02-23-2013, 08:11 AM
I had a great experience at Stanford and I think the place made me, not just more knowledgeable, but smarter if standardized tests are to be believed. I scored higher on my graduate school exams than on my SATs. Every professor or instructor commanded my respect. I only had trouble with a multivariable calculus class taught by a graduate student with a Slavic accent. From then on, I stuck to speakers of the three languages I know best: Mandarin, English, and Asian-accented English.
Contrast that to my business school experience, where it was obvious that the professors were more interested in the real money makers: board seats, consulting gigs, book publishing, and executive education. The MBA program was just a loss leader. This group of clowns crawled all over Enron, writing cases left and right. Not a single one of them realized what was going on. It took a Fortune magazine writer to finally uncover the fraud. The professor I hated most taught Competition & Strategy, and this guy allegedly had the highest IQ on the faculty, having been a mathematician before. When we did a case on AOL, this clown went on a soliloquy of how Steve Case was one of the all time great business geniuses. Jeff Skilling of Enron and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco both visited our class, and boy did this prof lay it on think. Calling each "among the greatest business geniuses of all time."
There were a couple exceptions. Bob Kaplan, who taught accounting. A wise man, who made a dry subject come alive and make us realize its importance. Clay Christensen was my other favorite. He had a parting message about life and career, a cautionary tale of his classmates that is the single most important thing I learned at business school. His claim to fame, the theory of disruptive innovation, is one of the breakthrough ideas in business scholarship. Then again when he was asked to opine about the launch of what would become the single most lucrative product of all time: the iPhone. He said his theory predicted failure.
Contrast that to my business school experience, where it was obvious that the professors were more interested in the real money makers: board seats, consulting gigs, book publishing, and executive education. The MBA program was just a loss leader. This group of clowns crawled all over Enron, writing cases left and right. Not a single one of them realized what was going on. It took a Fortune magazine writer to finally uncover the fraud. The professor I hated most taught Competition & Strategy, and this guy allegedly had the highest IQ on the faculty, having been a mathematician before. When we did a case on AOL, this clown went on a soliloquy of how Steve Case was one of the all time great business geniuses. Jeff Skilling of Enron and Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco both visited our class, and boy did this prof lay it on think. Calling each "among the greatest business geniuses of all time."
There were a couple exceptions. Bob Kaplan, who taught accounting. A wise man, who made a dry subject come alive and make us realize its importance. Clay Christensen was my other favorite. He had a parting message about life and career, a cautionary tale of his classmates that is the single most important thing I learned at business school. His claim to fame, the theory of disruptive innovation, is one of the breakthrough ideas in business scholarship. Then again when he was asked to opine about the launch of what would become the single most lucrative product of all time: the iPhone. He said his theory predicted failure.