Truth (Deception) about MBA

Every undergraduate should aspire for an MBA degree. Students should incur crushing debt to finance an MBA degree. Graduating with an MBA ensures a high salary. These all-too-common beliefs mask themselves as the “truth.” In many cases, they are false.

Most often, aspirants choose an MBA college relying on comments from coaching centres, parents, family or friends or a delightful meeting with an admission counsellor at the campus, should they choose to see one.

They make unfounded assumptions, recite opinions without reflection, and act based upon biases they do not even know they have. Emotions overcome logic.

Aspiring MBA candidates have always found it difficult to get onto their preferred campuses. Their second options are big compromises in terms of their dreams, affordability, flaunting-value of the degrees, location and career-prospects.

MBA Colleges are struggling on every side. Standalone Public institutions have far too many aspirants for limited seats. Public Universities are able to fill seats primarily because of lower fees. Private ones, whether university departments or Standalone colleges do not have enough students.

Heads of institutions comply with burdensome government regulations, resolve criminal scandals on campuses, and respond to misbehaviour of their students in public places.

In the midst of these crises, many MBA colleges have lost sight of what is going on in the classroom. Beguilement, deceit, bluff, mystification, ruse, or subterfuge, deception is everywhere in the MBA classrooms. Students are learning about propagating falsehoods, half-truths, denial of information, not to mention distraction, propaganda, sleight of hand, camouflage, concealment, and bad faith. Students are no more learning that people make bad decisions because they ignore facts and evidence and decide based on their beliefs.

MBA programs are built upon topics such as foundational courses in economics & behavioural sciences, functional courses in Finance, Marketing, Operations & Human Resources, contextual courses like economic, social & regulatory environment, decision tools like operations research & accounting and integrative courses like Policy & Strategy. All indispensable in many ways but are they preparing graduates for sorting out truth from fiction? MBA classrooms are preparing students for a world where people are encouraged to believe things that are not true.

Classrooms are venues, real or virtual, where delivery, acquisition, assimilation, reflection and exchange of information, knowledge and ideas happens in the hope of acquiring of wisdom. Faculty controls classrooms. Competence to teach, commitment to teach, orientation to teach and motivation to teach are attributes, difficult to come by amongst the faculty, even if they meet the norms for qualifications.

MBA colleges, on their current path, are not solving problems for a generation about to graduate. They, along with the accompanying student debt, are creating serious problems. That is the “truth” about MBA colleges. It is also the biggest deception in chasing an MBA degree.

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