MBA in time of cholera
Posted on April 10, 2009
Filed Under Education, Trends |
Studying an MBA is, again, becoming a trend. It doesn’t seem to matter what is the cost involved in such a course -typically between €40.000 and €60.000 a year-, the preparation candidates need or the forecast of a year -or two- going back to those times surrounded by exams-caused stress, lots of caffeine and some more lots of parties and few hours of sleep. And, well, we are not eighteen anymore. Thus, with this panorama in front of a potential MBA candidate, one could probably think something like:
Back to school? Nah… been there, done that.
In addition, business schools have it more and more difficult in order to provide their students with a suitable employment, due to the shrinking job market. As of today, no MBA school has been left untouched by the fact that companies are not hiring. The bad news came too late and even Top tier business schools are seeing a longer recruitment period, low average salaries (forget about those millionaire promises they used to promote a couple of years ago) and a new set of recruiters who would possibly have never been so sought-after in the past. This may lead one to think, why would someone do an MBA today?
Surprisingly, this is not the situation at all. The common idea behind it is, basically, “that while the economy has been slowing over the past two years, the current global financial situation indicates that it may be the ideal time for business executives to invest in their careers and strengthen their professional profile”. That is, in other words, “the equivalent of the get out of jail free card in Monopoly – a way of ducking out of the recession at its peak and, hopefully, coming back refreshed, reskilled and even more employable just as things start to pick up”, as Nic Paton describes it.
As Michael Prest, from The Independent, writes, “Schools are also encouraged by the number of applications from overseas. Portsmouth Business School says applications for its international MBA are three times higher than a year ago, with applicants from Saudi Arabia and India among the fastest growing groups” or, as mentioned in Management-Issues online magazine, “in a recent survey of more than 500 MBA programmes by the Graduate Management Admission Council, for example, more than three quarters said they were seeing a rise in applications from potential students, compared with fewer than two thirds in a similar survey last year”. Despite of this, it is still complex to make conclusions based on the number of candidates applying just after the worldwide plummeting of all countries’ economies, as it usually takes about two years from deciding to do an MBA to arriving on the campus. Students starting their degrees this year probably made up their minds before the economic collapse clouded job prospects.
There is a second idea behind this increase in the number of applications that makes even more sense. BusinesWeek published few days ago an extense anaylisis of this phenomena in the article In an Anemic MBA Job Market, Who You Know Really Matters. There, the magazine has complied a portrait of the size and strength of the alumni base in the top 45 business schools. Although not directly mentioned, it can be easily inferred that, the stronger the alumni community, the biggest the chances to succeed after an MBA. As many recruiters point out, it is not just what you learn, but more who you meet. In this sense, this type of studies are 50% education and 50% social. As Mark Twain put it,
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Taking a different approach -not that of the candidates but that of the affected economies-, many studies are suggesting that, in fact, business schools may be guilty for the current economic crisis. At the end, most top executives in affected companies hold an MBA. The New York Times, among others, makes echo of this idea in a very clear way.
“It is so obvious that something big has failed,” Ángel Cabrera, dean of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz., told The Times. “We can look the other way, but come on. The C.E.O.’s of those companies, those are people we used to brag about. We cannot say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our fault’ when there is such a systemic, widespread failure of leadership.”. Would be better to approach an MBA in the way Seth Godin does it with his Alternative MBA idea?
What would lead to the rethoric question: is it good for the world an increase in the number of MBA graduates taking into account the existing teaching methods and their consequences?
Regardless of the answer to that question, what is true is that MBAs are helping to create employment - top European schools, like London Business School an INSEAD have seen a radical increase in the number of entrepreneurs among their latest graduates- and pushing managers to increase their knowledge of macro- and microeconomics (a different subject would be if that model of education should be changed), offering also an updated view of economies we are not always aware of.
In conclusion, as Anatole France once said,
An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know, it’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.
I would rather finish it with “it’s being able to differentiate between who you do know and who you don’t”.
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