> So why do they persist in promoting this education for management, which, according to mounting evidence, produces so much mismanagement? > The answer is unf

> So why do they persist in promoting this education for management, which, according to mounting evidence, produces so much mismanagement? > The answer is unfortunately obvious: with so many of their graduates getting to the “top”, why change? But there is another answer that is also becoming obvious: because at this top, too many of their graduates are corrupting the economy. The MBA is a graduate degree that is the highest compensated of the Masters degrees that you can get from business schools. Here's why I think that is: How do you put together economics, finance, accounting, organizational behavior, marketing, and operations, in a way that makes sense? A lot of people have trouble thinking of these things both holistically and distinctly. The MBA is both a high-level overview of these subjects, and a sustained study on putting them all together in an aligned way. The degree says the owner has studied that specific body of knowledge rigorously and at length. It does not mean the owner has studied each component as in-depth as someone with a degree in any of these individual subjects. I have a generalist MBA myself. But I supplemented my studies with a lot of time in the library studying books and journals on finance, statistics, computer science, and management. I tried to lock down my learning by logging each article and book, and I believe I had 400 items in my bibliographic database when I graduated - I understand the rest of my cohort used the bibliography tools built into Microsoft Word. I didn't get any networking value from the degree - I got it from a half-decent state school in Florida - most of my cohort was civil service, local accountants, and a couple of engineers and housewives. I used R for my statistics project. The rest of my cohort used Excel. For the capstone project, a business competition, I tracked my competition in spreadsheets for simple charting (every turn took about an hour of data input manually from pdf) - I don't believe the rest of my cohort did anything of the sort. I was able to do a lot more than my cohort with the same education as my cohort. The business school was accredited by the same standards body as Harvard. I don't know if I'm qualified to be a CEO yet. I like to say that I want to be qualified to run technology at a hedge fund. I'm continuing my education by signing up for the CFA, and I take my first test in December. Wish me luck. But to answer Mintzberg's question - why keep promoting this education for management, which, according to mounting evidence, produces so much mismanagement? - This is the wrong question. The course material is correct. The problem is selection bias. Those looking for the fastest route to career acceleration go for their MBAs - thus being, at least on paper, the best qualified to run firms. We need to get this education in the hands of the right people. We can also address the problem on the CEO side by better aligning their compensation to long-term performance instead of short-term performance measures. But shareholders are fairly impatient, and boards of directors seem to like the idea of juicing short-term performance.