Reply to 2022-2023 MBA Program Rankings

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[quote=Anonymous]Business professor here.

Around 100 years ago, some enterprising dean started Wharton.  It is not a bad idea to throw in little math/statistics, economics, accounting/bookkeeping, business law.  Most undergrads know nothing about business.  They don't know about antitrust law, the difference between a stock and a bond, corporate governance (board of directors, fiduciary responsibility, proxy votes).  Many liberal undergrads don't even appreciate that businesses need to make money, and this happens when revenues exceed costs, including cost of capital.  The classes in finance, marketing, organizational behavior, and manufacturing/supply chain help define the vocabulary and problems.  This teaches students what business managers do.

In the 1970's and early 1980's, business schools were ranked by the Gourman report, according to academic standards.  Then Businessweek started publishing an abominable list in the mid-1980's.   It was just a hodgepodge of criteria.  It was so erratic that Businessweek smoothed the calculations over multiple years to avoid ridiculous jumps in rank.  The worst part is that the ranking was based on student reports, basically student happiness.  Deans rushed to make students "happy".  Chicago literally brought in the Second City Comedy Troupe to run orientation.  Also, students rated their schools by area.  But those students never attended other schools, so how would they know?  I laughted when Yale was Top 5 in "Quantitative", because some Yale students struggled with high school algebra.  By contrast, competing programs at Stanford, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon required calculus for admission.  Businessweek unleashed a race to the bottom to dilute standards and improve short-run student happiness.

In 1985, the two-year M.B.A. was the only way to learn finance and other business applications.  Microcomputers and software were new:  spreadsheets, statistical packages, optimization.  Now there are shorter, cheaper specialty masters in business.  Many of the students are international (Chinese), with limited work experience.  Decades ago, top M.B.A. programs had good students with 2-6 years of work experience.  Obviously those students got better jobs than somebody fresh from undergrad.  But if you know what you want, then you could enter a 1-year specialty masters program soon after undergrad, and take more courses in your specialty.  While you might not get the same job as a 2-year M.B.A. who has 4 years of experience, you might surpass that career after 5 years.[/quote]

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