Do Case Studies Make You An MBA?

Cases Without CP

In these courses, the class discussion is led by the professor. Students are not given any grades for participating in class. However, if any student has anything valuable to add, then the professor always lets him. Many a times, the professor encourages the students to participate by cold-calling. However, since it is non-evaluative, if a student doesn’t know something, he usually ends up saying so rather than blabbering nonsense. This really filters out the unnecessary voices of the crowd and streamlines the learnings in the lecture. The success of this method is also largely dependent on the professor and his ability to structure the lectures. But if done correctly, this can be one of the best uses of the case-based method.

Self-Developed Cases

Although quite rare, there are some courses which ditch the 20-page Harvard cases altogether. These professors create 4-5 page cases themselves. These are sufficient to facilitate the entire class discussion and are extremely to the point and crisp in terms of what the course intends to teach. It is a rare skill to teach the same concepts using just 4 pages instead of 20 pages. If you find yourselves into any such course, then consider yourself blessed. In my opinion, this is the best use of the case method; partly because it is unconventional to the usual Harvard method. But the major reason why I love this method is because you end up spending more time analysing than reading. Isn’t that the reason we go to a B-school to in the first place?

So going back to the initial question, “Do cases make you an MBA?” The answer is perhaps. Cases by themselves can only add value as much as reading a good book can. The real differentiator is the professor. Although just a facilitator, the professor largely determines how much you get out of a course. It might be a bit of a stretch, but it can be said that the “Exceptional Professors make you an MBA”. The best way to support this statement is by asking ourselves, after 5 years what will we remember? The cases that we read? Or those genius professors who taught us?

Hence, when you choose your courses, always go by the professor. Not by the content of the course or the quality of the cases or the class timings. Go with the best professors and rarely can you ever go wrong with a course.