What They Don't Teach You in MBA Programs

So, I got my MSM degree back in September of '86. I took a lot of courses but I knew they weren't teaching me everything in terms of my education.

I had a thing for economics and spent a lot of time studying it. As of now, I have 6 courses under my belt and I go A's in 5 and an A minus in one course. Here's what they didn't teach me in brief:

First of all just like there are partial derivatives, there are also total derivatives. And taking it one step further, there are partial and total differentials. And if you want to see a good book on these topics see Schaum's Introduction to Mathematical Economics.

So, you might ask, how did I chance on all this additional information? Well, in grad school, some of m fellow students were hanging out with the economics teacher. I was hanging out with the marketing teacher. So, the economics teacher told everyone what took me years to come upon on my own. I knew the professor was teaching them something outside of the classroom that wasn't being covered in it. But like I said, it took several years for me to bridge the gap.

I also figured out that they don't teach you how to formulate a supply or demand curve in MBA education. These curves are supplied to a student as a given. You need an econometrician to do the formulation of the curves. My text on Managerial Economics makes it clear that it is way beyond the scope of that book to teach people how to come up with the curves.

I also have Kelvin Lancaster's book Mathematical Economics. The math is way over my head as I only took the calculus for business majors and not "the real thing" offered to pure economics majors.

Now, I don't' have an MBA. I have a Master of Science in Management degree and I did very well in my studies. The MSM degree is oriented towards general managers who are time and budget constrained needing to get a good business education at a relatively low cost.

The theory is that although I took some courses in economics, statistics, etc, I was not going to be an economist or a statistician; I would simply read reports they give me to make business decisions.

And my MSM degree differs from subsequent revisions that Boston University made over the years as they added additional coursework in International Business to the program. I also have an undergraduate degree in business but it didn't make much of a difference.

But I went to grad school in Israel and they aren't open to new ideas. I went to Tel Aviv's government run employment agency and I wasn't expecting the bad reception I was going to be treated to. The counselor screamed at me, "What kind of degree is this?" very loudly. I was really taken aback and by surprise.

Tel Aviv University has an MBA program that takes 3 years to complete and it supposedly rivals Harvard's MBA program. At least that's what the Israeli's think.

My MSM degree only took 10 months of study over 11 months from beginning to end. And I was really glad when I was completed but the degree alone wasn't enough to find employment I needed to take a course in computer programming to find work.

I would like to further my education but I think I will have to do it on my own. Business education simply doesn't give a lot of people usable skills.

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