Why Has Business Education Failed Business
This article [Want to Kill Your Economy? Have MBA Programs Churn out Takers Not Makers] by Rana Foroohar based on her book “Makers & Takers: The Rise of Finance and Fall of American Business” talks about the state of business education in the US. For my friends in India, I am curious to know if you think this applies to the state of Indian business education as well. The main points in the article:
- MBA education is basically an education in finance, not business. MBA programs don’t churn out innovators well prepared to cope with a fast-changing world.
- Business schools by and large teach an extremely limited notion of “value,” and of who corporate stakeholders are. Many courses offer a pretense of data-driven knowledge without a rigorous understanding and analysis of on-the-ground facts. Students are given little practical experience but lots of high-altitude postulating.
- The greatest percentage of those who receive an MBA degree end up not in industry, but in some area of finance. Given the six figure cost of an MBA education, it is not so much a choice but a necessity for many students.
- Many of America’s iconic business leaders believe an MBA degree makes you less equipped to run a business well for the long term, particularly in high-growth, innovation-driven industries like pharmaceuticals or technology, which depend on leaders who are willing to invest in the future.
- MBAs are everywhere, yet the industries where you find fewer of them tend to be the most successful. America’s shining technology and innovation hub—Silicon Valley—is relatively light on MBAs and heavy on engineers.
This is the very reason that Institute of Product Leadership decided to change the notion of what business education means for technology product leaders. Our strong belief is that the curriculum has to be relevant, experiential and practical to the industry.
I hope this gives a little more context to the EMBA in Product Leadership program at IPL, offered in partnership with two leading universities in Bangalore, CMR University & PES University. We recently kicked off the 8th batch of the program in India with professionals from companies like Cognizant, GE Digital, Visa, Qualcomm, Sony, Intel, Oracle, Siemens, Amazon, McAfee, and more.
We are grateful to our university partners, students, alumni, executive faculty, speakers and coaches, who have joined hands in this mission to make a difference in business education and help grow the next generation of product leaders in India.
Rahul Abhyankar,
Director of Programs,
Institute of Product Leadership
Select Scholarships available for
MBA in Technology Management!
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