The MBA Myth

From time to time, one of my sons has raised the notion of attending Law School.  While it’s a laudable goal, I’ve rained on his parade by pointing out that law school is not the road to wealth and security that he and his friends regard it to be (if it ever was).

My argument was supported in this article that appeared in the New York Times last January.  If that was not enough, along came a more scathing assessment written by Paul Campos, law professor and legal critic, in The New Republic.

I haven’t heard any more talk about attending law school.

Likewise, I haven’t heard any mention of pursuing an MBA as an alternative.  That’s good.  It may be due to his lack of interest in pursuing a business career.  Or it might be a result of comments I’ve made about MBA students I’d met during the past 15 years.  

I visited the campuses of the country’s top business schools, and also hosted a who traveled to Silicon Valley en masse in search of post-graduate riches.  I’ve probably met with and interviewed 300 in all.

I met no more than a handful that I considered real stand-outs.  Yet you wouldn’t have known it during the dot-com boom.  The vast majority of graduating students I interviewed considered a $100K starting salary to be table stakes.  (I even encountered a Harvard student (also a MSEE) who politely told me that he would not be entertaining offers under $200,000.  I told him that I must not work for an enlightened company, told him he obviously wasn’t in need of any wish for good luck, and saved us both time.)

The dot-com bubble may have burst abruptly, but the salary expectations of MBAs took somewhat longer to attenuate.

That was then, and this is now.

As with graduate law students, some new MBA grads will hit the jackpot.  But the majority will experience disillusionment.  As this article about the today’s math in pursuing an MBA reveals, the cost may outweigh the benefit.