> So why do they persist in promoting this education for management, which, according to mounting evidence, produces so much mismanagement?<p>> The answer is unfortunately obvious: with so many of their graduates getting to the “top”, why change? But there is another answer that is also becoming obvious: because at this top, too many of their graduates are corrupting the economy.<p>The MBA is a graduate degree that is the highest compensated of the Masters degrees that you can get from business schools. Here's why I think that is:<p>How do you put together economics, finance, accounting, organizational behavior, marketing, and operations, in a way that makes sense?<p>A lot of people have trouble thinking of these things both holistically and distinctly.<p>The MBA is both a high-level overview of these subjects, and a sustained study on putting them all together in an aligned way.<p>The degree says the owner has studied that specific body of knowledge rigorously and at length. It does not mean the owner has studied each component as in-depth as someone with a degree in any of these individual subjects.<p>I have a generalist MBA myself. But I supplemented my studies with a lot of time in the library studying books and journals on finance, statistics, computer science, and management. I tried to lock down my learning by logging each article and book, and I believe I had 400 items in my bibliographic database when I graduated - I understand the rest of my cohort used the bibliography tools built into Microsoft Word. I didn't get any networking value from the degree - I got it from a half-decent state school in Florida - most of my cohort was civil service, local accountants, and a couple of engineers and housewives.<p>I used R for my statistics project. The rest of my cohort used Excel.<p>For the capstone project, a business competition, I tracked my competition in spreadsheets for simple charting (every turn took about an hour of data input manually from pdf) - I don't believe the rest of my cohort did anything of the sort.<p>I was able to do a lot more than my cohort with the same education as my cohort. The business school was accredited by the same standards body as Harvard.<p>I don't know if I'm qualified to be a CEO yet. I like to say that I want to be qualified to run technology at a hedge fund. I'm continuing my education by signing up for the CFA, and I take my first test in December. Wish me luck.<p>But to answer Mintzberg's question - why keep promoting this education for management, which, according to mounting evidence, produces so much mismanagement? - This is the wrong question. The course material is correct. The problem is selection bias. Those looking for the fastest route to career acceleration go for their MBAs - thus being, at least on paper, the best qualified to run firms. We need to get this education in the hands of the <i>right</i> people.<p>We can also address the problem on the CEO side by better aligning their compensation to long-term performance instead of short-term performance measures. But shareholders are fairly impatient, and boards of directors seem to like the idea of juicing short-term performance.