The Fruits of Business Education

By Yasir Mirza

A few weeks ago I had dinner with two very good friends who are finishing their final semester at Szabist Business School. I couldn't wait to hear about the ideas being thrown around and the businesses being built by their classmates. At the end of our dinner I was not impressed. Disappointed in fact.

I listened and they explained that 90% of their classmates came to business school to go right back into Job market. From the day first when born we use to feed him/her that prepare yourself for Job. And Job is the last hope so where is the creativity and innovation. These prestigious business schools teach us how to become a good Job hunter and prepare us how to find a Job and how to switch a Job. COOL

“Don’t use graduate school, or any other course of study, as a form of life avoidance. Pursue the course only if there’s a good reason.” ~Chris Guillebeau

Most people who’ve come to me have hit a breaking point. They can’t stand it anymore. A change is a must. This is an empowering place to be. It gives you the best chance of taking action. If the pain is great enough we’ll do something about it.

But the danger is that when your job makes you feel like you want to jump off a cliff, then often anything in the world looks better. So you’re likely to jump onto the first thing that comes to mind. And many a time the easy next step (that requires very little actual thought or work) is to say “hmm, why don’t I go back to school?”.

The problem is we forget to stop and ask why.

Making a change is not about just finding the next thing. Odds are if you don’t understand yourself, what you want and what you’re naturally good at, then you’ll be in the same place 6 months from now–or even worse, you won’t totally hate it so you’ll sit in that meaningless zone of complacency for even longer. I call that negative progress.

Recognize the opportunity you have. This is your chance to be epic. To take the world by the horns and figure out what you are here to do. You might not figure it out but you’ll at least have an idea of what you’d like to try. And that’s as good as you can ever get. As long as you’re trying what you think you are meant to do, you will constantly be learning and refining and getting closer.

Many MBA programs have become factories for making consultants and bankers. This may be the surest route to making a ton of money (and probably hating your life), and university like when wealthy alumni give money back to their university. This is why many students come, so that’s what they teach. It’s also a lot harder to teach how to be an entrepreneur compared to simple business theory. And it’s even harder to teach (and test) what your purpose is – how you can best impact the world. So they don’t.

Every year at Warren Buffett’s annual meeting in Omaha, someone asks him, “I just finished business school and want to follow an investment path similar to yours. What should I do?” His response is usually something like “Well first unlearn half of what they taught you, and then…” He’s serious. Almost every business school teaches that value investing (Warren’s method) is impossible. How crazy is that? This is why my partner and I took his advice, didn’t get an MBA, and instead created our own curriculum with books, businessmen, mentors and good old trial and error.

This is just one example but it’s representative of a greater problem. Be careful with your expectations of what you’re actually going to learn and how applicable it will be. Can you find a cheaper and richer source of learning the same curriculum?

I have left my MBA today