FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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MBA fools are few in number and easily identified

MBA fools are few in number and easily identified

Re: "MBA graduates can't even master basic arithmetic", Letters, October 28.

It is somewhat unfair to berate all MBA holders on the basis of a few bad examples during the 2008 financial crisis. Though I am not an MBA graduate, I do have plenty of contact with business graduates and feel compelled to disagree with JC Wilcox’s generalisation. As with any academic degree, there are good and bad holders. But on the whole, there are more good (many exceptionally so) than bad among MBA graduates. The bad ones tend to spout gibberish, littering their conversation with acronyms like CDS (credit default swap) in a bid to sound intelligent to the point where no normal person can understand them. Many were exposed in 2008 as talking nonsense. The lesson is not to trust any MBA holder who cannot talk in the simple terms used by someone like Warren Buffet. There are still plenty of them around.
However, on the whole they are good in analysis and judgement – even if they often display an overbearing manner. 
As Harvard Business School alumni Jamie Dimon (now CEO of JP Morgan Chase) said in defence of his school after fellow alumni, Jeff Skilling of Enron, was convicted of fraud, “They don’t teach people to be bums or crooks”. 
Songdej Praditsmanont
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