Comments (5)

• Rubén Rivero

  "Whatever the intentions, government action shifted huge amounts of capital into Wall Street products. Today a large percentage of the boomer generation is desperate that the Dow Jones Industrial Averages, buoyed by stock purchases for their retirement accounts, maintain present levels and advance. One of the things that kept investment bank employees busy over the last 25 years was inventing new ways to absorb so much funding."

  This phrase is prophetic. It sounds like there is a lot of hope with the bailout and "cheap" sub-9000 point Dow prices, plus Warren Buffets urge to buy American equities, as a desperate effort to reverse this bear market. I do not see anywhere in print whatsoever any preparation, either philosophical, economical, or whatever, to reactions that will occur in the near future should the Dow continue breaking support into the mid-4-figures...

  On education, I completely agree with you. Even though I have a college degree (and fortunately I was able to choose many of my courses), the best readings I have done have come from libraries and downloads I have freely chosen over the internet. Somehow I have decided to educate myself on subjects relevant to my interests instead of syllabi determined by an academia somewhat removed from the business or real world.

  Published: October 21, 2008 9:31 AM

• fundamentalist

  Several years ago an MBA professor wrote a book about what is wrong with MBA degrees. At the heart of the problem is the fact that the functions that can be most easily studied are marketing and finance, so schools dedicate a lot of time to both. Then, when graduates get jobs in companies, they spend most of their time on those functions because that’s all they know. What they need to do is to learn the industry they work in from the ground up, but that takes years, too much time for most graduates. Here’s a review of the professor’s book:

  Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development
  Two decades ago, Mintzberg, a professor at McGill University who was then teaching MBAs at MIT, discovered a profound "disconnect between the practice of management... and what went on in classrooms." Since that time, he has dedicated himself to the problems of management and management education, both of which he believes are "deeply troubled," and the latter of which has become the wrong that he, with help from colleagues around the world, must right. Using words like "arrogance," "mindless" and "exploitation," Mintzberg outlines just what is wrong with MBAs (the people and the degrees) and why the degree he's developed is rooted in the real world and, as such, is far more relevant and valuable to students, companies and the business world at large. Strong economies are based on good management, not on good business schools, Mintzberg believes, and because the top companies employ the top MBAs and the top MBAs (not to mention the mediocre and bottom-level degree-holders) are, or so he says, the products of an out-of-touch and unrealistic graduate program, then the effects of this miseducation can be felt far beyond the classroom walls. Mintzberg's argument is clearly researched and set forth in a progressively logical and even convincing way. Managers and manager wannabes will be intrigued and can certainly learn a thing or two as long as they, as Mintzberg himself urges in his teachings, consider the source of the education.
  Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
  

  Published: October 21, 2008 11:21 AM

• Carl

  I think that part of the reason why universities survive is that they perform research which is assumed to be valuable and important, and less 'interested' than strictly private research. But I think that private entities specializing in different fields would be more valuable to society in the long run.

  Published: October 21, 2008 7:48 PM

• Scott

  Sheepskins are America's "titles of nobility", something our founders prohibited issuing. As the article stated, they bestow privilege, not necessarily on merit, but, in the case of the wealthy, money. Worse than mere nobility, some unknowingly act on the premise their education was a hazing ritual. A painfull and humiliating, expensive ordeal entitling them to lord it over those not in the club.

  Recently C-Span had a book review about such corruption which described the "Z-list". Those whose families contribute upwards of 10 million dollars get their kids on the Z-list, to attend the Ivy-League college of their contributing ancestors, regardless of merit.

  It helps these plutocrats to have ambitious, intelligent sycophant peasants suffering from envy and inferiority complexes (like the Clintons and Obambas) to manipulate and hide behind, as well as give everyone else the illusion the "American Dream" isn't about winning a lottery, but about self-actualization.

  I worked at an allegedly prestigious government-funded university-organization. I participated in much busy-work, primarily to justify department funding and staff. I've seen this in the private sector too, but I've also seen the market punish this corporate inefficiency, unlike government, which as we know, will excuse its corruption, stupidity and inefficiency with being under funded and staffed. Great works of art and science come from those who've devoted themselves in love to their labor, not from bureaucracies based on pecking-orders. It's no mystery what the Soviets lacked in innovation, they excelled at in theft.

  Finally, I'll add that my first semester at college in 1983 I had an engineering survey course where the professor told us mother, God and country were archaic, destructive values. I conclude our academic aristocracy wants us to forsake our own families for the state, our God (objective moral values) for social relativism, personal pride at personal achievement for group-affiliation, and an American identity based on our constitution and bill of rights, with amorphous, green, amoral multiculturalism.

  I suspect this aristocracy suffers from some sort of suicidal guilt over its corruption, and selects college professors that share that unconscious sentiment to commiserate with. That would explain a lot of sick teaching and misanthropic environmentalism.

  Published: October 21, 2008 10:56 PM

• Maturin

  As this is an Austrian Economics website, how about applying some ABCT to the problem of educational inflation?

  It is my belief that govt manipulation via cheap educational loans and grants have inflated the demand beyond what was natural, which has effectively lowered the value of a post-secondary education dramatically in the late 20th century.

  Because of this unnatural govt infusion of cash into the educational system, artificially increasing the demand for degrees, the cost of education has skyrocketed in the past few decades. Too much money chasing too few real goods. At the same time, the rush of the educational marketplace to fill this demand has created too many low quality suppliers, so the average value of a college or post-graduate degree has dropped.

  Back when I was in school, three decades ago, there was much talk of "grade inflation," about how so many colleges were awarding high GPA's to mediocre students, thus distorting any actual measure of the value of degrees. A 4.0 GPA from Podunk U was somehow considered equivalent to a similar product from the Ivy Leagues, despite everyone knowing that was absurd.

  Today I think the problem is much deeper, and we should not think about just grade inflation, but about inflation of our entire educational system, which has seriously eroded the "purchasing power" or value of an educational degree. Having a BA will no longer get you even a cup of coffee in the white collar marketplace any more, now you need that "whole string of letters" just to get a job flipping hamburgers at Wall St Inc.

  Does anybody know of a good ABCT essay or book about this educational inflation phenomenon?

  Published: October 23, 2008 9:46 AM