| Tuesday, March 22, 2011 |
| Is an MBA Program a wise business decision? |
MBA: Master the Art of Business Program
Is an MBA getting a wise business decision No disrespect intended to any person or institution, but is an MBA necessary? Bill Gates, Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniak seldom got theirs & lots of, lots of other successful business people (& book reviewers) lack that degree & appear none the more serious for it.
In his new book, author & consultant not only explains the reasons they selected not to pursue his MBA, but does a masterful job of eviscerating the program in general &, more specifically, the reasons people seek it & why they needn't & shouldn't; in his not-so-humble opinion: Money.
Young Kaufman had an undergrad degree & a great job at Procter & Bet when they was urged to continue his schooling, which meant going after the inevitable MBA. In lieu, they did a quick cost-benefit analysis & decided to read & study on his own. They blogged about his decision & posted a preliminary reading list, which was subsequently picked up by inveterate anti-MBA advocate
Spending around $250,000 or more, to get an MBA from a top business school is a lousy investment & unnecessary. In fact, the whole biz school deal is fundamentally a money-making enterprise for educational institutions who profit mightily from teaching mostly ancient, arcane, academic approaches to business that track very tiny with the actual world & the ways it operates. Further, says Kaufman, there is no assurance that the instructors are qualified beyond possessing the skills necessary to teach (if that) & are usually bereft of the experience & achievements that would confirm the efficacy of their instruction.
He is canny to know that reading this book in a linear fashion - one chapter after another - is not necessarily the best way to go, so they encourages browsing, skimming & skipping around. I'd add, in fact, that reading it sequentially is downright uninteresting, so after about 125 pages, I abandoned the hard work & skipped around, as suggested. Kaufman is not a nasty writer, so that wasn't the issue. I'd decided that the abrupt shift after a couple of pages on each subject might have been intended to accommodate our increasingly short attention spans, but it wasn't working for me. True, each tiny chapter had an online part, but when I am reading a book I don't necessarily require to bounce on & off the Net to enlarge the experience or regardless of the intended effect was supposed to be. Sometimes, a tiny concentrated depth is where it is at.
Still, I think Kaufman is a very smart man & possibly his collective nuggets would resonate more with other audiences though it didn't make it with me. A few years back, I read & reviewed a thick tome called MBA In A Box & liked that a bit. Its more expansive approach worked for me. Still, in all fairness, I think I'll hold onto & keep it handy as a reference, since it covers every aspect of business in an smart way. |
posted by chalsie @ 10:37 PM  |
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