QuoteOriginally posted by: ChicagoGuyI think that the original idea of an MBA is a good one. They thought, finally an advanced degree that can teach you about how to succeed in the business world! However, as the degree became more popular and people started to realize it can serve as a mean to get a good job, people started doing them just to climb up the corporate ladder and not to LEARN. So in the end, you end up with people that are ambitious enough to succeed but not always knowledgeable or smart. Having an MBA merely gives a signal to employers that they are ambitious enough to pay tens of thousands of dollars and spend an extra two years in school to get ahead.Sadly enough, it seems like a PhD is becoming just that in the quantitative finance community. A PhD is supposed to be a noble degree, one that takes you into the depths of research and knowledge, not because that knowledge and research will pay money in the end, but because you will get personal utility from doing research and the knowledge itself. As many posts in wilmott prove, the MBA type of people are now considering getting PhDs just to climb up the corporate ladder, not really caring what they study or what they will contribute. I think that degrees that promise different things attract different people. MBAs promise wealth and leadership positions, so they usually attract people who are power and money hungry. Traits that are usually regarded as important in the business world but extremely annoying the the real world. Who really wants to hear someone talk about money and their jobs 24/7? Other degrees that promise knowledge such as a PhD or a non-professional masters will usually attract people who ultimately want to learn and want to excel academically or be more knowledgable in a certain area of study. You can argue that academic people are ambitious to be the best in academics, but at least they are really learning! The main difference is that an MBA is usually a means to money and power, and a PhD is a means to knowledge. Like in many Shakespeare plays, ambition usually ruins the character. Maybe they should include Shakespeare in the MBA curriculum.Totally agree with this one. A lot of people get those degrees because of greed (quickest way to earn the big bucks). It may not necessary be the field that fits them well but they do want to get these degrees to stay ahead. They eventually end up being substandard.With the recent slowdown in the job market... I can see a lot of people (especially inexperienced fresh grads) upgrading their skills by studying to get their MBAs and PhDs to be more competitive when the market picks up again. Then the vicious cycle of greed will start again.Unless we break the chain and not reward these type of people with big salaries.

QuoteOriginally posted by: HOOKOne thing that draw my attention is the difficulty to fail a bad student in a MBA course. It seems more difficult because MBA courses represents a significant part of universitie´s revenues.When I was a Teaching Assistant in the US, I had the same problem with failing bad students - only it was with 2nd year computer science students for not knowing elementary set theory and logic.. By my grading there were 3 clear clusters of students - 5A, ~20C and 5F - in that class. Instead everyone got A or B, maybe one or two C. Later he told me that the university would make his life miserable if too many kids were seen failing or barely passing his class - after all the undergrad kids (and their parents) pay the money to run the university. That was the only semester I was a teaching assistant, I refused to grade after that, nor was I asked to.

QuoteOriginally posted by: HOOKOne thing that draw my attention is the difficulty to fail a bad student in a MBA course. It seems more difficult because MBA courses represents a significant part of universitie´s revenues.Yes...what I do...I give so much material since day one..that it seems pretty obvious to the lazy ones, that my class requiers some learning,,ergo, they drop the course...by the 1st test...the ones remaining are actually trying to learn...

QuoteOriginally posted by: MaeloQuoteOriginally posted by: HOOKOne thing that draw my attention is the difficulty to fail a bad student in a MBA course. It seems more difficult because MBA courses represents a significant part of universitie´s revenues.Yes...what I do...I give so much material since day one..that it seems pretty obvious to the lazy ones, that my class requiers some learning,,ergo, they drop the course...by the 1st test...the ones remaining are actually trying to learn...In maths, it went like 1) 9 am courses 2) hard analysis (epsilon-delta stuff). In a few months you know which way the wind is blowing. 50 students in first year, by year 4 there were 6 left.

I think the problem in the world, everywhere, is that there are too many damn people. There are too many smart people arbitraging any new development and too many dumb people who need to have their hands held. We are all familiar with mathematics here; the world is now colonized and exponential growth is no longer our friend. It's just really a case of resources, and worldwide demand for just about everything is getting so high that it might as well be a zero-sum game. I am from the US. The US traditionally has been lucky to have bountiful resources. But if your motto is "all are created equal" then when your population doubles and triples while your technical innovation languishes, per-capita living standard plummets. This is happening now.Let's not forget scarcity. It used to be that just having a college degree was a golden ticket. Well, could it have been that was true in large part because relatively few people had one? It was the cutting-edge, elite thing to do at the time. I don't have an MBA, but I have a financial math MSc and a CFA, and in this job environment the value of those particular credentials seems to fall somewhere between Quilted Northern and - well, choose your favorite form of excrement. When everyone is super, then no one is.A lot of ambitious people I think (myself included) made critical career decisions based on outliers - e.g. Einstein, Soros/Rogers, Simons, Griffin, etc. - instead of on something smarter like the median. Or the actual day-to-day of some of the positions that the vast majority in their chosen field end up holding. That kind of decision is a really highly-levered risk in today's global economy. Capitalism rewards #1 and kicks #2 out on his ass. Far far too many people entering finance is a huge trend in the US. When I entered undergrad over 10 years ago, fully 1/3 of business majors were finance majors and about 1/3 of all majors were in business. I can only imagine those ratios held steady or even increased over the last decade, and it's insane. Everyone is chasing the big payoff. Except it's not there anymore unless you are the next outlier.Meanwhile we have corruption on a massive scale. Forget the governor of IL, read Jim Simons recent testimony about the ratings agencies. For several years I have watched in a amazement that they maintained so much credibility, gaffe after gaffe. They get paid by the issuers of debt, not the buyers. (!) We definitely need an IQ influx and a corruption exodus in government, because..Of all the stupid people. Stupid people represent a hell of a lot of demand. And often they demand really stupid things, like subprime mortgage-backed securities. Or mortgages they could never afford. T4Alpha pointed out the dilemma regardless of what degree you hold, the marketers and IBankers of the world are simply not going to leave that money on the table unless it's somehow illegal to take it. So do we need more regulation or less? I think a dichotomy has arisen at least in the US where half of us need more and half of us less. But laws are generally one-size-fits-all. And I doubt many politicians want to regulate themselves several tax brackets downward. We almost need to start over but that would take a concerted effort by a lot of key people in key positions and I'm not sure enough of them have the balls. Or the intellectual wherewithal, because a lot of them probably majored in finance.Overpopulation is the biggest problem. I think #2 is focus by managements large and small on the short-term instead of on maintaining "going concern" status. (e.g. profiting from currency disparity by outsourcing) Cut costs to a point, but eventually you really do need to grow revenue in a meaningful way, i.e. you need to have good ideas and vision. But I don't want to make this wall of text any bigger. I tend to have a negative slant so I hope a lot of the great minds on this board will prove all this crap wrong

Has every Wilmotter blamed enough MBAs for all the management mistakes, risk mistakes, and bad decisions ?? Are you happier now ??Yes, MBAs certainly have their limitations. For example, President George W. Bush is an MBA from Harvard Business School. Just look at his decision-making during his 8 years in office. How do his decisions and judgments compare to the MBAs you are complaining about on here ?Enough said.

When i started participating in this blame game here i had GWB in my mind indeed. Btw, i hold an MBA too....

QuoteOriginally posted on: Seeking Alpha