Gravy Training: Inside the Business of Business Schools Review

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(More customer reviews)I originally wrote this review anonymously; 17 of 23 readers found the review helpful. Here is my update: The title is misleading: This is a look at full-time MBA and executive (MBA) programs at the arguably best business schools in the world. This is like claiming a study to be a study of the auto industry when all the authors studied is Mercedes Benz. The real "business" of business schools must cover the part-time and undergraduate programs. There are transparent inconsistencies: The authors bash b-schools for promoting a cult of gurus, only the authors quote and promote gurus repeatedly. They use the same gurus to criticize the very schools that hire and promote the supposed "guru". Crainer and Dearlove decry one-liners, then summarize their work with a cliched one-liner of their own: "Management is pocket science, not rocket science." They tell b-schools to be customer-friendly but not to cater to the catering needs or accommodation interests of their clients. They purport to do a global study when this is at best a modest revision of a study of the few, elite European business schools, which are generaly unlike the American business school system. They imply (p. 186) that the major business school accrediting body -- the AACSB -- only changed its name to International Association of Management Education outside the U.S., and this is not true. [NOTE: And AACSB in 2001 changed its name again -- worldwide.] They criticize business deans for lacking vision, while not realizing that the "independent subcontractor" mode of business faculty is inconsistent with "academic leadership" creating a vision for such independent experts. Business schools have been successful because they produce what businesses clearly prefer to hire: knowledge workers, managers and leaders for the global economy. Business students at all levels -- undergraduate, graduate and executive -- are learning the new culture and language of the new world economy. Even as the "new" economy declines and former dot commers return to collect their MBAs. Business is a liberal art, much like the study of a foreign language. At the undergraduate level, where most business education is done, accredited business schools demand a well-rounded, liberal arts curriculum. B-schools are generous cash cows for universities. Sure, their faculty earn a lot but they teach large course sections and generate demand for non-business courses. If as much were spent on training top business students as is spent on the college's star quarterback, we might have even more effective business schools. The fact that innovation and leadership is absent from the "top" schools is a phenomenon in all industries: the top schools become rich and self-satisfied and the real change bubbles up from those struggling, niche-building programs competing for the new customers' dollar. A well-trained manager need not be a rocket scientist, but if there are design flaws in his education, Challenger-like disasters are in the making. Business education is too big and too important to be left to a few, smug, incredibly expensive schools. And we should all be grateful that it is not...

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