Have you seen the PHD comic about grad school and MBA's?
Piled Higher and Deeper
(not saying that this is at all an accurate representation of pram, mind you)

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"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

Very cute.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

Maybe a homosexual Quaker, just to be safe...

A homosexual Quaker with a Yale MBA.

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

Oh, it's pretty accurate.

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When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

"fo shizzle", and a popped collar?
What's funny is that the character neve actually has to say he's an MBA student; everyone just knows.

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"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

Um

Well....


I don't wear polos. I'd never say "fo' shizzle." I'd never be in a frat. And, I shave my head. But, other than that...







Actually, the MBA students that I attend school with seem to be, in general, intelligent, well spoken, and very interested in the academic part of their degrees.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Oh, good. You were about to just ruin my idea of you!

__________________
please click and help the eggs hatch!

"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

Exactly! MBA's are grad school?

As a grad student, I volunteered at the remedial essay-writing clinic on campus (we had a long waiting list of students seeking tutors for this). My favorite MBA student question was "does spelling count?" That seemed to sum up the educational aspirations of these types.

And of course, I'm not trying to disparage Pramjockey here.

No disparagement taken.

Perhaps your MBA program wasn't as rigorous as ours. There's a mix of them out there, that's for sure.

Oh, and nobody ever asks if spelling counts.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

It's difficult to defend the MBA program.

In case you hadn't guessed yet, that is what George W. Bush has - from an Ivy League school, no less. He is the first president with a degree in Business Administration.

So neither you nor I can defend our shared field of study...

Which is why I made the comment in the first place - in response to this:

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...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

That was one of the consistently top 5 ranked universities in Canada that is also the school with the largest primary research budget and the largest number of research cititations in both engineering and health sciences and the only school in Canada that still requires an Honours Thesis to graduate undergrads.

To call one of their graduate programs 'non-rigorous' is not credible.

Indeed, I consider the Harvard MBA program to be the most horrific (that case-study approach can make Hitler's extermination of Jews look like a good well managed plan - that case study approach is inherently flawed). Indeed, how many Harvard MBA's were involved in the Enron fraud? (answer: lots!)

That being said, I'm thinking that the real problem with MBA's on campus is the type of student that is attracted to that program. They are the ones that give the discipline its bad name and poor reputation.

They are the king of "does spelling count?" type approach to academia. They are usually just interested in making their first million and that schoolwork is just some tiresome hurdle they have to cross, that's all. Not all MBA students fit this model - be enough to construct a stereotype. Indeed, when you hear that being forced to wear 'proper business attire' in MBA classes is one of the best features of a cirriculum, you know where my contempt comes from.

Btw, the commerce field has been identified as the most prevailent for academic cheating (keeping in mind that academic cheating has been rising exponentially in all academic disciplines over the last 20 years). It is estimated that between 40% and 60% of undergrad papers are plagarized these days. And it is a career-ending move for faculty to object to, do anything about, punish or publically identify this fact.

Wel shit. I guess I'm in a field of tards, then!



One thing that I have going for me is that I'm old enough to realize the value of hard work, and young enough to actually have the energy to do it.

Of course, our school's very strong focus on business ethics (top 10 in the world for 5 years running) helps, too. We're not a school that cranks out MBA-Finance students that focus on profit only. We're actually required to think our way through school.

But, I can totally see the crowd that you're viewing that's attracted to the degree. There's lots of them around, that's for sure. Fortunately there's enough intelligent ones (I'd like to think I fit in that group) that balance them out.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

An increase in popularity of studies in Business Administration is due to the changing economy and social structure, wouldn't you say?
India churns out something like 150,000 MBA's per year as a result of demand from their growing economy...and ours.

With that kind of demand, the increasing popularity and competition, one would expect there to be more incidence of cheating too.

In addition, it is increasingly easy to cheat what with advances in technology, (specifically plagiarism). Since the field is one involved with ideas rather than creating or experimenting, I would think it would be ripe with fraud - much more difficult to determine and prosecute. And indeed, the statistics bear that out. No argument.

I'm not defending the field but I find it to be no less valuable than any other. What we do with it is another matter. Consider the example Jao Disilva gives in the latest evolution thread, of an educated biologist who teaches Creationism. No different than GWB's apparently inadequate MBA.

__________________
...the government...is caving in...with their specious arguments couched in the...language of civil rights law, and that the churches ... likewise crumbling to...rhetoric which is nothing but heretical sophistry -- ~F Phelps
Platitudes like the one you offer are no different - and no less incorrect - than the jackass part-time Christian who says, "I'm going to heaven because I'm nice to people." It so misses the point.~Impugn

Re: plagarism.

Are you aware that computers, software and the internet make it so that faculty can catch plagarism about 95% of the time?

Are you aware that university professors are banned from acting upon this information gained this way?

The university administrations are complicite in this explosion of plagarism. Apparently to enforce traditional rules of plagarism would empty the universities of 50% of their students and that is too catastrophic to consider - so plagarism is now tolerated in undergrads.

And I definitely have philosophic issues with many MBA programs. They get what they teach alright, no doubt of that. It is what they are taught that is so questionable.

And the demand for MBA's is just credentialism run amok. BA's in marketing or commerce are a dime a dozen and that market is flooded. Ergo, MBA is needed to be noticed. It is the students driving demand for MBA's not the private market.