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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, we have arrived at the point where you cannot recover the cost for a degree a while ago, where it's actually going to net you more money in the end when you learn a trade and starting to work basically when you get out of school rather than continuing to a university and start at 25-28 with a mountain of debt on your back.
Eventually people will most likely say "fuck that" and turn their back to universities, realizing that they're better off in the end starting at a lower level entry position. In the end, your degree doesn't really mean much, you don't start as high as someone with one but where you end up, and at what age, depends more on how good you really are.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Don't assume 18 year olds make rational decisions.
There are many popular degrees that have never had a positive ROI.
Many kids aren't planning at all, they are just there for the party.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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 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.
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.
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...
I know MBAs are a favorite punching bag on Slashdot, but my experience in getting one was very positive.
*However*, it's not something that is going to directly result in a pay raise or a new job opportunity, like a bachelor's degree might. Most people don't see the value in an MBA because you can't immediately and directly monetize it, but that doesn't mean it has no value.
I feel like I learned more about business during my MBA than I did in all my undergraduate years, and I use more of that knowledge every day than anything I learned by studying irrelevant classes the university foisted on my 19 year old brain, which has since forgotten them.
Like I said, I know /. hates MBAs, but not everything valuable can be easily and immediately quantified.
Also never underestimate parents pushing their kids to get a degree. A majority of families consider it a failing that their kid doesn't go to college and get a degree.
MBAs aren't universally air thieves. Of the fifty or so I've worked with, one wasn't an idiot.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I agree with you, actually.
However, I believe it does depend on *why* you get the MBA.
If, for instance, you get an MBA to boost an already progressing career, wherein you're moving from the masses to management, then it makes perfect sense to get one - doubly so if, say, you just became a junior manager and you want to push your career as far as you can take it. It actually helps you navigate the corporate world fairly well (as long as you have a solid intellect and a good eye on culture.)
On the other hand, if you're getting one just because your brain translates it to "$$$$$!!!!!!!one!!", then you'll get approximately nowhere with it - at least not without a lot of hard knocks at first.
All that said, I once worked under someone in a highly technical position (and in a very tech-intensive department), but her only claim to any sort of professional competence was her MBA... and nothing else. She was a nice enough person, but have you ever had to explain/justify any technical decisions to someone like that? It's a royal pain in the ass. Her lack of knowledge, experience, or even competency in the field(s) of the employees she oversaw also made for one very weird culture and work environment... somewhat dysfunctional in quite a few aspects. Little wonder that a once-tight team had pretty much disintegrated within the space of 18 months (I believe I was the last to leave), and that the replacements were not quite up to the tasks before them.
Long story short, because of this, I've come to the conclusion that an MBA is a great addition, but it makes for a really lousy foundation.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?