senior managers of my companies, you'll see very few MBAs there."
Seriously? Quoting Musk now?
I have an MBA. And I agree, it was a complete waste of time and money - I stupidly paid for it out of my own pocket. But I was taught education never goes to waste.
My concentration is in CIS and in Entrepreneurship.
I did learn some crazy ways to bootstrap a company from a serial entrepreneur that none of you heard of. I also learned how to read financial statements, economics, accounting, marketing and much more.
And I have learned more as an entrepreneur myself.
In that respect I agree with Elon. However, this worship of him is misplaced. It's a created of his PR people.
Musk and Tesla has become a religion. All facts are ignored or discounted based upon ignorance.
For example, when Tesla's cash burn is mentioned, someone always mentions that "it's because he's buying factories and building factories" or "he's building up".
Aside from the fact that it's been over 14 years, regardless of the reasons, a heavy cash burn leads to bankruptcy. And Tesla's cash burn isn't all investment: Tesla loses money on making and selling cars - period (Cite: 9/17 Cash Flow Statements - and every other since its founding - Cash Flow Statements as filed with the SEC).
Musk MUST get more money from investors to keep alive. Period.
Tesla is trading at ridiculous levels and it's obvious because his investors do not know how to read or understand financial statements.
tl:dr - Musk is now a religious figure.
P.S. I know, someone like Rei is going to argue with me by posting Cherry Picked numbers and cites of Fluff pieces.
A decline in hate filled foreign leftists attending US universities? Outstanding.
Dubya gave us the Financial crisis of 2007–2008. For those who forgot,
The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the global financial crisis and the 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists to have been the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s
So this over saturation they keep talking about? 8% of the population has a Master's degree. 25% of that is an MBA. I would not be too worried. The problem is that there are some MBA diploma mills out there, same with undergrad and those are skewing the percentages.
My God, the sooner the MBA disappears and all its holders die in fiery car crashes the better. I can't think of any degree program that's lead to --more useless waste, more needless suffering, and more Dunning-Kruger cases in positions of power than the MBA. It never should have been allowed as a standalone degree; at most it should be a double-major or a minor option.
To the O.P.
Yes, lots of people are turned off by the high education costs, but it arrogant presumption to assume those same people are unhappy with Trump in any way. After all, the high education costs have been around a long time before president Trump was.
See subject: It was my education in dual degrees & a career in MIS coding that worked in combination like bread & butter (it was my bread & butter to use that phrase) to not only earn a living but to excel enough for my "threshold of acceptance" of how I wished to live. It only makes sense - interdisciplinary combination that allowed me to be able to function w/ dept. heads & personnel ranging from accounting & finance to sales/marketing + logistics! After all, IF you've been there (I take you @ your word), a business degree is really a 'smattering' of MANY other areas in business/math/CS (just not as deep or focused).
Worked for me - All since I knew MOST of the algorithms they employed from the business degree side (for example logistics & routing via shortest path/shortest route (modified but pretty same) which you learn in BOTH disciplines in my subject line above).
* Long ago retired from FULL time coding professionally though @ age 44++ if that tells you anything as to how well it went - into other things now that keep my machine of my life going w/ considerably more free time, finally!
APK
P.S.=> After all, that IS the idea, right? To retire, & to BREAK LOOSE/FREE of the system & become truly independent NOT dependent on paychecks in an unstable business environs of today... apk
The prospective foreign students I know (and I know quite a few) aren't coming to US because of the leftist antics at American universities. They come from countries where there have been communist civil wars and many have have family members murdered by the communists. Masked thugs in black running around streets and universities beating teachers and students they disagree with..........well, that's straight out of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Places crowded with MBA masters ate money-hungry psychopaths with no conscience?
You don't say!!
Until the trades fix the problems of being considered "highly skilled unskilled" as well as its unfriendliness towards latecomers, it's still going to be a non-starter for many.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
The craziness on campuses has been widely publicized. I would be turned off by that too.
* ANTIFA and SJW crazies
* Trigger warnings
* Classroom disruptions
* 53 gender pronouns and counting
* Crazy standards for what constitutes a sex crime
Better to go elsewhere where sanity might prevail
Too often, MBA means "Moron in Business Attire". Even in the instances where that isn't the case, the training to go for short term gains and ignore the long term health of the company should in the long term mean they are not wanted.
Samuel Clemens approves the satire above. Well done!
Trump hatred tries so hard. There is nothing that cannot be blamed on the man! Go and read the GMAC study. The more accurate headline for this could be: "Rising MBA Tuition Costs Trigger Decline in International MBA Student Applicants to the U.S., Trump policy not to blame."
The entire "Blame Trump" narrative is fabricated. Trump has nothing to do with the decline. Page 20 discusses that a single presidential politics question was added to the online mba.com survey in November 2016. The results of this survey question are NOT reflected in the actual data in the rest of the GMAC report. The question is an opinion question phrased like "how likely is the results of the 2016 US presidential election to influence your decision..." The 2 paragraph discussion on page 20 indicates that the question was added in November of 2016. The 8% decrease (43% to 35%) in U.S. positive responses to the one question reflects the 4 month period from the election to the inauguration ONLY. I am curious to see what that percentage is now with 9 months of additional data. Also, that is an irrelevant opinion question. It is equivalent to asking, "Are you upset Trump won the presidential election?" A better question would be, "If accepted to a U.S. MBA program, would you refuse to take it if Trump is President." The DATA in figure 11 is contrary to this opinion question response, and indicates that the US is still the first preference for the majority of international applicants when compared with 2009, with most regions increasing positive, and the only significant decreases in South and Southeast Asia (11%) and Western Europe (7%). Western Europe is the only region where the U.S. dropped to 2nd preference. As far as I know, Western Europe has no Visa restrictions due to the current Administration, and Trump has not attempted any immigration policy change to those countries.
Figure 13 shows us the REAL reason for the drop-off: Affordability of Education. The study's text even points this out:
"More than half (55%) of candidates
intending to study internationally worry that business
school will cost more money than they can afford—likely
a contributing factor to the United States losing its appeal
as a study destination." (p.23)
If ease of obtaining visas were really a factor in US international MBA applicants, then Western Europe is as bad or worse than the US. Figure 13 of the study shows the US ahead of western Europe in "ease of obtaining work permits". Western Europe and the US are virtually tied in perception of candidates seeking international study opportunities in the categories of "Ease of obtaining work permits" (19% US vs 17% WEU) and "Ease of obtaining student visas" (13% US vs 15% WEU). So the other alternative headline should be: "Western European Immigration policies deterring MBA students from applying to Western European programs." Canada is the clear winner in these categories by a HUGE margin.
So, I started out my career with software. I've been getting paid to build things out of bricks made of C++, Erlang, Ruby, PHP and a few other languages since about 2003. Over the years, I've risen to a level where my day is spent managing people and direction for a large enterprise. I recently enrolled in an MBA program. What I've learned so far has been immediately, and immensely valuable.
If you've ever seen two people arguing about the same thing, because they both used words that meant something diffferent to each of them, that has been me increasingly less. Being able to speak the language of business, and more importantly understand said language and be able to translate that to your engineering brethren is damn near priceless.
Further, I've seen several comments speaking to how MBA programs teach shortsightedness and a ruthless focus on bad business concepts like money over people, etc. I might just be in a "good" program, but it couldn't be further from the truth for me. We've interwoven very human topics like bias and ethics into every class I've had so far, even things like accounting.
From my perception, acquiring an MBA is probably better as a mid-career assist than a valuable base. It would be very hard to remember everything taught and apply it meaningfully years later, having the knowledge atrophy in an entry position where you could care less about the strategic direction of the business or the budgets.
My vote it pro-MBA, but you have to know what you'll get from it.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Not of a specific company's brand of course.. but the "MBA" brand. There's countless stories about clueless managers out there that picked up their "MBA" from a 3 month online course. Even if the fraction of such people is small, they're the ones that got reported on the most and now anyone who sees "MBA" automatically assumes "idiot who couldn't make it into a real business school" (even though the degree from real business schools is still MBA..)
Not sure what there is to be done about that. My first suggestion would be for "real" schools to try rebranding but that's not especially easy to do and there's nothing stopping the phonies from just doing the same thing again under the new label.
The only other option would be to try and remove those phony schools.. somehow (I'm not sure they're technically illegal which would mean getting rid of them would likely require new laws to be bough^Wwritten right off the top, and that's not cheap or fast.) And then they would have to play the brand management game after the crud is removed in order to try and get everyone to believe that MBA is a meaningful title once again.
Back when I first started at my (un-named) company.. they paid for tuition for advanced degrees (i.e. masters and above). I heard tales of hundreds of engineers using this funding vehicle to make the company pay for an MBA which at the time wasn't an issue. The issue came a few years later after those graduates started demanding that they should be elevated to "Management" because their newly pressed degree indicated they were ready. Some were.. as they were seasoned professionals with 10+ years of experience.. but most were not.. as they got their "degree" 2 years after their hire date.
Push come to shove... the company doesn't pay for any degree path that isn't focused on your current job description.. which to me makes sense but it broke the back of the curtain climbers and most of them left after they weren't automatically upgraded in pay and responsibilities as "managers"
MBA degree is no substitute for having a good business acumen or intelligence. Even within the âoegood IV leagueâ universities most MBA students are sub par when compared to other students of higher education such as Medical students. Most medical students can easily get into the âoebestâ MBA programs if they decided to waste their time and apply. But, the latter is not the case - most applicants to MBA programs will never have a chance to get into a decent MD program within the US.
... the last decades of "development" (decay?) in the US. I'm not really surprised. These days I wouldn't touch college with a ten-foot pole if I were living in the US. You're in debt for life, academic job chances and their stability are dwindling and as a heterosexual male you run the risk of being burned at the stake in an instant for being too interested in the ladies.
Here in Germany however it's an entirely different game.
I just enrolled in a BsC programm called Media CompSci. The university is free, the programm is awesome, the campus is exeptionally well put together (they just moved to a brand new campus), services are excellent and on top of that I actually get to *save* money, because semster fees get you a student ID / status that comes with many benefits, including free public transport throughout the state. On the plus side the ladies quota in the CompScis is up and since my faculty has "media" in it's name we can't complain anyway. I get to flirt with girls less than half my age - very nice :-). And if I want I can walk 50 meters to the other faculty buliding and start my own extra MBA programm at no extra cost. Or whatever else I'm interested in.
Bottom line: That young USias (especially males) are steering clear of universities is no big surprise to anyone observing what has been happening lately. I totally get it.
My 2 eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Who do you think works on Trumps golf courses and works in his hotels...
Along the same lines of your experience, I went to a full time, lower tier I MBA program coming in with an engineering undergraduate degree and 10 years of work history. Applying myself, I found the coursework to be a valuable introduction to fields such as finance and datamining. With this foundation, I was able through self study to become fairly proficient in econometric analysis and financial modeling. The MBA does not make one an expert in anything, but it does provide an overview of how firms and the economy work at a slightly academic level.
Many, however, use these programs as a personal brand builder without focusing on what is actually taught. For them, networking is the far greater asset offered by the better programs. Support for this can be found in that some top programs do not even report grades to recruiters. Apparently, the stress of learning material really puts a damper on network building. Unfortunately, many of these individuals will rise to the top of organizations and will make bad decisions. This coupled with the diploma mills that provide MBA's to the me too crowd give the MBA a reputation.
As in most things, the MBA is not as bad as some one would suggest, but it is not a magic bullet to wealth or understanding either.