sigh

I just got home from my evening MBA class after a full day of work. I'm the Director of IT at a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Florida and graduated with 4.0 in CS and Econ with Math minor as my undergrad. After my MBA, I'm hoping to pursue a CS/Math PhD degree and I consider myself a lifelong student with no desire to make millions. I mentioned all of this because I want to make it clear that my reasons to defend the pursuit of an MBA program is solely academic in nature and not based on the potential earnings or promotions. I could make a lot more by switching companies, networking, or working overtime. I don't have to get an MBA just to make more money.

An MBA from a good university is HARD and enlightening work. Yes, the barrier to entry is pretty low and I've had the mis-experience of being in groups where 35 year old finance majors with 8 years of field experience didn't know how to use the Excel SUM() function. Nevertheless, the professors are extremely experienced, industry stalwarts from all sorts of background. Tonight an ex-IBM'er with 20+ years of Sales & Marketing experience across various IT sectors taught me about building customer value.

Here on HN we see blog posts by know-it-all nobodies dispense wisdom on "10 ways to blah blah" and all of us discuss the merits and demerits of the post for hours and days. An MBA is a superset of that, formalized and organized. Yes, you can learn business skills anywhere, especially by running your own company. However, that does not mean you cannot benefit from decades of knowledge, wisdom, and research in every field from finance to management to marketing. The goal of a well-designed MBA program is to equip you with the knowledge and skill to make better decisions in addition to letting you employ your gut instincts and intelligence in your ventures.

The problem with MBA programs is that too many people treat them as "bigger paycheck" tickets and smaller universities lower their standards to welcome anyone who can pay them $20K/year. This has the negative side-effect of making even the hard-working MBA graduates appear to be useless greedy monsters like this article portrays.

> The reality is that business school is now chiefly a community of intention. It brings together people who share certain career aspirations—for the most part, to make big bucks—and occupies their time teaching them a few technical things that they don't need to know, along with a code of conduct that says, in essence, whatever is legal is ethical; and if it makes money, it's a positive duty. It's now clear that we would have all been much better off if, instead of cloistering these people on fancy campuses with world-class golf courses, we'd have sent them off to do two years of national service.

This entire paragraph is a complete load of crap. Over and over our professors, books, seminars, and presentations mention that doing the right, socially-beneficial thing is the only way to go. We read cases about bad businesses, identify the good ones, and isolate the bad ones pretending to be good. Not once has any of my professors even so much as sugar-coated what Enron, Worldcom, Lehman, AIG, or any of the tons of other companies have done as being acceptable. Yes, profit and shareholder value maximization is the legal requirement for any public corporation but not at the cost of long-term corporate and social goals.

Sorry about the rant but I'm pretty sick of the dumb-greedy-MBA stereotype. Everything I learn in school at night, I get to immediately apply it at my job the next morning. My advice to anyone reading this is if you have a technical background and have often lacked in management and leadership skills, an MBA from a good university will genuinely help you be a well-rounded entrepreneur. Don't have unrealistic expectations about suddenly being transformed into Steve Jobs but do realize that leadership skills can be learned and 360-degree knowledge of business operations (from tech to finance to sales) will make you a very valuable asset to any organization, including the one that you start.