Bulldoze the business school - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/27/bulldoze-the-business-school <comment><USER3> I recently finished an executive MBA at a top European B-school. To echo some of the comments, it was overall way easier than my initial studies (eng school), with some exceptions such as a brutal strategy assignment. There was also a sense of entitlement from some of the participants, especially those who were financed by their company. "Entertain me and give me my diploma" so to speak.

On the other hand, due to the executive nature of the program (average age was something like 38-39) the classes were much more nuanced, especially on topics such as HR, management and so forth - when everyone in the room has some degree of managerial experience and a few war stories to share there's much less room for indoctrination. This was also due to European culture, which is a big part of the school's DNA and reinforced by the mostly European cohort.

I did learn a lot of stuff; what will stay with me the most is what I learned about myself, through introspective assignments and interacting with other students, most of whom had very different backgrounds. But I would never have been able to do this had I taken the program as an undergrad or right after eng school. It's true that you can't teach common sense, you must learn it through practice. However having the opportunity to reflect on that practice, formalizing it and sharing it with likeminded persons was tremendously helpful.

EDIT: to constrast my experience with the content of TFA, I crossed a few MBA students in NY during a seminar. The discussion went something like this:

Me: so what business do you guys want to work in after graduating?

One of them: real estate!

Me: cool, any particular reason why?

Him: to make lots of money and retire early! (Rest of the group nod in agremeent)

Me: ...

This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime crisis.

<comment><USER4> > _This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime > crisis_

Brings to mind this from Peter Thiel (exclude the length):

Q. You've written that you doubt the efficacy of MBA programs to prepare future business leaders. What would an effective MBA program look like?

 _A. The question is, what substance of business are you focused on? The conceit of the MBA is that you don't need to have any substance at all. It's just this management science, and you can apply that equally well in a software company or an oil drilling company or a fashion company or a rocket company. That's the bias I'd want us to cut against. So for the degree, people would learn substantive things and then on the side you'd pick up some business skills. But you wouldn't treat the business degree as the central thing.

I think one challenge a lot of the business schools have is they end up attracting students who are very extroverted and have very low conviction, and they put them in this hot house environment for a few years — at the end of which, a large number of people go into whatever was the last trendy thing to do. They've done studies at Harvard Business School where they've found that the largest cohort always went into the wrong field. So in 1989, they all went to work for Michael Milken, a year or two before he went to jail. They were never interested in Silicon Valley except for 1999, 2000. The last decade their interest was housing and private equity.

So there is something about the way in which business school is decoupled from anything really substantive that I'd want to rethink._

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on- leadership/wp/2014/10...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on- leadership/wp/2014/10/10/peter-thiel-on-what-works-at-work)

<comment><USER5> And we should listen to Peter Thiel because....

<comment><USER6> ... the downvotes say so.

I am wondering about the same. Peter Thiel does not seem to be someone the world should listen to. His politics are anti-human I would say. And yes, by being as influentual as he is I think we can and should talk about his politics here.

I am still trying to figure out how two such different world-views like thiel and musk were able to work together.

<comment><USER7> Just because someone has bad ideas (or ideas you disagree with) in one area, why would that mean all their ideas are bad?

To take an extreme example, Bobby Fischer is easily in the running for best chess player of all time. He was also an anti-semite. Does that somehow make his chess less good? Should we ignore that he was an anti-Semite? No! But should we cut all his games from chess books because of it?

Indeed, if you read many biographies one might quickly reach the conclusion that many of the world's most accomplished men and women are also among its most flawed. Science, literature, and art would be set make many centuries if we had to discard all the work of those not meeting modern standards of decency.

To be clear, I don't think Thiel is anywhere near as extreme a case as Fischer. I disagree with his politics (just the ordinary libertarian Baloney), but I think he is right on this point.

My advice to you would be to learn to separate ideas from the people that originate them, or you'll miss out on so much great thought.

<comment><USER6> Why promote a chess player who is anti semite if you could promote another one who is not?

<comment><USER8> He isn't getting "promoted" — he won a hell of a lot.

<comment><USER6> As did others.

<comment><USER9> I suspect you are trolling at this point.

<comment><USER6> There are many chess players. There are many chess players playing very good. You don't need to promote the anti-semite chess player. You can also promote the one who does not propagate fascist world views.

Let' use the analogy for the sentence from Peter Thiel:

The statement that managers should know something besides management is not original at all. There are hundreds of people telling you that. It is common wisdom. I heard that 20 years ago and I am still hearing it.

So why promote Peter Thiel for saying that? There is no need at all to quote him. The quote is not original, nothing new, nothing special.

Nevertheless, the commenter decided to quote Peter Thiel on that and give him praise.

Make up your own mind about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Drucker, the person most attributed with founding modern management, himself stated that you cannot teach management:

 _Prof Drucker expounds: "Teaching 23-year-olds in an MBA programme strikes me as largely a waste of time. They lack the background of experience. You can teach them skills - accounting and what have you - but you can't teach them management."

His view is that management is neither an art nor a science but a practice - in which achievement is measured not by academic awards but by results._

[https://www.ft.com/content/5e78a9cc-3732-11d9-a8bb-00000e251...](https://www.ft.com/content/5e78a9cc-3732-11d9-a8bb-00000e2511c8)

<comment><USER11> The original idea of bschools where they where for mid career mangers where considered high flyers.

Now it seems the higher level degree status is used to game visa applications.

Maybe a MBA should only be issued if you can prove 10 or 15 years real world work experience which would return the MBA to its roots as a course for experienced people

<comment><USER12> No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course.

Unfortunately, it looks that more than a half of big name universities are happy to admit people without such, or even no undergraduate studies background.

<comment><USER13> _No respectable business school should admit people without substantial existing work experience into any graduate course._

All the top US MBA programmes are stuffed with people with 2-3 years investment banking or management consulting as their sole experience.

The concept of a management consultant is possibly even more ridiculous to begin with

<comment><USER14> If you think management is only common sense, then paying 500 bucks an hour for MBA grads is ridiculously.

Using that logic, either the CEO is stupid, or the company employees are utterly incompetent and lacks common sense.

Or, more likely,

a) there's some science/skills behind management that can be learned at school even by non experienced people;

b) those young MBA people worked 60/70 hours per week for 3/4 years being part of a team reporting directly to the C-level executives of Fortune 500 corps, solving quite complex problems.

<comment><USER13> _either the CEO is stupid_

He or she might be; plenty get those kinds of jobs on their personal connections rather than their track records.

But a more usual scenario is that the CEO wants to fund their next bonus by slashing jobs, and paying management consultants - with the company's money - to facilitate that is, to that sort of person, a shrewd move.

<comment><USER14> >He or she might be; plenty get those kinds of jobs on their personal connections rather than their track records.

I'm yet to see a stupid person as the CEO of a large corp. Sociopath maybe, but hardly stupid.

Now an unpopular opinion: maybe the slashed jobs were no longer necessary and letting people go was needed for the company to remain competitive?

<comment><USER13> Those people were hired for a reason; if the CEO literally cannot think of anything useful for them to do then they have utterly failed as leaders. But they are lavishly rewarded nonetheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I graduated from business school last spring.

It's not that they need to be bulldozed, but rather, treated as a trade school.

Our highest rated classes were taught by practitioners - those in the Arena, leading men and women, making the difficult ethical choices, then posing them to us to wrestle through. These were the classes we all wanted to take, but were deeply oversubscribed and only a fraction of us got to take.

The practitioners were sidelined by the academics. The theorists and mere paper-writers - many of whom either utterly failed at business or never spent a day outside the university environment.

Not one of my MBA classmates planned to teach - yet we spent most of our required class time being taught by those in power with the least relevance to the real world.

The real revolution in business education will occur when the academics relinquish control, and let those who've learned through hard fought experience take the reins.

My experience was incredible - my classmates were the most impressive folks I've ever met. And the value there was incalculable. But the education was easily replicable, aside from the phenomenal courses taught by practitioners.

<comment><USER16> This is largely the duality between a school of engineering, and a school of technology as well. Purdue University has both. Engineering is this 150 year tradition that literally made Indiana the crossroads of America. Top 5 in most of it's disciplines year after year.

But that consistency has brought the hordes. Thus, freshman engineering is this gauntlet to run. Profressors are busy with reasearch, TAs are just reciting teleprompters. If you make it through, it's because you were self sufficient, and didn't rely on the university for much of anything.

The school of technology, on the other hand, requires professors have 15 years experience in industry. No research is performed. Every single core class has a lab section. It is literally disrupting the school of engineering by taking the students who aren't yet polyglots at 18, and actually teaching them to be engineers.

It is effectively a bypass to the same destination of becoming an Engineer. But there's more lanes, better signage,its well lit, more efficient maintenance, and I arrive at my destination refreshed, instead of frazzled because of all that big city gridlock.

<comment><USER17> I've seen something similar at other institutions.

The School of Engineering, in this case, is trying to teach something more than just domain knowledge about engineering disciplines. The goal is to take those "18 year-old polyglots" and turn them into world-class problem solvers.

You see this is every elite educational program. Mathematics at Chicago. Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. Engineering at MIT. Their programs have a difference in kind, and are very intentionally not built for "the average college student".

It's good that there's an alternative path within the same institution for those students who need to focus their efforts on baseline competence. But it's also good that strong programs expect more out of their students.

<comment><USER18> While those are big name schools. When I review a resume I never even look at the education section. I will never be impressed by that.

<comment><USER16> I would say, to firm that up even more, every school can point to their accomplishments, and the graduates/professors that worked on them, as to why they are in rarified air. You can look through Wikipedia at all of these renowned scientists, and who their advisors were, and who their students were. So you can say they stood on the shoulders of giants, and also stood tall for others to perch even higher.

But not a single one of those heroes of science should rightly be remembered primarily or even secondarily because of where they studied.

The underlying fallacy is that you can only learn the best skills from the best people in a short window if time in your early adulthood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> He's got a point, and I studied at a top business school.

The points he makes are mostly valid. Not sure if he mentioned this one, though:

The existence of business schools gives society the unjustified idea that there are positions for which business graduates are better suited than most other people.

To compare, medical schools do the same but it is justified.

I wouldn't have surgery performed on me by someone who hadn't been to medical school, but I would be indifferent to hiring a manager who hadn't gone to business school. (One interesting line of thought I did learn at business school was that in the Germanic world, they are less likely to accept the Anglo-Saxon view that management is a separate skill to working. So they get more people stepping up from the ranks.)

So why do I think this? When I studied the business school, it was just very weak intellectually. Kinda like watching documentaries all day; interesting, makes you think you understand something, but ultimately superficial. Reading about Betamax vs VHS is the same; you think you're gaining insight as you do it, but there's nothing really deep in there. There's not really a method or organising principle to decision making, other than "try to think about it in an organized way, keeping in mind relevant precedents" (like SWOT). Basically just common sense as a degree.

That's mostly the strategy part I'm addressing there, which is probably the piece most people associate with business school.

The other parts are also better taught by other departments. Finance can get very interesting when it comes to derivatives and investment strategies, but you're never going to learn this without having a strong applied math background. Organization behaviour and Human Resource Management, there are scientific departments that reach into the same space. Again, there's a big gap between what we can learn about human psychology and how you should use that information practically.

Worst of all is the philosophical angle. So many times I thought to myself "how do you actually know this" with very little answer.

If you want to learn how to solve business problems, there is a course that is uniquely suited for this. Software Engineering. You look at business problems, look at what resources you have available, see how other people solved them (hashmap, quicksort), and cook up your own solution using the same tools that professionals use (git, IDEs, terminals).

<comment><USER20> "So why do I think this? When I studied the business school, it was just very weak intellectually. Kinda like watching documentaries all day; interesting, makes you think you understand something, but ultimately superficial. Reading about Betamax vs VHS is the same; you think you're gaining insight as you do it, but there's nothing really deep in there. There's not really a method or organising principle to decision making, other than "try to think about it in an organized way, keeping in mind relevant precedents" (like SWOT). Basically just common sense as a degree."

That's one thing I have heard from several people who have STEM degrees and also an MBA. They all say that once you got into business school it was by far the easiest degree they got.

<comment><USER21> Add me to the list. There are also any number of books you can read about weak in math liberal arts major struggling through year one of biz school.

And I saw it first hand as a tutor. I had someone ask me to explain graphs to them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have an undergrad business degree, and a lot of the criticism in the piece is fair. Most of what you learn is common sense. There's a reason there are plenty of people in history that have been able to build multimillion dollar businesses without very little formal schooling, it's simply not as difficult as engineering or chemistry.

I was a marketing major, and really there is no value in the credential past an undegraduate level. The journals that professors publish in have no relevance to people working in the field, and are borderline gibberish. To have a masters or PhD in marketing is entirely useless unless you want to become an academic.

There's also a lot of make work in the business school. I studied political science as my minor and found the papers had a lot less "work" from a volume point of view, but I learnt a lot more and was challenged to think a lot.

</comment><comment><USER23> Gary Hamel has been very effective in calling out the emperor's lack of clothes in business 'education' for years - I was at an event in 2009 when he went on an epic rant after the banking 'crisis'.

[https://www.london.edu/faculty-and- research/faculty/profiles...](https://www.london.edu/faculty-and- research/faculty/profiles/h/hamel-g#.WuSUpvdFVE4)

Ironically both Mr Parker and Mr Hamel are being paid well for teaching at the institutions they despise.

I see an analogy with the vast 'San Francisco Academy of Art University', now the largest property owner in San Francisco. It's a highly successful business teaching all sorts of art courses, but a common criticism is that it's a mill, taking young people's money to 'learn art' in an expensive, beautiful city. The fact it is there is demand and it's hugely profitable, just like BSchool. Doesn't mean you are a good businessman or artist at the end of it - I believe like Drucker you have to learn as a trade in context not as a theory - <USER2> highly successful businesses cater to demand...

</comment><comment><USER4> Anybody who found this interesting will like 'The Management Myth':

> _The thing that makes modern management theory so painful to read isn't > usually the dearth of reliable empirical data. It's that maddening papal > infallibility. Oh sure, there are a few pearls of insight, and one or two > stories about hero-CEOs that can hook you like bad popcorn. But the rest is > just inane._

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the- man...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/06/the-management- myth/304883/)

And previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11931270)

</comment><comment><USER24> We don't need rich bosses. We need hands-on leaders who aren't afraid to make the world a better place and who respect the integrity of all their collaborators.

Replace business schools with institutions that foster leadership, collaboration, and inclusive positive project management skills from a wide variety of alternative forms of organization.

For example: cooperatives are a legitimate, sustainable form of business, so _why aren 't they being taught and innovated in business schools?_

Also, project management skills should be something everyone gets. Every working person should be afforded opportunities to grow in their ability to lead.

</comment><comment><USER25> My finance professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley preached that maximizing profit was our ultimate service to the world---so much so-- that he taught that if we were running a company and had an option to maximize profits by producing a product that would seriously harm the health of people (eg. give them a medical condition), we should undoubtedly DO IT. Because we would have maximized profit for shareholders, made something great for our customers, and (if we needed) we could take the extra profits and make medical payments to the people harmed to make it whole.

He made this argument in front of 150+ person lecture class. I was so dumbfounded and shell-shocked at the argument that I couldn't believe what I just heard. I looked around at the undergrad business finance students around me, and it looked as if they were absorbing it in.

That was the day I knew I chose the wrong major.

I really did think about raising my hand in that class to respond to the hellish ethics he just espoused. But this professor frequently shouted down students or used ridicule to make people regret raising their hands, and I didn't have the worldview I now have to be able to tell him precisely and irrefutably why what he was teaching us was so so wrong.

The real trouble, however, is that this professor was just a preacher for the doctrine of modern day American capitalism. I just expected to hear the doctrine in a much more sugar-coated and digestible form. He literally read the doctrine to us right out of the book.

UC Berkeley allows undergrads to study at their Haas School of Business and earn a BS (bachelor of SCIENCE) in Business Administration. This is what I was studying. Luckily I had enough time left in undergrad after this lecture to switch to studying computer science at the College of Engineering--where I then felt like I was learning real skills.

<comment><USER26> I was a student at the great institution called UC Berkeley and I remember well the teenagers walking around in suits/ties and skirts/blouse. These were undergrad Business school students and I remember well the air of superiority they showed. They seemed so proud.

<comment><USER25> I was in classes with these kids. Many of them were smug AF and wanted to start tech companies, but didn't know a thing about software engineering. I just felt they wanted to manage/direct the people and make the money.

Since I had been coding since a young age, building web apps in my spare time, when I was in classes with these people I started to actually realize I had this superpower they valued.

But truth was I didn't want to work with any of them. I didn't see the value in someone whose studies were about learning how to harness my value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> On the same topic, I absolutely recommend reading "Confronting Managerialism: How the Business Elite and Their Schools Threw Our Lives Out of Balance" by Robert R. Locke and J.-C. Spender.

[https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business- Ec...](https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Managerialism-Business-Economic- Controversies/dp/178032071X)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm a Stanford business school grad and harbour no fanatical love for it. I penned a public letter to my Dean [1] five years ago suggesting changes to a curriculum I saw as myopic.

But this article strikes me as a diatribe against capitalism rather than business school alone. And the author's track record of railing against an industry he taught in for years sounds a bit like a publicity effort.

Fwiw, my experience at Stanford was very positive and I found some of the academics to be quite useful even ten years later. And my classmate are incredible and many remain close friends and advisors.

[1] [http://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/120424/Reform- Stanfor...](http://www.curiousjuice.com/blog-0/bid/120424/Reform-Stanford- Business-School-or-keep-paying-lip-service-to-motto)

<comment><USER29> > my classmate are incredible and many remain close friends

That's a more significant aspect of business school than the classes themselves. In fact, I suspect the curriculum are designed more to maximize the creation of friendships (i.e. fairly easy and communal) than it is to actually fill people with knowledge.

<comment><USER26> An acquaintance of mine who graduated from USC MBA said basically you will do well if you can carry on good conversation over beer.

And another who went to Harvard Law said everyone at Harvard Law viewed folks at Harvard MBA as idiots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> An MBA, much like most schooling, is all about signaling. Anyone who frames our educational system in any other way is missing the point.

<comment><USER30> In my view, there is a grain of truth to the "signaling" hypothesis, but it also sounds like:

1\. A legitimate grievance from people who didn't get an education and are having it arbitrarily held against them.

2\. Sour grapes from people who got nothing from their time spent in school.

Higher education is whatever you make of it. You're legally an adult, and can make your own choices. No two people will experience it in the same way. My kid will start college next year. I've given her a couple of analogies (roll your eyes after each one):

1\. It's like going to California during the gold rush, and being handed a shovel and a bag. You get to keep the contents of the bag in four years.

2\. It's a tiny elite college hidden inside a giant Big Ten party school. There is intense social pressure for you to join the party school. You decide.

<comment><USER31> That grain of truth was enough to win a Nobel prize.

<comment><USER30> Indeed, but like many social science results, "signaling" has taken on a life of its own in the popular consciousness.

In the post above mine, signaling has gone from being an interesting and potentially measurable effect, to being the _entire_ effect of education. Emphasis mine:

>>> An MBA, much like most schooling, is _all about signaling_. Anyone who frames our educational system in any other way is missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> You can substitute a number of humanities programs and all the criticisms would be equally valid.

</comment><comment><USER33> The problem doesn't lie only with business schools but with complete higher education. Being a CS senior at Indian University, I have heard about from so many industry experts railing about the huge difference between industry and academic skills.

</comment><comment><USER34> John Ralston-Saul, writing in The Doubter's Companion in 1994:

> BUSINESS SCHOOLS: Acting schools which train experts in abstract management > methods to pretend they are capitalists.

> The graduates of these institutions have dominated Western business > leadership for the last quarter-century. This corresponds exactly with a > severe economic crisis in the West, which has included runaway inflation, > endemic unemployment, almost no real growth, record levels of bankruptcy, > and a collapse in industrial production. Manufacturing, the sector which > they have been trained to manage, has suffered more than any other.

> This raises two questions:

> 1\. Is there any indication—practical, statistical, philosophical or > financial—that training future business leaders in specialized management > schools has benefited business or the economy?

> 2\. Has this new élite — approximately a quarter of the university > population — been able to communicate to society any convincing program for > ending the crisis?

> Not surprisingly, an education which above all teaches the management of > structures is impervious to failure. Those within the structure continue to > define the economy's needs in their own terms and so seek out successive new > generations of business school graduates.

> In 1993 the Harvard Business School reacted to growing criticism of its > methods by announcing a new curriculum. In the future students would "focus > less on specific disciplines and more on combining skills to solve > problems." But it is precisely their obsession with problem-solving that is > the heart of the problem. To organize the training of business leaders from > the point of view of the corporate executive is rather like training > athletes to compete from the point of view of the team's office manager.

> The outside observer might conclude dispassionately that these schools > should be shut down or their methodology revolutionized. The graduate will > argue, like the World War I staff officer, that failure could be turned into > success if only there were more of his own kind in positions of power. Just > one more wave of bodies heaved out of the trenches for a charge and the war > will be won.

</comment><comment><USER35> > Take finance, for instance. This is a field concerned with understanding how > people with money invest it.

Actual finance is mostly concerned with pure money management, agnostic of the entity holding the money. If it's not a person, company or administrative body it's probably a mixture of those.

> [...] it also assumes substantial inequalities of income and wealth.

This is not true. For the most part it assumes that there is some need to allocate capital. Whether it is from a pension fund, an evil dictator or the Red Cross is mostly only a concern regarding specific constrains like regulation, objectives, etc.

> The greater the inequalities within any given society, the greater the > interest in finance, as well as the market in luxury yachts.

No. The more capital to allocate, the greater the interest in allocating it. An economy with a greater financialization therefore requires a greater amount of financial knowledge and services. One can argue that such developments might be bad - completely fine. It is however awfully inaccurate to describe financial services as Veblen goods (luxury stuff where demand increases with price).

I like the general attitude of the article and I believe that there might be some benefit in questioning the study of management. I just do not like beating strawmen.

</comment><comment><USER36> Does it apply to other countries aswell ?

In France, we have a pretty specific system called "classes préparatoires" where you spend 2 years before accessing business/engineering schools. As far as I know, the ones intended for business schools give a lot of importance to philosophy, history and geopolitics. This seems to differ a bit from how other business schools are described throughout the article.

In the meantime, our business schools seem to follow and try to mimic the American ones.

Do other business school teach similar topics ?

</comment><comment><USER12> I, under great pressure from my parents decided to go for one. Through my youth I dreamed of doing some hardcore engineering work, yet me taking a look on the job market made me reconsider (that was right in the middle of credit bubble,) engineering job at that time looked like a great lottery where you pay 80k for 6 years of uncertainty, and 2 in 3 chance to not to get a substantial job in a year. Yet, your studies take much dedication, and leave you no chance to earn properly while you study.

Given all above, we settled on a compromise solution, I were to go for a 2 year intensive BCIT undergrad business course with as much edge in tech as possible, and to which I will get as much study credit transfer possible from Russian PTU and courses I did as an exchange student in Nanyang, Singapore.

In total, it took $60k of living expenses and study fees for 2 years. I was able to work while I study more or less freely, though with arguable legality with my student visa. I found my first job through the company I was interning with. I never went into debt besides $20k I took from my parents at the very end of my studies, when fees were finally closing on to eat through my savings (they never did, but I had just $1.9k by the time I graduated).

In the end, by tech background took me back into tech, and my second job after graduation had close to no business side, aside from what I learned on marketing courses (I was a webmaster for an electronics startup with a lot of liberty in what I put into marketing drivel.)

My thoughts:

1\. Some base skills like financial modelling/planning, bookkeeping, doing accounting reports, business law do have genuine value. I regularly see tech managers nearing C-Suite positions who have great trouble when it comes to comprehension of such basics.

2\. The further you go, the more ephemeral and metaphysical do your studies get, the thicker the coolaid, the harder they try to persuade you into believing into value of such studies. By the time you get to writing "executive case studies," if you have not realized that, then, with all respect to you you are a lost cause.

3\. People who endure and get through, by the time they graduate, have their view of reality warped. No red pill will help them. Even if some do come close to realisation of errors in their ways, and can ask for feedback, it takes extreme effort to persuade them to adopt proper ways. You need to show them that they don't only concede their position on a particular issue, but make them accept that their original reasoning that leads them to their erroneous position is not working.

4\. In China, I saw great great many youngster coming back from America after B-School, putting the knowledge they were taught to a level nearing an ultimate religious revelation. My short relationship with TCL's (a Chinese electronics company) product group was like that:

Me - man, this is not a lifestyle brand no matter how you twist it, and it will not be one no matter what the marketing dept. think they can do. You are not becoming a lifestyle brand through any actions of a marketing dept.

Product manager Joe - but this is not how it is supposed to be, a guru of management studies B said this, so we will be doing so. This is the trust our company's supreme leadership puts into progressive Western ways! ...

After the end of the gig, I decided to not to accept their new offers. For the next few months after that, their above standing managers were contacting me. All of them sounded rather surprised with my reasoning for me not willing to work with them. I think, all of them asked me something like "were we _really_ doing something wrong there?"

</comment><comment><USER37> Is this what they are teaching people to do? [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6c...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263daf)

<comment><USER38> Click on the link.. and I get no content, only

> Make informed decisions. Become an FT Subscriber.

Okay - no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Years after spending close to 200K at an elite MBA program I've come to the conclusion that they are a waste of time for most candidates.

While students can be very smart and professors highly acclaimed, the MBA is a failed enterprise. In my opinion, business school only delivers an illusion of achievement and learning. MBA programs are too generic and formulaic to deliver meaningful value. Most notably:

1\. Management science is even less scientific than Psychology. Yes, you can apply decision analysis, probability and game theory to business problems, but do these form a cohesive knowledge base? If management science does in fact exist, why do MBA programs' teachings differ so much from school to school?

MBA students get exposed to theories and frameworks transplanted from the sciences but they walk away with only a shallow understanding of these models. Are we training managers as confidence artists? As the business school alumni move across corporate ranks they ossify and think they get it, when in fact they are just managing randomly without rigorous understanding of the complexities underlying their decisions. And yes, these business school alumni are to blame for the collapse of 2008 and many others.

2\. Shareholder value maximization should not be a way of life. Very few business school graduates can think of businesses in holistic terms. The shareholder value maximization mentality incubates the many destructive forces that turn corporations into sociopaths.

3\. Business schools are toxic environments created by mixing a myriad of backgrounds in a room and expecting highly divergent people to learn at the same pace or even to coalesce.

In my experience, racism, discrimination, exclusion and backstabbing were the norm. Bankers drank with bankers, white Americans labeled the Chinese as "yet another international student", African Americans were severely under represented and military transplants were systematically labeled. My B-School experience was traumatic but not uncommon. I was literally swimming in a shark tank.

4.You will definitely learn a lot about corruption. I lost my faith in human nature after listening to business students talk about putting profits before lives. This are the type of people that will do anything for that bonus.

In sum, business schools are a playground for corporations to shop for high (but not very high) IQ, good appearance, business aptitude and ambitious candidates. Business school is just a runway of highly accomplished students who think they get it but in reality don't. Management can't be taught. It needs to be experienced. Business schools are the most salient cancer in academia and they need to disappear.

</comment><comment><USER40> Companies should stop treating an MBA as a technical requirement for employment.

</comment><comment><USER41> I agree with many points in the article, but it seems to me his core point is that alternatively economic and political models to capitalism should be taught in business schools.

It isn't clear to me that this is a job for graduate business education. The author clearly has an agenda to change either some aspects or capitalism, or to change economic systems entirely. I don't know why he thinks educating business school students differently is going to be something of a catalyst for change of this magnitude. People are studying these degrees with the sole aim of advancing their careers _within_ a capitalist system. If you want political or economic change, these ideas are going to have to be spread throughout the general populace, as most of us here live in democracies.

I also don't think its clear what system would be better than capitalism, despite its flaws, and asking a curriculum to give focus on some alternative system which is completely unproven is a big ask.

</comment><comment><USER42> 1\. He makes a good point 2. Its not the point he thinks he makes 3. Full disclosure one of my degrees is a B.S in finance but I work as an engineer.

He makes a point that "At the end of it all, most business-school graduates won't become high-level managers anyway, just precarious cubicle drones in anonymous office blocks." But isn't that true of most degrees? I would argue even most STEM grads end up in the cubicle farm. I saw plenty there working for a defense contractor. I also think him saying this is objectively bad is a little elitist. Depending on background and family socio-economic status the cubicle farm might be a step up and even a point of pride.

All of his criticism is from the point of view that people in business schools take advantage of others, how about people go to business school to not be taken advantage of? To know how to negotiate a salary, to know the rough rules of the game. If you don't come from a family of means I would argue a decent business school and STEM are about equivalent in terms of increasing your income and providing a long term career. Some don't have the aptitude or inclination to do STEM. Just like many STEM grads couldn't sell someone a $100 bill for $95.

Another claim is that: "Another suggested that the likelihood of committing some form of corporate crime increased if the individual concerned had experience of graduate business education, or military service. (Both careers presumably involve absolving responsibility to an organisation.)" How about people who know a field and are in the field are more likely to commit a crime in it? I am sure the number of blue collar embezzlement is dominated by plumbers/electricians etc. Not even going into criminal medical issues such as corrupt doctors being opioid prescription factories.

I am not saying all business schools are useful, or that they do the job perfectly but his opinion seems shockingly naive. Also business school might not be a good place to be if you don't have some degree of faith in capitalism (the single greatest eradicator of poverty over the past 50 years), it would be like being a flat-earther in an astrophysics department.

Finally, I would much rather be managed or HR-ed by someone with at least some formal training on how to treat people with dignity in difficult complex situations. I have seen conflict/layoffs/firings etc. handled absolutely atrociously by (albeit young) STEM grads. Admittedly having a degree in Management/HR doesn't mean you are automatically good at this, but education helps.

Personal anecdote: My first year in finance taught me a lot about debt, I changed my whole college strategy to graduate debt free. My finance degree also taught me most of the wealth management industry is exploitative of the average investor and have no demonstrable gains over just buying low fee indices. These 2 bits will save me hundreds of thousands of dollars if not over a million dollars throughout my career. Sure they may be obvious but millions of students every year make egregious financial mistakes to get other degrees that may land them in the same cube farm.

<comment><USER43> "How about people who know a field and are in the field are more likely to commit a crime in it? I am sure the number of blue collar embezzlement is dominated by plumbers/electricians etc."

I think you entirely missed what the article said. The claim was not that most white-collar crime is committed by managers, but that the individuals most likely to commit a crime were either b-school grads or veterans. In your example, this would be like union electricians committing more fraud than their non-union counterparts.

<comment><USER42> Fair point, I wonder if union electricians do commit more fraud since they feel more secure/less touchable etc a clearer version of the point I was trying to make is saying a correlation between business school grads and white collar crime does not imply that business school is the cause. Could have many kinds of selection bias there. I shoulda just stuck with the ol correlation doesn't imply causation bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Not sure what the curriculum in the USA/EU is like. Would love to understand what the US/EU model is?

Here is some perspective from some of the top business schools [0] in South Africa:

> 'What can I do to make the most money?' and the manner in which faculty > members teach allows students to regard the moral consequences of their > actions as mere afterthoughts."

and

> "The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are > subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school, > and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans"

Not really the general case. Ethics is done right up front. All the major philosophical ethical theories are covered including: Virtue ethics, Utilitarianism, Duties and rights, Justice, Caring

The consequences of actions is a thread that runs throughout every single course. For each assignment/paper submitted you are required to conduct an ethical analysis of your actions or decisions. This is done to identify any implications or negative consequences.

> " If we want those in power to become more responsible, then we must stop > teaching students that heroic transformational leaders are the answer to > every problem, or that the purpose of learning about taxation laws is to > evade taxation, or that creating new desires is the purpose of marketing."

From what i have seen this is very far from what is taught here in South Africa. You will find lively debates on the purpose of marketing, is it to create demand or to fulfill demand?

> " In terms of the classroom, they expect the teaching of uncomplicated and > practical concepts and tools that they deem will be helpful to them in their > future careers. Philosophy is for the birds."

Philosophy is actually covered. You are expected to submit a dissertation/thesis as part of the requirement to complete your MBA. In the past the MBA was academically rated lower than a masters from another faculty. You could not even gain entrance to a PHD programme.

There has since been a complete overhaul with the academic requirements significantly increased. The current qualification is rated the same as a masters from another faculty in terms of academic requirements.

> "Why then do we assume that degree courses in business should only teach one > form of organisation – capitalism – as if that were the only way in which > human life could be arranged?"

Some B-Schools are known to have very 'socialist leanings' in the guise of social innovation/sustainability. With a very strong emphasis on this. The only way i can describe it it is like socialism and capitalism mixed. They pretty much teach you that Friedman [1] is not correct and one needs to move beyond this.

Students that complete typically end up with a bunch of mental models to reason about the world. A student coming out of B-School is faced with a choice:

(A): The B-School perspective becomes their primary perspective on seeing and reasoning about the world

(B): It is only one of the perspectives available to you, that you can pull out when the appropriate situation arises.

The schools themselves help you to identify this and it is up to the student which of these options they take. As one grad described it to me:

> "They teach you all the mental models, then they break them all down and > show you how they are incorrect and the negative consequences of them"

> "The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are > subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school, > and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans "

Are schools in the US/EU still teaching social responsibility?

The schools here teach you that social responsibility is BS. You are thought that CSR (corporate social responsibility) is not the answer, but really 'window dressing'. What you really need to do is embed sustainability practices[2] throughout your organisation. It is not an afterthought, but should be a core part of business.

[0] [https://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/](https://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/)

[https://www.gibs.co.za](https://www.gibs.co.za)

[http://www.usb.ac.za](http://www.usb.ac.za)

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/240845-there-is-one-and- onl...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/240845-there-is-one-and-only-one- social-responsibility-of-business-to)

[2] [https://embeddingproject.org/](https://embeddingproject.org/)

</comment><comment><USER45> _The problem is that business ethics and corporate social responsibility are subjects used as window dressing in the marketing of the business school, and as a fig leaf to cover the conscience of B-school deans – as if talking about ethics and responsibility were the same as doing something about it._

At the business school I attended, there was a soaring mission statement that mentioned "high ethical standards" and "improving the world." And there were some people (faculty, students, program managers) who really did try to live up to the statement in terms of the focus of their studies, the special programs they launched, and the cross-campus collaborations that they took part in.

But it was also abundantly clear that some parts of the school could care less about the mission. They were there to make money, period. Roll out the red carpet for Wall Street recruiters, management consultancies, and private equity firms. Sign multimillion dollar academic "collaborations" with cash- rich countries run by dictators and monarchies. Treat ethics as an afterthought.

I remember in our microeconomics class (taught by a tenured professor who had been at the school for decades) the very first week we had to read a case about a team at Harrah's who designed a loyalty program for frequent gamblers. I remember the professor or someone in a video interview we watched crowing, "it was like printing money." The "big question" at the conclusion of the case reads:

 _When asked about the company's long-term vision for its RM system, a member of Harrah's RM team became thoughtful for a moment. He responded that, while all of the near and longer-term developments described above were critical, he thought there was one important aspect of all RM systems that needed further development. "What I'd really like to know — and I pose this as a question for researchers in revenue management — is how to integrate information about price elasticity into these systems. Clearly, changes in price affect the level of demand we experience. However, none of the systems we are familiar with capture this effect."_ ([https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/ited.1090.003...](https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/ited.1090.0031cs))

Neither the case nor the instructor had anything to say about the fact that this was basically a technology-driven scheme to extract as much money as possible from members of the public, including gambling addicts and other vulnerable populations. I regret not raising my hand at that point, and asking, "WTF?"

Later in the program, we did get exposed to professors with moral and ethical compasses, and wanted to impress upon us the real risks to human life and well-being. They included instructors teaching macroeconomics, finance, innovation, and management law. In other academic units, people most definitely were attuned to doing the right thing (one faculty member famously has her incoming students watch "Black Mirror").

I went in knowing almost nothing about business or the way to navigate certain situations, and came out the other end a lot more comfortable about creating a successful business based on high ethical standards. But some other experiences -- not to mention the obvious conflicts between the school's mission and the way it pandered to some of the most ethically challenged elements of global capitalism -- left a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER46> I am a business school graduate. It's a little shocking to read this but also hard to argue. I think many degrees have no value except for serving as a requirement for entry into a career.

<comment><USER47> >I am a business school graduate. It's a little shocking to read this but also hard to argue. I think many degrees have no value except for serving as a requirement for entry into a career.

I would add a further element of uncertainty, that applies not specifically to business schools only but to a number of schools/universities.

The professors/dean/etc. may control what is _taught_ at the university, but rarely they can control what the students actiually _learn_.

If the student perceives the degree as a mere requirement for entry into a career, he/she will not study to learn, he/she will study to pass the exams, which is not at all the same thing and learn and participate as little as possible.

If this is the case, there is no real incentive to teach "better" or teach "more", and what is taught little by little starts diverging from what the industry expects from a graduate, reinforcing the feeling (IMHO correct nowadays) that the degree is just a sort of badge to allow the entry to the club.

The job market however insists on asking these qualificatons even for jobs where they make no sense whatsoever, fueling this perverse mechanism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> What is fun is CEOs like Jack Dorsey who leads two companies.

<comment><USER49> What is the difference between Jack, who leads 2 companies, and Sundar Pichai who arguably leads an order of magnitude more "companies"?

or Tim Cook who leads multiple multi-billion dollar revenue products some of which could be Fortune 500 companies on their own?

<comment><USER48> The point is to joke about random MBAs that leads companies they know almost nothing about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So, an article in "The Guardian" laments the immorality of teaching capitalism to future would-be capitalists. Color me shocked!

What should we teach them instead? The importance of social responsibility, sustainability, diversity and warm feelings and how capitalism is really evil and how they should feel bad about employing its principles? In other words, shall we turn them into sheep to be let loose among the wolves (and charge them for it)?

There's an argument to be made against many practices taught to MBAs, but those arguments better be supported by some science (like behavioral economics). It all has to make sense and support the bottom line.

Let's take the example of the manager who fires a hundred workers and who pays himself a 500,000$ bonus (half of which will fall to taxes). He's in it for the money, just like those workers. Should he give up on his bonus and save ten employees for one year? Will that increase productivity or is he better off increasing his own wealth? We're talking about a man who rose to the top, someone whose education (or indoctrination) will _not_ have destroyed his sense of self-interest.

<comment><USER34> > So, an article in "The Guardian" laments the immorality of teaching > capitalism to future would-be capitalists.

Hmm. From TFA, the author laments that:

 _Within the business school, capitalism is assumed to be the end of history, an economic model that has trumped all the others, and is now taught as science, rather than ideology._

And then:

 _The business school assumes capitalism, corporations and managers as the default form of organisation, and everything else as history, anomaly, exception, alternative._

Reasonable, and substantiated, concerns around economics _as a subject_ (rather than pretending to be an actual _science_ ).

> Let's take the example of the manager who fires a hundred workers and who > pays himself a 500,000$ bonus ... We're talking about a man who rose to the > top, someone whose education (or indoctrination) will not have destroyed his > sense of self-interest.

Your commitment to the masculine is probably merely a habit, but you've inadvertently highlighted one of the problems exacerbated by the teachings of the average _business school_ \-- self-interest at any cost is acceptable, because it's an _inherent property of capitalism_.

Self-interest is fine and dandy, but the example you're citing -- dispense with a hundred people in order to obtain a half a million dollars -- is not an overly _productive_ practice for most societies.

<comment><USER50> > Your commitment to the masculine is probably merely a habit, but you've > inadvertently highlighted one of the problems exacerbated by the teachings > of the average business school -- self-interest at any cost is acceptable, > because it's an inherent property of capitalism.

I'm not committed to anything, would you have preferred I chose a woman to be put into the role of (from your perspective) "the villain"? What about a transgender person of color, would that not completely change the power dynamics of the situation? How about literally a red herring that somehow made it through business school?

The point is, if you want to just push an ideology into the heads of students in order to "fix capitalism", without any regard to the actual socio-economic environment, you're doing _them_ a disservice and you will fail at your goal. These people will not survive in the market based on what you teach them.

"Self-interest at any cost" is a naive caricature of capitalism. You're probably indoctrinated too much for me to make an impact here, but just keep in mind that if you only ever fight a straw man, you're never winning an actual battle.

> Self-interest is fine and dandy, but the example you're citing -- dispense > with a hundred people in order to obtain a half a million dollars -- is not > an overly productive practice for most societies.

Unfortunately, you weren't even able to perceive the scenario as the dilemma that it is: In this scenario, either 90 or 100 workers will be fired for economic reasons. The question is, does the manager give up on his bonus to save 10 people for _one year_ , voluntarily. If he does, it may have an impact on morale, boosting productivity, possibly leading to even higher long-term gain. If he doesn't, he immediately gets to be more wealthy. There's no obviously right or wrong answer even from the point of self-interest.

Contrary to what one might like to believe, productivity is not the same as _production output_. If there's a surplus, production must be decreased to the point where it meets demand, not well above. Laying off workers then can _improve_ productivity, because revenue relative to cost increases. These are basic economic principles that exist even outside of capitalist systems, especially socialist systems (used to) struggle with this issue. As far as society as a whole is concerned, widespread misallocation of labor makes _everyone_ poorer, because it creates a discrepancy between what is produced and what is necessary.</comment></comment></comment>


Mathematicians prove the triviality of English - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/oct/29/mathematicians-prove-the-triviality-of-english <comment><USER2> Click-bait title much? I don't know about anyone else, but when I read that title I thought it would have something to do with syntax or semantics, not as a monoid word problem[1]. Also, why did they call it "semigroup with identity" instead of monoid?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_problem_for_groups](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_problem_for_groups)

<comment><USER3> Not click-baity but seriously lacking in information. The work relates to the relationship of orthography to pronunciation in English. From the title I was expecting some syntactical or grammatical result. At the very least the title should read, "Mathematicians prove the triviality of English pronunciation" but even then that misses the mark, doesn't it?

Not only that, but I think the conclusions are frankly incorrect. I would not say that because LAM=LAMB (when spoken) that B=1. I would say that LA=LA and M=MB. B is not silent elsewhere, only in combination with M so it is false to discount the B (setting it to 1) without contextualising that B as being alongside an M when this happens, if you see what I mean. This to me seems so obvious that I fear I am missing something huge here because I can't think how otherwise they can assert what they are asserting.

Don't like to be harsh or snarky on HN but in this instance...?

<comment><USER4> "Not only that, but I think the conclusions are frankly incorrect."

They can't really be "incorrect", because they made up the rules. It would be more accurate to observe something like this definition of trivial is itself rather trivial and useless.

It's a fun word game, and nothing more. As this appears to be a recreational math column in the Guardian, there's nothing wrong with that. It's no Martin Gardner, but it's not being put forth as some sort of major result or anything either.

A lot of people here seem to be taking it a great deal more seriously than any of the relevant authors.

<comment><USER5> >A lot of people here seem to be taking it a great deal more seriously than any of the relevant authors.

Lack of context, probably. I fetched the text from my RSS reader - I didnt know where it came from. From the title, I had a false expectation, as other HN readers seemed to have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is merely a different version of the old linguist joke that "In English, all letters are silent". Leaving this here for the interested: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_English_alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_English_alphabet)

<comment><USER7> "Queue is just Q followed by four silent vowels"

<comment><USER8> They're waiting in line...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Seems to prove the decided _non_ -triviality of English, really. In fact, it could read as part of a proof that English words can't be read, or written, at all, because essentially it shows that English orthography has basically no rules - all sequences of letters can be pronounced in any way.

<comment><USER10> Uh that doesn't follow at all. Just means that the rules are a bit more complicated than "this letter is always pronounced that way". Neither does it mean that "all sequences of letters can be pronounced in any way".

Look up Chomsky & HalLe's the sound pattern of English for an attempt at completely describing English phonology with rules.

<comment><USER9> It should be obvious that, since English clearly IS capable of being reliably serialized to and from text, that any proof that it can't be is obviously based on a flawed assumption, and so functions as a proof by contradiction of its assumption's falsity. In this case, it would be the semigroup model for orthography/phonology which is the flawed assuption.

<comment><USER10> While I agree, it should be noted that there has been serious controversy about the question whether language and language use can and should be characterized by rules, or whether it is based on some kind of emergent phenomenon or dynamical system (connectionism). The controversy is still not really over. Personally I don't think it's an either/or question, but about levels of description.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Proof by contradiction. They are using pronunciation to define algebraic equality. So the minute B=1 and C=1, we can write B=C which is not true under the pronunciation rule. We have a contradiction which indicates the premise being false. In other words, using English pronunciation in that way is wrong. That's good because it seemed pretty stupid on first reading it. Glad my intuition on that was right.

<comment><USER12> The whole point of the article is to show that the premise is else, in every single case: there is no letter in English that always has unambiguous prononuciation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think this is why you don't let linguists do maths.

<comment><USER10> Why is that? This was actually mathematicians doing "linguistics".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's a joke ... maybe to show how uncritically journalists will publish anything that comes across as "mathematical".

</comment><comment><USER12> People are misunderstanding "trivial". Here what they proved is that there is no way to encode any of the English pronunciation rules _as a function purely of context-free spelling of phonemes_ in a way that is consistent across the language. The data shows that all spellings must yield identical pronunciations, unless English JS inconsistent and/or context senstive. Obviously, the latter is true.

<comment><USER15> Which people? The writers or the readers? 'Cause the context-free interpretation of the headline suggests the writers intended to make the content of an article that fits the definition of trivial sound profound and mathematical in a way that it isn't.

<comment><USER16> The headline is gimmicky wordplay, like most headlines.

"trivial" _is_ mathematical. The headline makes "trivial" sound _non- mathematical_. Profundity is nowhere to be be found; the article is about triviality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >"By phonemic transformation into visual terms, the alphabet became a universal, abstract, static container of meaningless sounds"

-McLuhan

</comment><comment><USER18> But there are at least 6 ways to write "f" in english (for, off, photon, enough, wife, mazeltov);

<comment><USER19> I don't think you can include the mazeltov type there - I cannot think of a native english word that uses that pronunciation. Happy to be proven wrong though.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, and photon is not native english, but greek. But what's native english? All the -gh are old constructs and new english word never follow that pattern, is that modern english? Or a barbarism taken from another, old english language? What about french words, like garage, are that english?

<comment><USER21> Does it maybe have to do with how long a loan-word has been in use, or how commonly it's used?

<comment><USER20> Sure.

dvh was commenting the variety of ways the f phoneme can be written down in different english words, and for the purposes of the discussion, elthran's conservative line on where does the english language end is not really super useful. Having 5 or 6 different symbols for a single sound is irrelevant; the point is that the article is considering letters as whole symbols for a sound, when they might be part of a symbol, not the whole symbol, for a sound. If gh is /f/ in a particular word, then using that word as part of the g cancellation is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My favorite page on the internet about the regularity (or lack thereof) of English orthography; oldie but a goodie: _Hou tu pranownse Inglish._

[http://zompist.com/spell.html](http://zompist.com/spell.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, if we set all letters to equal 1, then what is stopping this from working out?

Haven't they just shown that the product of any combination of 1's is equal to the product of any other combination of ones?

<comment><USER24> This wouldn't work in eg German, where there's no way to cancel out pronunciation like that.

<comment><USER23> Can you give an example of how this wouldn't work out? I can't even figure out how to make one up, and would like to see how it would look.

<comment><USER25> I'm sure the poster was intending that it wouldn't be complete, like English. There certainly are some letters that obey this property:

DASS/DAS; S=1

BUND=BUNT; D=T

MANN/MAN; N=1

VIEL=FIEL; V=F

VERBEN=WERBEN; V=W

SIEH/SIE; H=1

GANZ=GANS; Z=S

POPP/POP; P=1

That only gives five letters as the identity (H,N,P,S,Z), but that's how you'd attack it.

The equivalence of D/T, for example, is unsurprising as it's an example of voicing changing; these words are in the process of changing.

If you can do more complex work with bigrams, more are possible, e.g.:

JAHR/JA; HR=1; HR/H; R=1

<comment><USER24> I'd say that S is idempotent in `dass' vs `das'. Not that s is the identity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The title is ironic for me given that I've seen mathematical types push formal specification of software (eg Z, VDM) for over a decade straight with a consistent, English-related justification. They say that English is too imprecise and ambiguous to be sure you can understand what specs mean. It was true in practice enough that a combined formal (math) and informal (English) specification became a requirement for any correctness and security argument for highly assured systems.

And now some are saying English is trivial. Haha.

</comment><comment><USER27> This wouldn't happen with lojban ;)

<comment><USER10> No but then again there's barely anyone to talk Lojban with.

<comment><USER28> Well, at least more fluent speakers of Lojban than fluent speakers of Ithkuil.

<comment><USER27> I would so love to think/speak ithkuil, but knowing that nobody seems smart enough made me learn lojban instead ^^

.xu do tavla fo la lojban

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> All it really proves is that English spelling rules is ridiculously inconsistent. It almost seems like an strange cousin of numerology. Where numerology applies significance to to arbitrary numbers, this applies significance to arbitrarily spelled English words.

</comment><comment><USER30> Wow. And here I thought they were going to discuss vectorization of the English language, akin to how Word2Vec does it.

Instead it's first grader style writing with fake subtraction of letters such. That's a tremendous let down.

</comment><comment><USER31> That English is trivial is nothing new. That the average US-ian doesn't even know their own language should be more surprising (but isn't). Mark Twain still has the best rant about it, and he knew English.

</comment><comment> r-w Seems kind of obvious. When you can set so many products equal to each other, what could each of the terms equal but one?

Misleading title. Someone ought to flag this.

</comment><comment><USER32> Mathematicians prove there own triviality.

<comment><USER32> Oops. s/there/their/

<comment><USER33> there = their => re = ir

<comment><USER32> LOL</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Best Hope for France's Young? Get Out - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/opinion/sunday/the-best-hope-for-frances-young-get-out.html?hp <comment><USER4> Hang on, hang on, let me shed a tear while I contemplate the fact that EVERY French citizen without a job gets a monthly pay check.

It may be subsistence living, but unlike the States where unemployment means credit debt and eventual homelessness, it's living nonetheless, and the state foots the bill, incredible social safety net.

As an expat living part of the year in France it's always shocked me how unemployed seasonal workers get up to 80% of their salary for the 8 months of the year they don't work. Where I'm living (SW France), kids will work the summer season in a restaurant or similar, then come autumn, hey, time to go surfing in Indonesia, "pay" checks mailed to the bank.

Needless to say, the French live pretty well working or not.

<comment><USER5> _unemployed seasonal workers get up to 80% of their salary for the 8 months of the year they don 't work._

My goodness, who pays for this?

<comment><USER6> Taxpayers. And that, people, is socialism.

That's the cycle ---> rich country with strong middle class --> right-wing politicians get less and less popular/elected --> socialists/communists come --> poor country --> right-wing politicians are elected again

<comment> philipp-de In Germany,where i live, you get:

* 2/3 of your last wage for 1 year on unemployment, free health care

* After that expires you get your rent paid, free health care , and 400 euro per month for other expenses - <USER2>

On top of that everyone also gets free additional care when they are old / nursing home.

Also everyone gets a minimum pension once they reach 67 years of age.

Germany has the lowest youth unemployment in europe. it has one of the lowest overall unemployment rates in europe. it is one of the few countries that still had growth in the years past / is not deeply in recession.

Yeah, those are the perils of "socialism".

<comment><USER6> Germany is doing well, because of : 1\. Germans working hard 2\. Qualified immigrants from Eastern European countries(and other parts of the world as well). Their labour is cheaper, which in turn is like adrenalin to the economy. I'll let you figure out why.

<comment><USER7> 1) That's actually factually wrong (check EU work statistics) and a little racist -- adopting the stereotype of Germans as working robots. Here's a pointer:

"According to a new research on working hours in countries of the European Union, Greeks work 42.2 hours per week. more than all other Europeans. The research was conducted by the National Statistical Service of Britain for the period April-June 2011. German people work 35.6 hours per week, French 38 hours, the British 36.3 hours, while the Irish only 35 hours. In addition, according to the same research, full-time workers in Greece and Austria are working more hours (43.7) than workers elsewhere in the EU" (from the Guardian).

2) Nope, they mostly got/get lots of unqualified immigrants. Not to mention that the integration of Eastern Germany post 1989 had an enormous cost that nearly toppled Germany's economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > a youth unemployment rate of 25 percent for nearly 30

What does it ACTUALLY mean to be unemployed in France?

In the US, if I lose my job and cannot find another for a long time, here is what happens:

• I have to start paying for health insurance. This will probably be in the $500-1000/month range.

• Unemployment insurance pays me for a while.

• In a little over a year, unemployment runs out. At that point, I'll be living entirely on my savings.

• When savings run out, I lose my house. Oh, I also lose my health insurance.

• Before becoming homeless and losing most of my possessions. Hopefully, in the prior year I've been eating good healthy home-cooked food to save money, and also hitting my treadmill regularly, and so might have gotten into good enough shape to no longer need my diabetes and blood pressure medicine, since I can no longer afford them.

To sum it up, being unemployed in the US means you are majorly screwed. Our social safety nets are just not very good.

Our health insurance safety net, for instance, is the emergency room. If you show up with a life threatening condition, they are required to treat you regardless of insurance or ability to pay. They only treat you enough so that you are no longer in immediate danger, and then they can kick you out. Given the choice between providing someone with $30 worth of drugs a month that will keep their condition under control forever, or letting their condition become life threatening and treating it with a $5000 emergency room visit every 2 or 3 months to just keep them alive--the US goes with the latter. Giving them a $30/month prescription would be socialism, and we can't have that.

<comment><USER9> That is the whole reason people are unemployed in France, you realize that, right? Incentives being what they are, and all....

<comment><USER10> I think I have to disagree. Not knowing the specifics of French unemployment benefits, here in Germany, the situation is probably closer to that in France than that in the US. If you are unemployed, you still have health insurance, you get some money, and becoming homeless because of unemployment is basically unheard of.

So far, I have yet to meet a person that is happily unemployed here. There is a huge social stigma attached to it and people get depressed because the self- image suffers from being unemployed for longer times. Going a little bit over the top, the whole incentive argument to me sounds like this: Since being miserable does not provide the right incentives for an unemployed person to search for work, the situation must be improved by making them miserable and hungry/homeless.

<comment><USER11> France is like most countries with high unemployment in that the primary cause of unemployment is that there aren't enough jobs. Germany has the mittelstand which keeps over 70% of the population employed. The US has its own version of the mittelstand with over 26,000 Subway sandwich franchises, so its unemployement rate is only slightly worse than Germany.

<comment><USER12> Rubbish. There is a massive lack of jobs, just like everywhere else in Europe.

There may be a lack of _high-paying, low-stress_ jobs, the kind that spoiled, study-a-random-field-till-30 university graduates generally feel entitled to, but that's not the same thing.

<comment><USER13> >There may be a lack of high-paying, low-stress jobs, the kind that spoiled, study-a-random-field-till-30 university graduates generally feel entitled to, but that's not the same thing.

What are you referencing by that? Off the top of my mind I can't think of any low-stress job. Sure, some jobs are less stressful, but I don't think anyone has the expectation to find a job that doesn't conform to general properties of almost all jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I currently live in São Paulo, Brazil...

That infamously is on several lists of one of the worst place to do business in the world (because it is first place in red tape and associated costs, also very high in corruption, tax rate, and so on...)

Yet, I've seen with my own eyes a ever bigger community of french business people here, there are LOTS of rich french, or young french, coming here and doing business here, and some of them I talked, absolutely hate Brazil (regarding business aspects, violence, and some other stuff), but imply (they never reply directly when I ask, and some get offended) that yet Brazil is still better to live than France...

This makes me believe something VERY WRONG is going on there... Usually it was the dream of Brazillians to move to France, not the opposite!

<comment> chestnut-tree London has been called France's sixth biggest city. According to this BBC article from March 2012 there is an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 French citizens living in London. That's more than the population of Bordeaux, Nantes or Strasbourg.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18234930](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18234930)

<comment><USER15> I know I'm rather late but I just wanted to point out that this number is likely an exaggeration. See this: [http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/more-like- colmar-on-thames/](http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/more-like-colmar-on-thames/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> " _France has always been a land to which people dream of coming. Not leaving._ "

That would be news to my mother and her ancestors: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cajun)

<comment><USER5> Also see: Eastern Canada.

(Mind you, this was in the 18th century, but still.)

<comment><USER17> Cajuns were from Eastern Canada.

<comment><USER5> True, back there they are called Acadians, but it's the same people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> (French here)

Maybe I think backward, I always wanted to travel and learn from others countries and cultures. I even did an internship in the US in MV and I loved it.

But after reading this kind of article the only thing I want to do is fight for my country, I wouldn't say I'm patriot, far from it, I consider myself European first. But I don't think we're as bad as people (often ones of our owns) try to describe us. So I want to fight against the odds, against our weaknesses and yes we have a lot of things pulling us down but overall I really think there still are plenty of bright minds. I don't want to leave, I want to fight and succeed here.

<comment><USER7> > _But after reading this kind of article the only thing I want to do is fight > for my country, I wouldn 't say I'm patriot, far from it, I consider myself > European first._

What does "European first" even mean, though? To be friendly with other European nations/cultures is one thing.

But there's no such thing as an entity called Europe that cares for all the people's in it -- E.U, for one, isn't it. The larger countries, and especially Germany, control the whole game. And the law making, representation, etc, of individual countries (and people) in E.U is opaque and authoritarian, more bureaucratic than democratic. Nothing like the US in unity, for a thing (except for the bad parts: corporations and private interests controlling legislation and such).

So, I'd say, fighting for democracy and social justice in YOUR country (France in your case) is more important, in the political sense, than any general feeling of "Europeanes".

And, sure, people can always immigrate somewhere else, especially within EU. But if that immigration is not because of personal (e.g cultural) choice, but to avoid hardships and fighting, then it's an easy cop-out -- those people are not fighters and not give a damn for their community, only for their personal well-being. And they would just as easily abandon their new host country too. Remember that in order to there be countries to immigrate to --in the first place--, there must have been people willing to stand for them and improve them.

<comment><USER18> > What does "European first" even mean, though? To be friendly with other > European nations/cultures is one thing.

It's easy, I'm feeling myself European it might seem dumb or impossible to you but it is. I think we're very much alike, we love the same sports and take our holidays in the same places, more often than not people have ancestors from another counry in Europe (mine were from Italy). When I was young I spent holidays in Austria, Italy and Spain, I played with kids from all these countries and it never seemed we were differents. I can tell you growing up in such an environment is probably what's make me think I feel European first. I'm sorry if I don't have a better explanation for what I feel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's interesting to see the EU take form. With the recent finance reforms and articles like this, it looks to me like the EU is becoming more and more like the US with the countries taking the role of states. Moving between US states for the purpose of employment is extremely common. The EU countries have more border autonomy and language barriers that prevent people from moving between them, but it seems similar to the formation of the US and the subsequent 200 years of consolidating power at the federal level. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in the next 20 years.

<comment><USER20> Many of the people I chat to from Europe on IRC confirm that notion. They consider themselves E.U. citizens first and foremost.

Of course these are heavily tech-oriented chat rooms so I'm not sure how far that can be applied. But I find it interesting myself, especially given the history of the USA, where right up to the 1870s people considered themselves a citizen of the _state_ first and not the _nation_... obviously it has eventually inverted.

But should this inversion actually happen, when does the USA get to ask for the E.U. to act as a singular entity for things like Olympics, U.N. representation, and other international protocols? ;)

<comment><USER13> I can't recall where I saw it, but there was a poll asking people whether they felt European or a citizen of their own country. The "Europeans" were not very high. Definitely some selection bias (firstly, I guess you're talking to people who are comfortable IRC'ing in English).

Also, the EU is already represented as a whole in some int'l organisations (such as the dual representation in the WTO), and economonically the Euro Zone is a block from the outside.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a French citizen emigrated to Canada, that's a concern I can relate to. The best thing I found to explain what's wrong with France (to quote NYT and add a few of my own: distrust, negativism, elitism, "losing hope", "overcentralized gerontocracy") is this little book:

 _La société de défiance : Comment le modèle social français s 'autodétruit_ (ISBN-10: 272880396X, ISBN-13: 978-2728803965) English Translation: _The distrust society: How the French social model self-destructs_ [http://www.amazon.fr/La-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-d%C3%A9fiance- fran...](http://www.amazon.fr/La-soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9-d%C3%A9fiance- fran%C3%A7ais-sautod%C3%A9truit/dp/272880396X/)

Its "originality" is that, unlike articles like the one linked here, the authors support their argument with serious economical and statistical analysis.

Montréal-based HNers wanting to borrow my copy are welcome, feel free to contact me at @ronjouch

EDIT: ebook freely available here: [http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/opus/OPUS09.pdf](http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/opus/OPUS09.pdf) (PDF, 5MB)

<comment><USER22> Can you tell us more?

<comment><USER21> I'd love to, but I read it a long time ago and I don't have the copy with me. If you can read french, I recommend this review, which is where I got word of the book:

[http://econo.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...](http://econo.free.fr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=2&codenote=178)

And ooooh NICE, the review made me realize that the book is available for free as PDF :) : [http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/opus/OPUS09.pdf](http://www.cepremap.fr/depot/opus/OPUS09.pdf) , and I'm editing my original post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chestnut-tree The figures for youth unemployment in Europe are shocking.

The percentage of people under the age of 25 who are unemployed:

\- Greece: 62.5% \- Spain: 56.4% \- Portugal: 42.5% \- Italy: 40.5% \- Cyprus: 32.7% \- Rep of Ireland: 26.6% \- France: 26.5% \- UK: 20.2% \- Germany: 7.5% \- EU average: 23.5%

Source: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world- europe-23095198](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23095198)

<comment><USER23> Yes, my fundamental question about this article - where are they going to go?

It's not like there are jobs begging to be filled in other countries, barring perhaps the oilfields in North Dakota.

<comment><USER24> > _Yes, my fundamental question about this article - where are they going to > go?_

Germany, The Netherlands, Norway or Sweden. Lots of countries left where there is still work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> France is a good example of a country where its citizens and leaders have chosen to protect the status quo at the expense of innovation, advancement and particularly at the expense of our generation (namely those born in the 80s). This is a trend that I find is beginning to happen in the US... less productive (and more expensive) older workers are creating rules & legislation to protect themselves (unions are classic examples of this... AirBnb & Uber are constantly fighting this). We have to stand up for free markets else we'll fall victim on the road to serfdom.

<comment><USER26> You know, you can think that but, ITER, concorde, ariane, Airbus, M51, part of LHC, some air carriers are created partly here. It's not startuppy at all, but I would not say nothing happens. There is some kind of state driven innovation. I don't like it but it exists and gets shit done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> (French here)

Written by a guy who's never worked a day in his life, I find that article to be very funny.

French bashing is always done better by the french.

Guys, to give you a bit of context, when this guy wrote his first piece last september, the backlash was quite big (which might also explain why he never went anywhere with his campaign at the time).

To me this guy has zero credibility.

<comment><USER28> > "to give you a bit of context, when this guy wrote his first piece last > september, the backlash was quite big"

I appreciate we Americans don't know everything about the system, but you added nothing to my understanding. This is from the article:

>"When the journalist Mouloud Achour, the rapper Mokless and I published a column in the French daily Libération last September, arguing that France was a decrepit, overcentralized gerontocracy and that French youths should pack their bags and go find better opportunities elsewhere in the world, it caused an uproar."

We might gain something if you'd try to explain why you think the view that France is a bad place to live for the new generation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> > French youths lounging on the Champs-Élysées.

The legend of the photo of the article is ridiculous knowing there is 90% of probability that they are tourists.

</comment><comment><USER30> A bit tangential to the point, but still: get out, wherever you live. If you have the ability (which may be non-trivial), moving country is of a huge benefit. Even if you love the place you live in, you just don't have a comparison if you haven't lived (i.e. had local friends and jobs and dealt with day to day stuff for a couple of years) somewhere else. And just the experience both makes you more interesting and helps you get the experience that makes you better at many higher-paid jobs. Also, having friends around the world can be invaluable if/once you _have_ to get out.

</comment><comment><USER31> Kind of curious that the article ends with mentions of Brazil and China... I think neither are the best options for young French people right now - <USER3> one, wage levels there are significantly lower than in France. Canada, USA or Northern Europe seem like better targets to me.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hey folks. I have an idea. It's not particularly novel, but this article triggered the thought. Let's try an experiment. For the next month, July, let us post and promote articles that speak well of a country's systems. In every country there is something admirable and awesome about the people/culture/systems. How about we spend just a month educating ourselves about what is good in different parts of the world in the present. Just as an exercise in trying to learn from the good as well as the bad. I'll start.

France gives generous paternal benefits:

[http://riviera.angloinfo.com/information/healthcare/pregnanc...](http://riviera.angloinfo.com/information/healthcare/pregnancy- birth/)

</comment><comment><USER33> One of the big "issues" about Europe were the missing mobility by its citizens. Somehow it seems that the "financial crisis" intentionally or unintentionally has positively brought change to that area.

</comment><comment><USER34> I approve of this.

Related: Will code Node.js for food if given out of France, wanna hire me?

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh, well Italy is even worse...

</comment><comment><USER36>
      "And then there is France. In the realms of cultural,
      diplomatic, linguistic or economic policies, the French
      have long and eloquently insisted on their nation's
      "exceptionalism." Yet a new form of exceptionalism,
      no less eloquent, though far more brutal, now burdens
      them: since 2011, France has seen at least a dozen men
      and women who have either set, or tried to set,
      themselves aflame.

      The cradle of the Enlightenment, France now glimpses
      a very different light, one that makes visible the
      darkness of its economic and social malaise.

      The series of self-immolations has ranged across the
      country, from Flanders in the north through the suburbs
      of Paris to the Pyrenees in the south. No less varied
      are the workplaces to each of these suicides: a lycée
      teacher, a carpenter, a company manager. Moreover,
      there is a mix of class and ethnic backgrounds: among
      the victims are so-called "français de souche" (white
      and native born French) as well as foreign nationals
      who had lived for years in France.

      Beyond the static of differences, though, one can see
      common and disconcerting themes. In all of these cases,
      the victim was either unemployed or employed in a
      position whose pressures ultimately grew intolerable.
      In the town of Beziers, a mathematics teacher slightly
      more than a year ago set herself on fire in the
      school's courtyard--an "act of desperation" that
      investigators attributed to "professional reasons."
      Last summer in the Parisian suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie,
      an unemployed man, learning his welfare benefits had
      come to an end, immolated himself outside the local
      unemployment office. In 2011, a France-Telecom employee
      in the southern city of Orange set a match to his
      gasoline-drench clothing in a parking lot near his
      office building--one among several suicides at the
      company since it began to lay off employees in its
      effort to restructure."

Source:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/print/2013/03/self-...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/print/2013/03/self- immolations-in-france-what-do-they-mean/274059/)

</comment><comment><USER37> > she explicitly told the 3.6 million young unemployed people in the euro zone > to be ready to move around to find work as the European Union allowed them > to and the whole European project encouraged them to.

That's a great suggestion but which one of the twenty-three official languages of the European Union should I start studying ?

<comment><USER17> The one you apparently already know.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Selling Business Idea/Source Code - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea for what I think could be a profitable business and I have the required skills to code it.  The only problem I have is I am a student and would not have to time to run this business as it would involve selling advertising and managing a staff of contract workers.  Is it possible to do some sort of deal where I would sell the source code/"business" in return for some equity in the result corporation?  Should I just move on? <comment><USER2> Just move on.

Regardless of how fantastic your idea is, the fact remains that there are millions of people out there with what they believe are fantastic ideas -- most of which aren't. For someone to distinguish between fantastic and non- fantastic ideas takes a significant investment in time, and no sane person is going to make that investment given the negligible odds of a payoff.

Or, put into economist-talk: The friction of investment discovery is too high.

This presupposes, of course, that you don't have any special advantages which will lead an investor to think that your idea is more likely than average to be a good one. If Jeff Bezos says "hey, I have a great idea for a business", people will listen -- but most of us don't have that sort of credibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not looking for investment I'm looking to give it to someone else to work on and in return ask for equity.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I was unclear. By "investment" I meant the time required to listen to you describe your idea and figure out for themselves if it's worth pursuing. It's not an investment of money, but that doesn't make it any less of an investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm initially with cperciva ("Just move on") but the thought did occur to me that this might just a good student project or pet project to help put you through school. If it's such a great idea, then once you have it developed you'll be able to shop it around and get some help. Plus it might be a great resume item or even an incentive to take a few business classes.

As a student there are other reasons to code it up besides just concept of selling it. You probably already know this but, just in case, I thought I'd throw that out there.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting :) Would you like to share any details on the concept? You can email me at: joubee{dot}com or I'll keep checking back here. It really depends on how 'big' the idea is. Is it scalable? Is there a business model? Are there other less obvious benefits to working on the project. Love to know about it though.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also - how committed are you to this idea and why? Will you just forget about it when it doesn't magically make you a billion overnight. Will you see this through?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am a university student right now so I don't have time for this idea. I want to give it away to someone else and see what they can do with it. I'm asking if that's something that's feasible and would make sense.</comment></comment>


First flapping, two-winged aircraft takes flight - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32128989/ns/technology_and_science-science/

<comment><USER2> First? Better let them know: <http://www.ornithopter.org/>

_Ornithopters have been around a long time. The first successful ornithopter, the size of a pigeon, was flown in 1870._

<comment><USER2> Ah. First _rudderless_.</comment></comment>


List of Companies Started By MBA's - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rafaelcorrales.com/2010/11/list-of-entrepreneurs-with-mbas.html

<comment><USER2> I believe that this article mischaracterized the argument against business schools. While some may go to the extreme of saying that MBAs are poor startup founders, the majority lie in another camp: that business school may be the _wrong_ school to learn to be an entrepreneur.

This is effectively the argument for the Durant School of Entrepreneurship; Business schools teach corporate management (generally speaking), not entrepreneurship. While many schools may offer entrepreneurship courses, they are often just thinly veiled management courses.

More on this can be found on Steve Blank's blog: <http://steveblank.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Having worked for UCLA, Sylvan Learning Centers, Kaplan Test Prep, The College Network, Grockit, and Veritas Prep has taught me that there is a lot you can teach someone in a classroom, but there is so much more you can't.

Some of the best musicians in the world are self-taught, because you can learn as much or more about jazz in a smoky nightclub as you can in the halls of Julliard.

That said, there are thousands of classically-trained musicians in symphony orchestras around for every Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix. It could be that we only notice the hackers turned entrepreneur superstars because they get so much exposure in the tech world. I bet there are a lot of businesses started by MBA's that aren't as glamorous as Google or Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER4> Suspicious of this likely biased list, I looked at two entries:

EA: Founded by Trip Hawkins Hawkins designed his own major at Harvard... (NO MBA)

Sun Microsystems: 4 Founders, only 2 with MBAs.

Stopped checking the list after that.

At the end of the day, we should be happy that Mr. MBA got to feel better about himself albeit for a brief while.

<comment><AUTHOR> The list is if they were founders and had MBAs. Not "are they the only person to found a company". Sun Microsystems succeeded because of all four founders.

Also, Trip has an MBA from Stanford, if you are careful enough to dig a little further: [http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/ces/entreunion/entreunion_schedu...](http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/ces/entreunion/entreunion_schedule.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like being a downer, but this is completely one-sided.

What matters is the ratio. I would like to see the other list and see how the ratio of MBAs versus non-MBAs look.</comment>