Is an MBA Still Necessary?

It used to be that top corporations picked up MBA graduates as fast as schools could slap mortarboards on their heads. These young guns drove corporate reorganization, product innovation and marketing and implemented new styles of leadership. They were a symbol of a new culture, and anyone serious about a career in business aspired to earn those three letters.

… Henry Mintzberg is probably the most outspoken critic of the MBA. The Cleghorn Professor of Management Studies at McGill University in Montreal and an entrepreneur in his own right, Mintzberg argued in his 2004 book Managers Not MBAs that the entire notion of graduate business education needs reform. His opinions have only grown stronger since then. Not only do MBA programs teach an insufficient style of management, he says, but they also fall short in discussion of ethics. In fact, he has written, "conventional MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences."

Read full article: Entrepreneur, September 24, 2012