Why MBAs are BS...

Like most things I write, this reflects my own opinions, experiences, and how life looks from my very own ignorant view. This is not life advice, not something to live by, and certainly not the law.

While I do believe the whole educational system as it exists today is probably the world's largest scam aimed at systematically producing stupidity, I also think that whoever invented the idea of an MBA is the Madoff of education (master scam artist AKA Voldemort of finance, they don't teach you who he is in your MBA so you might as well google him). Thus, I am writing this brief reflection to share my experience with an MBA.

Backstory: I am a C-grade student at best. I worked very hard to try and fail high school as I wanted to become a football player back then. I did not want my father to overestimate my academic potential and push me into engineering or med school (Arab parents' child ambitions). While I almost failed high school, I did not become a football player. But as life would have it, and by some strokes of luck, I built things that people found helpful and built a career in building and breaking technology in different spaces.

I always ran my own business, and as anyone in corporate knows, people with MBAs have a particular chip on their shoulders. If you meet anyone with an MBA, they'll mention it 12 times in the first 3 minutes.

Example:?

You: *Cough*

MBA holder: Oh my god, you coughed! That's exactly how I used to cough before I did my MBA until we learned how to cough better! Don't worry; you will get there someday.

In today's corporate world, educational institutes and insecure MBA holders created the narrative that for any professional, an MBA is something they must do to leapfrog their career and jump from the realms of ignorance and darkness to the bright light of the MBA universe where people know exactly how to cough.

And so I decided to explore what this was all about... and here is how it goes:?

Enrolment:

?You get a call from a recruiter that goes like?

Recruiter: "Your profile is all fancy schmancy, and you look like you could be the perfect fit for our program at the fancy MBA school. But as your profile is extra cool, we want you to join our executive program."

You:? "Executive?"?

"Yes, executive! Where we only enroll the best of the best of the best! So basically, we are right next to the Avengers in the acceptance criteria."?

The recruiter tells you that the program is full of executives and people who have achieved the unachievable and that you will be taught by some of the best people in their respective industries.

Now, the only catch is that an MBA usually costs around 100k$+. While this is a significant expense for most working people, it's probably a full year's salary. The pitch is that you will be able to unlock a network of people who will give you massive opportunities to climb the career ladder and become the ultimate version of yourself that, God forbid if you did not have an MBA, you would never achieve.

Unlocking the magical network:

Your first day at the EMBA (E is for executive/Eternal boredom, you choose) starts with a bunch of admin staff telling you things like, "This will be a cold shower. You will have to manage timelines. You will learn so much the knowledge will start oozing out of your ears to your desk, and you'll have to eat it off your desk (exaggeration). And you will meet the most brilliant people you've ever met who are incredibly well-achieved. Brace yourself, for you are about to enter the Valhalla of academia.

On my first day, I met the "executives" in our class of approximately 50 individuals. Among them, three were C-suite executives, while the majority were unemployed or between jobs. I kid you not!! Unemployed or between jobs… ( what happened to the” we are next to the Avengers criteria… even Antman would've made this cut..)

Whenever I attended class, I answered questions about where people could secure their next gig, how to raise funds for their startup, and what a tech stack meant. (I never charged 150k$)

Once you've met everyone, you realize that the entire admission pitch is merely a front created by the admin staff to generate excitement and attract people to join the program. You'll also hear from others that they're enrolled in the program to meet "executives and unlock networks" or because it looks good on their resumes and may lead to a pay raise.?

My usual advice is that if you go to Roberto's past 7 PM, you'll meet all the executives you want

That's because executives rarely have the time to attend full-day classes on Tuesdays.

Building a network is one of the defining factors of a successful businessperson. The saying, "It's about who you know, not what you know," holds true in many situations. We tend to engage in business with those we trust and have strong relationships with, making network-building crucial. However, in this day and age, there are numerous effective ways to build networks without having to invest $100k in an MBA. The individuals you desire to know, those actively involved in meaningful projects and endeavors, are typically immersed in their work. Hence, you won't normally encounter them at a full-time school listening to how a manager at Uber designed the green go button. To establish meaningful connections with these individuals, you need to go where they're actually executing their work.

The Scam of New Learnings

I could summarize this part by saying that anything they'll teach you in an MBA is on Chat GPT for $50.

But here's what I learned in my MBA:

That empty space signifies my learnings. It might be because I'm not the smartest student compared to the high-achieving executives, but it could also tie into the fact that most teachers are mid-level employees at corporations looking for a gig that pays more. They're hired because the name of the company is cool.

Academics are mostly great people, yet most academics don't know how to operate their theories in real life. There is a China wall between what is in the curriculum and theory versus what actually occurs on the ground. I believe that education follows execution.

For example, someone built Uber (which was thought to be theoretically impossible), and then they studied Uber and wrote a book about how you can build Uber.

Academia is, at best, a documentation of what takes place in real life. It is good to learn to benchmark, and it is absolutely important to be knowledgeable about what happened historically and other similar business models. However, an internship at a startup will teach you all of that, and you might even get paid for it.

Trust me when I say that a senior manager at Google will not teach you how to build a business.?

If they knew it, they would do it themselves...

The Schedule…

For an executive program, I was shocked to learn that people were required to attend 8 hours of classes almost every day of the week. I mean, don't executives have jobs? When I posted this question to one of the admin staff, they replied, "This is how the program always worked." I wanted to debate whether what worked in the past really proves precedent for the future. But then I said, "You are absolutely right." Given that half the people in class don't have a job, it must've always been successful to ask them to spend 50 hours a week doing coursework.

So people's schedule in an MBA ends up looking like this: You go to class, you sit there to show yourself for a couple of hours (you fail if you don't, not a joke, they would actually fail you), and then you end up copying the tests and assessments from other people in the class (99% of the content in an MBA is plagiarized). And after 2 years of hard copying and class trips, you get to graduate, put on a weird hat, and get the chip on your shoulder at graduation, along with an official paper that says you can now tell people what to do and how to cough..

(Disclaimer: You must pay full tuition; otherwise, it doesn't matter how much homework you copy, you can't get the chip on your shoulder.)

In conclusion, I think MBAs are just a scam to convince mid-layer employees and corporate workers that their value to their organization has now drastically increased. You will see that true innovators, business builders, etc., don't really care. But if you work for someone who gets paid a salary, they will probably hire you if you have an MBA just so they have an excuse to have you around in front of HR.

Your value to the business is always built on top of how many opportunities you can create. The fact that you went and sat in class, copied someone else's work, and spent 2 years reading about how real founders build their businesses does not make you an expert. At best, it gives you some knowledge; at worst, it puts you 2 years behind the guys who do the actual work.

I hope this gives some perspective to people contemplating wasting 2 years and $100k on a degree. And for people like myself who already did that, this brings a bit of perspective on how much you have an MBA really matters.

For perspective: $100k and 2 years could give you a 200x return if invested in certain places and can teach you much more than what an academic will lecture you about…

So invest the $100k... Anyway, this note reflects my disbelief in the educational system in general, MBAs specifically, and EMBAs in particular...