An article in the New York Times says that fewer finance jocks are attending business school. All I can say is: Good! In fact, it’s good for everyone.
The Wall Street jockies whose only real interest is in making a buck can go make their money unimpeded by anything like the knowledge of what a company actually is, other than its financial characteristics.
And the business schools. Ah, the business schools. Currently, they churn out mainly investment bankers, private equity managers, and hedge-fund managers. Maybe at lost last, those doobies will bypass the MBA campuses and let the business schools return to teaching people who want to run companies how to do it.
I’ve long lamented that many business schools have remarkably few students who are actually interested in running businesses. Most are just interested in making a quick buck. In fact, it’s sort of a common joke that whatever career the MBAs are most pursuing today is probably headed for a big crash in the near future. My biggest fear about the hedge-fund trend is that like the junk-bond trend of the 80s/early 90s, the internet bubble of the late 90s, and the real estate bubble of the early 2000s, hedge funds just might turn out to be a bubble too. If so, when it pops, all those “geeks just wanna have funds” guys who don’t really care about much except enriching themselves will tumble right back into MBA programs, thus sucking up the time, resources, and curriculum once again from programs that would otherwise serve us by teaching people who actually care about business.
Yow! Am I cynical, yet? It’s tough being an American who actually cares about business as a driver of a safe, sane, sustainable world, rather than viewing it simply as a tool for a few white guys at the top to get obscenely wealthy.