Is it time to revisit the traditional MBA?

A two-year full-time MBA degree is at the crossroads. If changes are not made in quick succession, doomsday will not be far ahead.

That’s the message emanating from Srikant M Datar, David A Garvin and Patrick G Cullen’s Rethinking the MBA — Business Education at a Crossroads.

This hard-hitting book, brimming with statistics, explains in great depth why MBA education needs to re-orient and alter itself to retain its credibility and reliability.

The book captures, in detail, the words of the French poet Paul Valery, “The trouble with our times is that the future is not what it used to be.”

If you think completing an MBA would throw open doors to a secure future, filled with money, power, and position, you might be asking for too much. Because the traditional two-year MBA that attracted millions of prospective students and employers, may have been a golden passport to a high-flying career with MNCs then, but today, unless drastic changes are incorporated in the curriculum, pedagogy, moulding students’ leadership, and managerial skills, attitudes, abilities to manage and take risks, and so on, opportunities would be strictly limited.

The book stresses that threats to the two-year full-time MBA are too many to ignore and recommends a few perceivable solutions.
Twenty years ago, if one spoke of ‘graduate training business’, one was speaking almost by definition of the two-year MBA degree. Yet today, substitutes abound. These programmes include the 12-month MBA, part-time MBA, executive MBA, online MBA, corporate training and development, say the authors, who are part of the faculty at the Harvard Business School.

In Europe itself, over 22 schools ranked amongst the top 100 globally, offer 10-15 months management programmes. And because many such short-term programmes admit students with more extensive business backgrounds and work experiences, employers perceive these programmes on par with the two-year full-time programme, explain the authors.

Moreover, the authors discovered that several students in the US are opting for the part-time and executive MBAs, as these courses offer the freedom to continue working.

If this was not enough, say the authors, several financial services and consulting firms are increasingly substituting non-MBAs for MBAs.

The authors give the example of a director of a leading consulting firm whose hiring mix constitutes about 50% non MBAs—people with expertise in medicine, law, as well as PhDs in economics, applied math, physics, life sciences, and computer science. The reason being, fields such as consulting, finance, and strategy that once barged into business school campuses to scoop out the best brains, are now increasingly looking for people with a high analytical bent.

The book quotes two executives as saying that “MBAs do not have a good sense of how business works. How a decision is made. More should be done to help students understand that the right answer on paper is not necessarily the right answer in practice. There should be more focus on organisational realities.”

It then goes on waxing eloquence on how full time two-year MBA products could be again re-shaped into forces to reckon with.
Schools should drain into students a high level of emotional expertise that will help towards self reflection and self examination.

Another very important concept is the value of ethics, especially in the wake of the financial turmoil. Executives whom the authors spoke to advised schools to train students to prepare for and to think through ethical dilemmas that they might face in their careers, ranging from bribery, to side payments, etc and most importantly, corporate governance.

Furthermore, the authors emphasise that B school education must focus on domain expertise; execution and implementation of projects and policies; and thirdly, on values, attitudes, and beliefs.

Also, fashioning out the curriculum in congruence with global MBA programmes, through exchange programmes, global field studies, global research centres, can also add tremendous value to the students.

MBA programmes should devote more attention towards teaching thinking and reasoning skills which would help in decision making and judgments.

The book also elaborates on how various institutes such as University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Harvard, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Yale School of Management, incorporated various methodologies and techniques to aid in producing the finest talents.

Business schools have outlasted many crises, including theGreat Depression, and have shown themselves to be extraordinarily flexible, say the authors. “The leading edge of change is already visible and under way. We are hopeful about the future of the MBA and believe it will continue to be a degree in transition,” conclude the authors.