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Happy_4_U

16-10-2008, 12:45 AM

Giá trị của bằng MBA tại Harvard

Các sinh viên tốt nghiệp trường QTKD Harvard trong buổi lễ trao bằng tại Boston.

Các MBA của Harvard đều thừa nhận tốt nghiệp một trường lớn như Harvard đã mang lại cho họ một sự tự tin và lương bổng cao hơn những nơi khác vì họ có IQ cao hơn và được đào tạo bài bản với nhiều kỹ năng.

Adam Richman, tốt nghiệp trường Quản trị Kinh doanh (QTKD) Harvard năm 1996, hiện là chủ của Double Nickel, một công ty giải trí trong lĩnh vực phim ảnh và truyền hình, đã thực hiện một bộ phim tài liệu về những người bạn của anh tại Harvard sau khi ra trường trong 10 năm 1996-2006. Anh hợp tác cùng với Monica C. Higgins, một nữ phó giáo sư trong trường nhằm tìm hiểu về giá trị thực sự của những MBA, thạc sĩ chuyên nghành QTKD. Liệu MBA có đúng là một con bài chủ lực, một chiếc vé bước vào cuộc sống tốt đẹp? Sự thử thách thật sự chỉ đến sau khi bạn ra trường, Higgins nói.

Theo NewYork Times, tại Mỹ, bằng MBA đang ngày càng đại chúng hơn. Vào năm 1970, các trường kinh doanh cho ra đời khoảng 26.500 MBA. Năm 2004, sau thời gian bùng nổ kinh tế với sự cạnh tranh mạnh mẽ của các doanh nghiệp và sự khan hiếm nhân lực bậc cao đã khiến con số các MBA ra trường lên đến gần 140.000. Nhưng những số liệu nghiên cứu và ý kiến của các chuyên gia về giá trị của một MBA khá trái chiều, thậm chí mâu thuẫn nhau.

MBA là bằng cấp đa năng nhất và đào tạo một cách toàn diện nhất, Rachel Edgington, Giám đốc nghiên cứu của một tổ chức phi lợi nhuận, nói.

Nhưng cũng có nhiều chuyên gia chỉ ủng hộ kinh nghiệm được gọt rũa qua thực tế. Bạn không thể tạo ra một nhà quản lý trong lớp học dù người đó có giỏi đến đâu đi trong nữa, Henry Mintzberg, Giáo sư của ĐH McGill tại Montreal, nói. Cuộc điều tra năm 2006 do trường kinh doanh Lubin tiến hành đã xem xét danh sách 482 công ty trên thị trường chứng khoán NewYork. Trong số đó, 162 công ty có các giám đốc điều hành là các MBA từ những trường danh tiếng. Tuy nhiên, những công ty này không tỏ ra mạnh hơn những công ty có lãnh đạo đến từ những trường ít tên tuổi hơn.

Trong bối cảnh nhiều tranh cãi đó, công trình của Richman đã khẳng định những giá trị không thể phủ nhận mà bằng cấp Harvard mang lại với mức học phí 2 năm là hơn 70.000. Bằng MBA sẽ giúp bạn biết cách đương đầu với thử thách, dự tính trước những rủi ro và cho bạn cơ hội theo đuổi niềm say mê và giấc mơ mà có thể bạn sẽ không đạt được nếu thiếu nó, Terrence M. Mullen, 39 tuổi, người sáng lập một quỹ đầu tư ở Manhattan và cũng là một trong số 10 người được hỏi, cho biết.

Đối với câu hỏi họ quan niệm như thế nào là thành công, câu trả lời khá giống nhau ở mỗi người theo trật tự giảm của tầm quan trọng gồm có: sự hài lòng của bản thân hay sự cân bằng trong cuộc sống, sự tôn trọng của những người cùng lứa, vị trí giám đốc điều hành hay giám đốc tài chính ở một tập đoàn, lương bâc cao theo mỗi năm. Việc đặt trọng tâm vào sự cân bằng trong cuộc sống và hạnh phúc của bản thân đã cho thấy một sự thay đổi về chất trong cách nghĩ. Những cú sốc bên ngoài như sự kiện khủng bố 11/09, sự bùng nổ và đổ vỡ của nền kinh tế bong bóng dot-com đã khiến cho họ nhận ra những thứ thật sự quan trọng trong cuộc sống, mà trước hết chính là gia đình, Higgins nhận định.

6 trong 10 người được hỏi từng làm việc liên quan đến lĩnh vực Internet, trong đó 4 người là chủ công ty và 2 người là các nhà đầu tư vào các công ty khác trong lĩnh vực này. 5 trong số 10 người đã có kinh nghiệm đổ vỡ xương máu do kinh doanh thất bại hay họ mất việc vì ngừng sản xuất. 5 người khác đã đầu tư thành công hoặc kiếm được những khoản tiền lớn trong các công ty mà họ làm việc.

Dù từng thất bại hay không, tất cả đều thừa nhận rằng tốt nghiệp một trường lớn như Harvard đã mang lại cho họ một sự tự tin và lương bổng cao hơn những nơi khác, vì họ có IQ cao hơn và được đào tạo bài bản với nhiều kỹ năng hơn. Nhưng quan trọng nhất vẫn là sự tự tin. Chính tự tin đã khiến Michelle Madden rời bỏ thế giới kinh doanh vài năm trước đây để theo đuổi niềm đam mê trong nghành nhiếp ảnh và sở thích leo núi trước khi bắt đầu lại công việc như là một tư vấn viên. Hiện nay có quá ít thời gian và quá nhiều sức ép để thay đổi sự nghiệp, nhưng với bằng MBA, tôi đã có thể gián đoạn công việc và quay lại làm việc mà không gặp nhiều vấn đề, Madden nói.

Malone là một trường hợp khác, cô chưa bao giờ đặt kỳ vọng vào Harvard và vào đó với rất nhiều sự hoài nghi. Nhưng sau đó, cô đã sớm hài lòng. Một nơi đẹp đẽ, rộng lòng chào đón và ấm áp tình bè bạn, Malone tự hào nói về trường đại học danh tiếng này. Sau khi rời khỏi Harvard, cô mất vài năm để xây dựng một công ty trong lĩnh vực điện thoại và Internet. Nhưng cô đã bỏ việc để viết tiểu thuyết vào năm 1999 trước khi gia nhập vào Google tháng 6/2004. Cũng giống như Madden, cô biết rằng bằng cấp cho phép cô tạm ngừng làm việc và dễ dàng để có một công việc khác.

Theo Ngôi Sao.

nvha

16-10-2008, 10:10 AM

Mong các bạn trên forum không lôi mấy bài báo trên báo Quốc doanh vào trong này nếu không thật sự bài viết nghiêm túc. Cá nhân tôi rất dị ứng với các bài lược dịch trên báo Việt nam.

Các bạn có thể xem toàn văn bài viết bằng tiếng Anh ở đây:

Was earning that Harvard MBA worth it?

By Abby Ellin
Published: MONDAY, JUNE 12, 2006

About a year before Adam Richman was to graduate from the Harvard Business School in 1996, he took on an extracurricular project. It was long before the Internet bubble inflated and burst, and well before one of the school's graduates landed in the White House.Richman wondered: What was the real-world value of a master's in business administration, especially one from the iviest of Ivies? Was it, as widely perceived, an ace in the hole, a get-out-of-jail-free card, a ticket to the good life?
To that end,Richman decided to track a core group of his Harvard classmates, to converse with them about their personal and professional aspirations, and then to revisit them every five years until 2026. He also decided to film them along the way, à la "7 Up," Michael Apted's celebrated documentary series, which chronicled the lives of the same 14 people every seven years.
"I wanted to know how students made their career and leadership decisions, how they defined success," saidRichman, 36, the co-founder of Double Nickel Entertainment, a television and film production company. His academic adviser, Monica Higgins, an associate professor at the business school, became a consultant for the series, titled "Building Career Foundations," which she uses for case-study work in her classroom.
"We're very interested in how external shocks affect careers - like 9/11, the dot-com boom and bust - and this class was right before the dot-com boom," saidHiggins, 41. "We wondered: 'How do people make the decision to drop everything and go after a dream? Who makes those type of choices and why?' People ask alums, 'What was the most important class you took in school?' But the real test comes once you're out."
In that regard, their documentary is a litmus test of sorts about how much bang Harvard Business School graduates get for their buck after their academic sojourn to Boston. It is, of course, a narrow, microcosmic gauge, limited by the number of peopleRichman and Higgins are following, the questions they ask and the complexities of education and personal choice.
Even so, their work offers a window into the value of a Harvard degree that carries a two-year tuition bill of more than $70,000 and, more generally, onto the overall utility of any MBA degree.
THE popularity of the degrees has surged. In 1970, for example, business schools handed out 26,490 M.B.A.'s, according to the Department of Education. By 2004, after a period marked by an economic boom and heightened competition for top-flight business careers, that figure had jumped to 139,347. But opinion and data appear divided on the tangible benefits of an MBA
"The MBA is the most versatile degree out there - most of the others are very field specific, but you can apply an MBA to any field," said Rachel Edgington, a research director for the Graduate Management Admission Council, a nonprofit group in McLean, Virginia, that is overseen by leading business schools and administers annual admission exams.
But others advocate hands-on experience over academic buffing and polishing. "MBA programs train the wrong people in the wrong ways with the wrong consequences," said Henry Mintzberg, a management professor at McGill University in Montreal. "You can't create a manager in a classroom. If you give people who aren't managers the impression that you turned them into one, you've created hubris."
In 2003, Mintzberg tracked the performance of 19 students who graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1990 and were at the top of their class academically. Ten of the 19 were "utter failures," he said. "Another four were very questionable, at least," he added. "So five out of 19 did well."
Research varies on the value of an MBA A 2006 study by the Lubin School of Business at Pace University, looking at 482 companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange, found that only 162 of them had chief executives with graduate degrees in business. The companies with chief executives who went to more prestigious schools did no better than those who went to less prestigious schools, according to the study. Why this was so is unclear.
"One possibility is that if you don't have a graduate degree from a top school then you have to work that much harder to succeed," said Aron Gottesman, an associate professor at Pace and a co-author of the study.
On the other hand, Gottesman and a colleague found in a separate study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Empirical Finance, that mutual fund managers with M.B.A.'s from BusinessWeek's 30 top-ranked business schools - including Harvard - generally outperformed other mutual fund managers.Gottesman is not sure why this was so, either. "One possibility is that at higher-quality schools they simply teach better technical skills," he speculated. "Or students at top-tier schools have a higher I.Q.
Wherever the broader value of an MBA degree resides, most graduates themselves appear to be satisfied with their diplomas. According to the 2006 Global MBA Graduate Survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council, 63 percent of MBA alumni described the value of their degree as "outstanding or excellent," when comparing the cost of their degree to the quality of their educations; 29 percent called it "good."
And the subjects of "Building Career Foundations" have toldRichman that they are pleased, indeed, with the professional and personal doors that their Harvard degrees have opened.Richman and Higgins initially chose four women and six men to be their subjects in 1996 after a lengthy interview process. They surveyed about 130 other students along with their main focus group, asking questions about post-Harvard goals, salary expectations, relationship status and other topics. They also sent similar questionnaires to the same people in 2001 and had their cameras ready to film their core group.
Last weekend, when the class of 1996 returned to the Harvard Business School for its 10-year reunion,Richman and Higgins were present with their cameras and notepads.
"The experience lets you handle challenges, gives you the confidence to take calculated risks and enables people to pursue passions or dreams that maybe they otherwise couldn't at that point in their life," said Terrence Mullen, 39, a subject of the documentary who is a co-founder of Arsenal Capital Partners, a private equity fund in Manhattan.
In 1996 and 2001,Richman andHiggins asked their 140 subjects how they defined success. Their answers, in descending order of importance, were the same in each of those years: personal satisfaction or "balance," the respect of their peers, and the chief executive's or chief financial officer's post at a corporation. High salaries ranked last each year.
"It did surprise me that the folks coming right out of school would put money last, because they had all this debt," Higgins said. "But they want to have it all."
Respondents to her survey this year offered a different mix of priorities. They said that balance, financial security and corporate power were their top goals, but they placed less emphasis on becoming C.E.O.'s and were more interested in general corporate leadership positions. Ranked last was "respect by peers." Another category that often emerged, Professor Higgins said, was "impact" - defined as making "a real difference" or "a positive difference to society."
Higgins said the focus on "balance" and "happiness" seemed to stem from having or planning to have children, from feelings about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and from the bursting of the dot-com bubble. "They seemed to have come to realize that certain things are precious in life, not the least of which is family," she said.
At this year's reunion of the documentary's main subjects, it turned out that 6 of the 10 had been involved in Internet businesses previously - four as C.E.O.'s of their own companies, and two as investors in other companies. Five of the 10 had experienced a major career trauma - their businesses collapsed or were taken over or they lost jobs because of layoffs. The other five had invested successfully or cashed in on initial public offerings in companies where they had worked.
The documentary's main subjects now have jobs in various fields. Stephen Klein is executive vice president of Too Far, an arts and entertainment company in San Francisco; Kevin Hall is the chief operating officer of the Broad Foundation, a Los Angeles nonprofit group; Kim Malone is director of online advertising sales for Google Adsense in Mountain View, Calif.; Mareva Grabowski is a bank executive in Athens; Jeff Flemings is a senior executive at Digitas, an advertising and consulting firm in Boston; Clare R. Scherrer is a managing director at Goldman Sachs in New York; Levent Kahraman is a managing director of a New York bank; Cheryl Pegues is the director of business development at Cox Enterprises in Atlanta; and Humphrey Chen is a director at Avaya, a software company in Basking Ridge, New Jersey.
Hall, 39, pursued a series of corporate jobs after getting his Harvard degree and then founded a company that ran charter schools. At the Broad Foundation, he focuses on improving public education in Los Angeles. "September 11 really reinforced for me that I'm willing and want to devote my energy toward K through 12 from a patriotic standpoint," he said. "I think it's really critical for us as a country to do this."
Richman, who was a creative writing and drama major when he graduated from Tufts University in 1992, later went to Harvard Business School without formal business training and no plans to seek a corporate job. He did, however, want to do something in television and film, and rather than start as a gofer in Hollywood he applied to business school to "round myself off," he said.
"When I first got out, people in Hollywood were like: 'Why did you get your M.B.A.? You would have been better off sitting at someone's desk answering phones,' " he recalled. "But it certainly has been helpful for me now that we're doing bigger deals. It was helpful even before I started my company, putting together financing for projects and closing deals."
Another benefit of an MBA degree, especially from a top-notch school, is the public perception of it - and, by default, its holder - according to a 2005 report by the University of Maryland. The study found that recruiters paid higher salaries to graduates of top-tier business schools compared with those from less prominent ones. "The school's prominence provides legitimacy in the eyes of third parties," said Violina Rindova, an associate professor of strategy at the University of Maryland and co-author of the study.
"The real value of an Ivy League business degree is arguably not the education itself, but the screening of intelligence, drive and past accomplishments that the schools do," said Ben Dattner, founding principal of Dattner Consulting in New York. "Just like with undergraduate degrees, if you're smart enough to get into a top-tier school, you're likely to inspire confidence."
Michelle Madden, 39, a 1994 Harvard Business School graduate who lives in New York and worked at an online media company which she and her partners sold in 2001, agrees. "People tend to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're somewhat intelligent," she said. "They assume that if H.B.S. has done the screening, they don't need to concern themselves with the intelligence screener."
The degree also gave Madden the confidence to leave the business world several years ago to pursue interests in photography and mountain climbing before resuming work as a consultant. "Today, there's much less of a stigma to taking time off and changing careers," she said. "With the M.B.A., I felt I could do it and return to work without much problem."
Others say that they preferred actually being an entrepreneur to just contemplating becoming one. Jamie Rosen, who quit Harvard Business School in 1995 after getting funding for a software start-up, sold his company in 2004 and founded Memorystone Publishing, a company that produces digital photo albums, a year later.
"The reason I went to B-school was to learn to be an entrepreneur, and here was an opportunity to build a business and get paid for it," saidRosen, 35, of his decision to leave Harvard. "I'm not necessarily happy that I didn't finish, but I don't regret not going back because I enjoyed what I was doing."
Malone, one of the subjects ofRichman's documentary, said she never expected to enjoy Harvard as much as she did. "I went in with great skepticism," she said with a laugh. But what Malone, 38, found at Harvard surprised her - "a pretty friendly, warm, welcoming, nice place."
After Harvard, Malone spent a year working at the Federal Communications Commission and then helped begin an Internet telephone start-up, which eventually went public. She quit in 1999 to write her first novel, as yet unpublished, before joining Google in June 2004. Like Madden, Malone said her degree allowed her to take time off while knowing that it would be easy to get another job.
"It's this big safety net; it's a credential that makes it easier to get a job later," she said. "Maybe life shouldn't be that way, but it is what it is."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/business/yourmoney/11harvard.html?ei=5088&en=2c08cc79fc844603&ex=1307678400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/12/business/web.0612harvard.php

darren1010

16-10-2008, 10:31 AM

Đúng là 2 bài khác hẳn về mặt giá trị !!!

nvha

08-11-2008, 03:20 PM

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/11/07/in_search_for_expertise_harvard_looms_large?mode=P F

In search for expertise, Harvard looms large

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | November 7, 2008

CAMBRIDGE - When Barack Obama sought advice before a critical Senate vote on the terrorist surveillance program earlier this year, he called his friend and former colleague Cass Sunstein, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School.

When the Democratic presidential candidate convened a national security summit last summer, one of the hand-picked participants was Graham Allison, a nuclear weapons specialist at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Obama's healthcare plan, meanwhile, was formulated by David M. Cutler, a Harvard economics professor.

Nearly two-dozen members of the Harvard faculty - some of whom have known Obama since he arrived at Harvard Law School two decades ago - played a central role in shaping the policy views of the next president, as either formal advisers or informal consultants. From legal affairs and climate change to foreign affairs and the economy, they served as a backstop for his presidential campaign and some regularly exchanged phone calls and text messages with the candidate.

Now, as President-elect Obama begins putting together his administration, his Harvard brain trust is hoping to fill prominent positions in Washington - as top White House advisers, senior political appointees, Cabinet chiefs, or judicial nominees. Indeed, some longtime observers predict Obama's election will mark a major new chapter in Harvard's influence at the top rungs of the government - perhaps on a scale not seen since Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960.

"There is a broad and deep Harvard connection and I think it will serve him well," said Charles J. Ogletree, a specialist on racial justice who mentored Obama when he arrived in Cambridge in the late 1980s and who continues to dole out personal and policy advice to his former student and friend. That connection, he believes, "helps navigate this challenge of bringing change to Washington."

Harvard has a long history of advising both Democratic and Republican presidents. Starting with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, a slew of Harvard faculty members and administrators have been recruited to leave their perches along the Charles River to take up residence along the Potomac. A full quarter of Cabinet members over the past three decades have been former Harvard students, overseers, or staff, according to John Trumpbour, editor of "How Harvard Rules," a history of the university's role in shaping national policies.

Some administrations, like Kennedy's and Richard Nixon's, were known for their abundance of Harvardites and other intellectuals. The Kennedy administration enlisted so many that after his election Kennedy, a Harvard graduate and overseer, quipped to WHRB, a student radio station, that "We are starting up a university of our own of Harvard in Washington."

"There is nothing left at Harvard except Radcliffe," commentator James Reston remarked at the time.

But the Kennedy brain trust - later inherited by Lyndon Johnson - is also known for the mixed results that followed, especially the handling of the Vietnam War, and some say Obama would be foolish to overdose on academics who have relatively little political experience.

"Academics often don't live in the same world as the rest of the country," said Matthew C. Woessner, a professor of political science at Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg who supported Obama's opponent, Republican John McCain. "They are engaged in the exploration of ideas. Most don't have to make a payroll or, if they have tenure, worry about job security or fluctuations in the economy. Most academics don't have a good grasp on America's political center."

Obama and his advisers, for their part, insist he will recruit a cross-section of individuals from academia, the business world, and government - much like he did during his historic campaign for the White House.

But there is no mistaking the extent to which a new generation of Harvard minds is poised to descend on Washington, some for repeat tours, others for the first time.

Indeed, Hauser Hall, on the law school campus, could double as an Obama campaign outpost. The directory in the lobby includes half a dozen professors who have played the role of adviser or stump surrogate.

Several were Obama's mentors at Harvard Law School - like Ogletree, Laurence Tribe, and Martha Minow.

Minow, who later served on a commission with then-State Senator Obama, says of the president-elect: "He always wants to hear the competing arguments."

When Obama asked Ogletree to be a senior adviser, he told his mentor - whom he fondly calls "Tree" - to impart "anything you think I need to know and anything you think I need to hear,' " Ogletree recalled in a recent interview.

Tribe, who hired Obama as his research assistant in 1989, is an informal adviser on rule of law issues who delivered speeches on Obama's behalf.

Einer Elhauge, a legal conservative who stumped for Obama, could be in line for a senior anti-trust post, some say. Like many Obama advisers and confidants at Harvard he declined to be interviewed. "I will have to pass until the transition press staff is up and running."

Meanwhile, law professor Elizabeth Warren, who advised the campaign on bankruptcy issues, first met Obama at a Cambridge fund-raiser organized by colleague David Wilkins for Obama's 2004 US Senate bid. As recently as Wednesday, she was sought out by Obama's staff on transition issues, she said.

"There are a lot of people in his background [here] who all along have advised and counseled him," Warren said.

The Harvard-Obama orbit has also attracted people like Allison - a Reagan and Clinton-era Pentagon official - who have served previous administrations and were sought out by Obama or his campaign. Allison said in an interview that Obama reached out to him after reading his book, "Nuclear Terrorism," during a fact-finding trip to the former Soviet Union in late 2005.

Former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, meanwhile, has been frequently consulted and recently floated as a possible candidate to take his old job as Treasury chief, although a vocal group of liberal Democrats are already making known their opposition.

Some of them say he is partially responsible for the deregulation in the 1990s that led to the current financial crisis, while others cite his controversial comments about the female intellect as disqualifying him.

Another Washington veteran who has been advising Obama is Sarah Sewall, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School, who was assistant secretary of defense for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance in the Clinton years.

Uniquely, Obama's Harvard brain trust includes many newer faces as well. They are younger, more diverse, and generally less experienced in government service, but possibly more influential.

There is Cutler, 42, Obama's senior healthcare policy adviser, and Jeffrey Liebman, 40, a professor of public policy at the Kennedy School who advises on Social Security and other retirement issues. Samantha Power, the 38-year-old Harvard foreign policy specialist and former Obama adviser, has been mentioned by some experts as a possible candidate for a senior post.

Another newer face is Daniel Kammen, 46, a former lecturer at the Kennedy School who earned his doctorate in physics at Harvard and is Obama's senior energy and environment adviser.

Then there are Obama's former law school classmates. Preeta Bansal advises Obama on human rights. Michael Froman, a former adviser to Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, is a key purveyor of economic advice and, some predict, could become Obama's top economic adviser in the White House.

Julius Genachowski, former chief counsel for the Federal Communications Commission, has handled technology issues on the campaign.

Froman, Genachowski, and Christopher Edley, another of Obama's Harvard Law School professors, were named as members of his presidential transition team yesterday.

A major difference between many of the current generation of Harvard advisers and those who influenced previous presidential hopefuls, such as Clinton or Jimmy Carter, according to Ogletree, is that many know Obama personally.

"They didn't know Carter," said Ogletree, proudly displaying a photo of him and Obama at a 2005 reunion. "They didn't know Clinton."

Still, the real measure of their influence may not be in the number of government positions they hold, according to Tribe, who still has the appointment book from 1989 where he marked down Obama's name after the first-year law student knocked on his office door. "Shaping his thinking as a policy maker may be as important as serving in the government."

Globe correspondent Jenny Paul contributed to this article. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

saubebe

19-11-2008, 01:34 AM

Happy_4_U

19-11-2008, 03:08 AM

Hôm nay đọc được một bài viết khá thú vị về HBS/ Harvard MBA written by a Harvard alumni, post lên cho mọi người đọc chơi:
http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2007/09/04/Features/Alumni.Perspective-2946965.shtml

Some casual thoughts:
1. Reality check
2. Feel good about lesson #1 (not alone - see... even Harvard MBA'ers suffer)
3. Lesson #3 rings a bell.
4. Not sure about lesson #5 - is that IT-specific?
5. Overall it's fun to hear from insiders but I would not agree with all the pessimistic views.

Alumni Perspective
Lessons Learned
by Paul Shafer, HBS, '79

Harbus: Before we dive into things, would you introduce yourself, please.
Shafer: My name is Paul Shafer. I entered the MBA class in 1977, when invited. I graduated on time in 1979, likely in the middle third of the class. Since my career started in 1975 (before HBS), I have worked as an information technology (IT) practitioner, mostly for the Fortune 500, with very few breaks. In recent years I have risen to the role of principal architect of project management standards that are being enforced across a multi-billion dollar IT practice.

Harbus: Why come forward to share some of your HBS and career experiences with our students now?
Shafer: I believe HBS students are managing their careers at a historically dysfunctional time. Unless things have changed since I was there, students may not be hearing the truth about what awaits them once they earn their MBA degrees. They may be in for greater hard knocks than they deserve or expect, once they graduate. Far from receiving favorable treatment, they may not even receive a fair shake, and worse, find that their hard-won paper makes them a target. What I relate here is something I deeply wish someone had had the decency to share with my classmates and me when we were deciding whether to invest in HBS, or at least, once we got there.

Harbus: If you are sure of your story, why not cite names of people and companies involved?
Shafer: The purpose of this text is not to indict specific individuals years after the fact, but rather, to share important truths with those who may value them here and now.

Lesson #1:
A degree from HBS does not guarantee, nor even correlate with, a high salary and a corner office.
It is a very natural and healthy thing for young, high-potential people to want to distinguish and prove themselves. It is a very sick and dysfunctional thing to exploit them by stroking their egos and otherwise making them think they can readily achieve their goals when, in fact, if they achieve them at all, it will be through their own innate attributes against the odds imposed by a toxic corporate environment and not by anything as artificial as an expensive piece of paper. Consulting literature has reported over the years that a huge number of people, with and without expensive degrees, have left industry out of sheer disgust, to do their own purely entrepreneurial thing, join the nonprofits, or just opt out of corporate management and "getting ahead". My own experiences across many industries, even in companies rated "best to work for in America," bear this out.

Current HBS students face an additional obstacle of recent years-an economy in which tens of millions of jobs have been outsourced, and not just junior or blue-collar jobs. As only 1 example, in the 2003 timeframe, a major Wall Street investment bank announced that it was forsaking its traditional connection with Ivy League schools to get interns from India, thus saving 60 percent of the associated labor costs. After all, dollars trump traditional ties-as another door slams in the faces of those starting their careers.

Lesson #2:
All HBS graduates are not created equal. There is a difference between an "HBS grad" and a "Harvard MBA". People coming from money and connections will always walk in where others are uninvited, and merely being an HBS grad does not narrow that gap.
An MBA degree's impact on careers is much more situational than HBS wants students to know. The three groups it most benefits are those who need it least. These groups include those who grew up in privilege, whose personal and family contacts alone virtually assure their future; those who will sacrifice all-everything-for money, power and position; and those with a strong corporate tie that may even be sponsoring their MBA education. HBS students not in any of these three groups are at an elevated risk of having their expectations unmet.

Social class distinctions, and the importance of pedigree in the business world, are alive and well in American industry. The patricians who run America strongly prefer to hire like types for more senior roles. Their view is that a plebian does not become a patrician, with all the privileges thereunto appertaining, just by associating with patricians in a classroom for two years. In this way, social and career privilege works very effectively to preserve itself and bar newcomers.

I can recall one instance when, three years out of HBS, finding myself in an industry getting hammered by foreign competition, I was trying to identify career options. I contacted the HBS Placement Office for advice, but got no support. Two HBS alumni handed out referrals at an evening job change seminar. One was to a third HBS alumnus who advised me that an "HBS graduate" is not the same as a "Harvard MBA," in that the former lack the pedigree and connections to make the HBS degree pay off. He offered no other help. Another referral was to a fourth HBS alumnus who suggested he might interview me if I donated cash to the HBS Alumni Fund.

Lesson #3:
Hands-on experience and practical skills can be more beneficial than your HBS degree, especially at times of layoffs and downsizing.
Five years out of HBS, when I interviewed at a large computer manufacturer, the hiring manager cautioned me that only hands-on systems skills, and not the MBA degree, would keep me the job.

Six years later, in 1990, the computer industry had hit the skids, and in general virtually no one was hiring anyone. I interviewed in the service industries with a major airline whose team of line managers informed me I was sitting there only because I had chosen a much more pragmatic path than most MBAs select and had hands-on skills they wanted to engage. They gave me a choice of which manager and job I wanted based on those skills, with no further discussion of the MBA degree. They pointedly stated that MBAs in the job market due to washing out from partnership bids in service firms were viewed by them as patently unmarketable.

Lesson #4:
HBS Career Services cannot be relied on to provide support that combats negative forces such as a dismal economy.
My HBS class, like most, was full of bright, motivated people who worked under continually high stress to learn, grow and help make their way in a business world that we sensed in the 1970s had become excruciatingly difficult. HBS projected an attitude that we were all part of a baby boom, at a time of intense competition for shrinking pie, so they need do nothing more than construct an obstacle course and we would all run through it like willing rats as we raced toward some kind of career prospects.

The summer job market after the first HBS year was poor. The HBS Placement Director rationalized this to us so that we would accept it as a temporary inconvenience and not perceive it as storm clouds on the horizon regarding ultimate MBA prospects after graduation. The "Big 8" (since then, "Big 4") firm I worked for had no real plan for me for the summer, and I was underutilized. The firm let me know they would pursue me for a permanent work offer, but I had decided by the end of the summer not to work for them because I could not respect the way that they treated their employees.

As second year recruiting began, the HBS Placement Director advised us that the job market was significantly changing and that we should "pay our dues" in a 5+ year apprenticeship to learn a function rather than expecting to build a career based on an HBS degree. I received three offers: from the summer job's firm, a small consulting firm that was high risk and marginal, and from an auto manufacturer wanting help with a system implementation (based on faculty recommendation). The auto mfr's Personnel Manager, when hosting me for a site visit, indulged in ethnic slurs (I am an ethnic minority). He did not take me to lunch, but rather, had a real-estate agent take me out for a hamburger during which time she shared her concern that the Personnel Manager's only interest in her was sexual. Having heard enough, I rejected the offer from that company. The HBS Placement Director then advised me the job market was very difficult; that, like other students, I would need to vacate the campus immediately after the school year ended; and that I should accept the offer from the auto manufacturer or risk being unemployed indefinitely with no further help from HBS. He offered to contact his "friend" at a Big 8 firm widely viewed as marginal, but offered no other support. Some time later, the news hit that the HBS Placement Director and his staff were gone, but in the meantime, out of sheer necessity, with near-zero net worth, I had taken his advice and committed to the auto manufacturer. Among classmates I knew, there were noticeable instances of those receiving one offer, or a very late offer, or offers they could have received without an MBA from Harvard.

Lesson #5:
Having a degree from HBS not only does not ensure a fair shake, but might make you a target because you will be held to a higher standard and co-workers or superiors might resent your degree.

The Operations Manager I reported at the auto manufacturer seemed to have mixed views of me. He valued my systems work because it made him look good, but also seemed to view me as a threat to his position. He had no plans for me nor did we ever have discussions. The only training I received was in how to use advanced functions on the photocopier.

The auto Operations Executive who had been a major player in recruiting me, and who had suggested he would be involved with me on an ongoing basis, never contacted me. Department managers had no understanding of who I was or desire to talk with me.

As I completed the system implementation, my management indicated satisfaction with the work but no encouragement. Apparently, their only interest in me was getting the system implemented cheaply so I began researching a job change. I read a fiction article illustrating fact in Esquire, in which a graduate of a leading business school joined a prestigious services firm, failed to make the fourth-year cut, discovered little market for his strategic planning skills unaccompanied by line experience, and, finding himself on a fast train to oblivion, jumped off a skyscraper. Other than the overly dramatized ending, this cautionary tale rang true, so it made sense to build on my systems track record and not seek privileges based on having a high-priced degree. I had a sense that the job value of the MBA, if any, might terminate after five years or so, so it was particularly important to find a decent, stable employer at this point.

After leaving the auto firm and accepting my second job post MBA, to which I connected through HBS faculty referral, facts that could not have been previously known began to unfold, in a series of harsh, alarming interactions. My new superior, an Operations Manager, revealed he had been fired from his previous job in a "smoking gun" company,and his wife had divorced him. Needing to support himself and pay the legal settlement, he had apparently told the high-tech company in which we now worked that he was a systems expert and knew how to provide quick, cheap, leading-edge systems. It was not clear he had any real background in that area, as he shoved me into a commitment for providing such systems yet offered neither leadership nor expertise of any kind. The scale of the system needed went far beyond anything the company, or I, or others involved had done before, or that the industry had addressed through commercially available packages. We delivered it, though the impact on my health and on the careers of the managers responsible was very negative.

Lesson #6:
Racism and sexism are still present in today's corporate world.
In the auto plant, department managers had an ongoing contest to see which of them could hire the female secretary with the largest breasts. Ethnic slurs in my presence were continual, such as the Personnel Manager publicly declaring, "Let's have a pig roast!" or a teammate, feigning a sneeze, with "AhhhJewwwwwww!" Later, in the first year at the second job, it became clear that ethnic slurs were not the exclusive province of heavy industry in America's heartland.

Lesson #7:
It important to maintain your health now because the corporate world is not always supportive of employees' medical conditions.
When I was at HBS, health concerns were foreign to me. Now, at 52, my peers and I view them as telling indicator's of one's situation in life not to mention expected lifespan.

During my summer internship, I heard from a young accountant from the Midwest that, knowing he was a hemophiliac, the firm had sent him for training to a sprawling rather than a compact campus, where he stumbled on steps and had to be rushed to the hospital to stop his internal bleeding, lest he die-and then the firm had begun sending him signals that he might better leave.

Later in the auto plant, I got the news that a Chicago MBA colleague of mine, in a higher-level role, was absent for a long while due to a cardiac event at age 29, and that such situations were not uncommon in that company even for young talent. (The cardiac event sounded like a heart attack but I know only that he suddenly disappeared and was gone for several months.)

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
The need is for HBS to reengineer itself, from an operation that exploits its aura from the past and the earnest nature of young people to lure them in, then shoves them into a 2-year obstacle course while sucking their pockets dry before shoving them out and disowning them-to one that is in the business of providing real, ongoing support and care, over a period of time, to high-potential people who are trying to build careers against very great odds. Each student might reconsider whether his or her goals will really be met by two years at HBS, rather than assuming HBS is the premier choice for anyone with real smarts, aspiration and motivation. Alumni of every stripe might offer support and truth to students and those in early career, rather than the usual self-promoting, evasive pabulum.

What I believe is more likely to happen in response to this text is this: HBS will respond with the usual non sequitur-"One out of eight of our graduates are CEOs"-not stating, but strongly insinuating, that correlation is causality for that group, and that the other seven eighths are not worth further consideration. There will be a backlash from HBS graduates who are concerned that the mystique enveloping the diploma they worked so hard to earn not be destroyed in favor of reality just so current students can have the benefit of the truth. And some of your current students will see themselves in this text and be forewarned-which is why I offer it. ?