You mean, besides the School of Hard Knocks? No. At least for the most common knowledge about business, you can learn what you need to know whether you get a

You mean, besides the School of Hard Knocks? No. At least for the most common knowledge about business, you can learn what you need to know whether you get a BA or MBA in business or neither of these two. My opinion is that there are two kinds of knowledge that can hurt you, (1) good knowledge you don't yet know but need and (2) bad knowledge you know, believe, and act on. By far the most dangerous is (2). Thus one of the best parts of education is to learn what high quality knowledge is, looks like, walks like, talks like, etc. so that you can become a critical consumer of knowledge. For this a good undergraduate degree is usually important. The most solid knowledge going is math; it is also very widely applicable although good, new applications are not easy to find. A close second and closer to reality are the physical sciences. Engineering is also quite solid. Actually, one really good application of math in business can give your career one heck of a boost into orbit. That is, you don't have to look for a good application each day or in each spreadsheet. Generally the bottleneck of people in physical science, engineering, computing, or business who want to do things that are quantitative (or want to do academic research) is how much math they know. So, don't expect the best education to be just vocational training you can apply on a job tomorrow. My opinion is that the most important knowledge to get, both in life and for business, is about people. The materials available, say, from the social sciences, are not solid at all, but the subject is so important that you have to make do anyway. There it is especially important to look for high quality sources. Fictional literature and movies commonly do illustrate some important correct points about people; sadly about as often they pass out confusing nonsense about people! So, can take such fiction as conjectures to be considered. If you actually carefully evaluate a lot from movies, then you will learn a lot about people. Still many important lessons about people are not in the movies; some of the lessons are in books and elsewhere, and some of them you have to get from your own observations. For the rest about business, you can get some of it in school and the rest out of school or just get all of it out of school. Again the B-schools don't really have the more difficult knowledge about business it would be good for you to know assembled, confirmed, formulated, organized, etc.; it would be good if they did; but you can, as people have done in various fields for centuries and still do, dig out much of it out of school. For business, read the blogs of venture partners Fred Wilson, Ben Horowitz, and Mark Suster. Realize that heavily they are looking for publicity for themselves, etc., at least for more 'deal flow'. They may also be trying to do something like "win you with honest trifles in order to deceive you in deepest consequence": Of course, this is a slightly modified quote from Shakespeare who didn't provide any evidence that people actually do this, but you can observe on your own that sometimes they do. So, take such blogs with many "grains of salt". Still, can learn some things there, about business and, indirectly, about people. Also read the blog by Steve Blank. Sure, also read Paul Graham! These blogs have some advantages for people on Hacker News who are interested in business -- the blogs are up to date and focused on starting businesses in the hottest part of computing. There is likely much more and much better on the Internet. Finding it is a challenge. Likely a little more solid would be Jim Collins, Good to Great, ISBN 0-06-662099-6. and his other books. Generally his work is not considered solid enough to be academic research, but it's better than nothing. I would suggest that generally take anything from the old news media as valuable only indirectly; e.g., it says something about people that they will pay attention to that stuff! So, you need to understand what the newsies are doing: Largely it is deceptive manipulation. They distort in various ways, some with long traditions, often close to formula fiction entertainment, to get eyeballs for ad revenue. Generally books written by people successful in business, e.g., Andy Grove at Intel, should have some value and not be just efforts at polishing their public images. For people, the best single book I found was E. Fromm, The Art of Loving. So, he explains a lot about what motivates people. E.g., he has (rough quote from memory): "The fundamental problem in life is getting security in the face of the anxiety from our realization that we are vulnerable to the hostile forces of nature and society. Only four ways have been found to get this security ...." I'll let you get the book to find his four ways! Then, when you find someone doing something and you don't see just why, see if one of those four ways gives an explanation! Of course, Fromm was a Freud student; anyone who could make sense out of Freud has to be bright! Since Fromm was an early clinical psychologist, he had the advantage of listening to a lot of people explain their problems. Then, apparently, being a bright guy eventually he got some understanding of people. Solid knowledge? HECK no. Still it's likely important. Not everything in B-school research is worthless! There is at least one guy at Harvard's B-school who writes on negotiating and likely does have some good, useful, practical, and non-obvious things to say! And there are no doubt other examples from B-school profs. Also remember, that often in business you are trying to innovate, that is, do something new, so that there can't really be a vocational training course that just passes out innovative ideas ready for a Series A. Parts of education can help (and parts can hurt) your ability to innovate. Mostly, then, the challenge of innovation is yours. Finally, there is an attitude: If you have made enough progress in business to need some good knowledge of accounting (or other specialized topic), then hire an accountant! The hard part is doing well enough to need an accountant. Hiring and working with a good accountant is much easier!