Before the MBA world
The world is changing and so is the definition of education and success. Not a very long time ago people worked on the basis of practical knowledge and if people were to be a leader or be head of a group they were called the “Gladiators” of their field, the managerial skills was thought of a thing which was in born and something which could not be acquired. All this was true until the wheels of the world changed and people started advancing rapidly, we were no longer distant relatives of the monkeys, we were masters of them. And what happens with advancement is rapid growth and with growth people become impatient and we no longer could wait for some Russell Crowe to be born and be our leader, we needed to make one or choose the next best alternative.
So this brings me the crux of my study, “How much is your MBA worth”, it a very relevant question and it is the reason is why I see people running around with bunch of survey question for their business research course or participating in thousands of competition and all this points to one thing “You are doing MBA” (I am on the same boat)
Great, it is nice to see that you are pursuing a masters and education is what will make this nation great someday. Now I know many people do an MBA for various reasons some do it for career advancement, some do it for better salary, and many follow the herd mentality of walking with the crowd. I do not want to say any of the above mentioned points are wrong as each one of us has some or the other reason for doing whatever we do and I am definitely not a judge. But the world will judge each and every one of you if there exist anyone who thinks just because you are an MBA you are better than most of the others who just normal graduates or not an MBA.
Its simple Economics
Let me explain why MBA got to be the crown jewel for every student who wants to make it big. The answer is not that anyone who is doing an MBA or is aspiring to do one is genius or smarter than the rest of those who don’t.
The answer why an MBA is really considered to be worth more than any other graduate is hidden in simple “ECONOMICS”. In Economics the price of everything is based on its level of scarcity. If something is rare and not readily available then it is price heavily, every one of us knows it its basic demand-supply paradigm, its common sense. Wait, you so called managers of the future don't jump to the conclusion that you are a scarce breed and that’s the only reason you are valued more. As told at the beginning of the article that world has had business and its leaders for thousands of years and no one was an MBA at that time actually hardly many of them were educated but that didn't stop the world from running. Even during and after the Industrial Revolution we didn't have the typical MBA running a business; mostly there were workers along with a select few exceptional leader or expert. But there was no need for MBA or “Institutionalized Managers” so as to speak to run the business till the start of the 21
st century. So do you really thing until 21
st people were doing just fine with the fairly educated masses and some graduates and all of sudden one morning everyone was shouting for MBA’s.
Let me tell you what exactly happened to the industries and other organisations, they were running all right with the regular employees, what changed all of a sudden was the supply of talents to a particular job. With the world becoming more prosperous more people started getting education there was more people willing to do a particular job with the risk of being overqualified for the job. Now that a good problem to have if you think in terms of “picking best of the best”, for a regular labour job there can be thousand or even lakhs of post so the more quality the merrier, but it got nasty as you moved higher up the ladder.
The top of the tree is usually occupied by managers and for that post you don't need thousands of people, a group of people will suffice and the amount of competition I suggested above is not good for those who are recruiting for the top post. It will become nearly impossible to choose from the millions of graduates to select the chosen few, it’s not only time consuming but also impractical so what did the clever people do. They decided to go back to economics and this time adapted another classical theory and that is what we also call
“Green Belt” zone. In economics what this means is that you are creating a sort of barrier for something to enter, it’s just the sort of thing people do by fencing their houses so that the neighbours don’t use your stuff. Please don't misunderstand me that I don't value MBA’s, and the quality that they bring to the table. But what this green belt does is makes the work of the selectors easier in terms of choosing a small set for finding the right person.
Are you really that special??
Imagine the world to a large Venn diagram and a large circle representing the whole world. An MBA is the most innermost concentric circle, it is a sort of rule or policy adopted by the higher power to limit themselves from going through the many outer concentric circles such as primary school pass out, high school pass out, Graduate etc for selecting the right candidate. So, you may now see that a MBA is worth his money not just because of the classical demand-supply gap in terms of quality of talent, because someone was too lazy to search through millions of applications . It is just that people don't want to go through thousands of aspirants to find the right one, an MBA might bring you more talent it is highly possible but there is also an high possibility of a normal graduate doing the same.
So, MBA as a career was developed to make the choice of selecting candidates for the top job easier and add a certain benchmark to the position making it more desirable as well as a target for the best of the minds.
Thus if you are doing MBA and you think it makes you the best in the world, then wait for a second and think once again because the reason you are in a commanding position is just because some lazy person (Company owner’s) thinks his golf time is more precious that interviewing millions of other Non-MBA’s to find a suitable person.
So I guess MBA has got less to do with talent and more to do with economics and optimization.