Blame it on Business Schools?!?!?

When you look at the key figures responsible for the current economic crisis the country is facing they all have one thing in common they have MBA's. The have all graduates with graduate degrees in business from some of the best business schools in the country. The New York Times article by Kelley Holland investigates whether the MBA programs are to blame for the inability of these executives with high education to adequately manage some of the country's largest corporations.

The experts are now claiming that the MBA programs are not giving the students enough real world experience. Instead in business school "students are taught to come up with hasty solutions to complicated problems". They then graduate with a narrow focus on the dollar and a lack of empathy or a moral conscious. Due to this they say that the students were unequipped to make the decisions that could have avoided this crisis.

Today many business schools are lacking a code of conduct. They are forgetting to emphasize the importance of ethics in business leadership. If the students were given more real-world experiences they could build a better understanding of the needs for these attributes. Students are mostly given rigorous business problems with which they respond with quick responses.

I don't totally agree that the business schools are to blame. Whenever there is a crisis it is human nature to try to look for a direction to point the finger. In the end the finger needs to be pointed directly at the individuals who had the power to prevent this crisis from occurring. The moral and ethical value that is needed in business is something that an individual develops long before entering graduate school. These individual were egotistical, narcissistic individuals who cared only about themselves. Now there are consequences for their behavior. I do believe that this economic crisis is a teaching moment, and should be discussed in the classroom.