The MBA - Sending Lots of the Wrong Signals

 What a difference half a century makes. 

In the late 1970s the MBA was the ticket. For getting in, for being promoted, for the knowledge assumed to be required to start a business. In order to transition from non-profit to the private sector I took calculus, the GMAT and coaching for my application to be admitted to the MBA program. I was right: One semester in, I landed a plum job in Big Oil at more than double my salary and with an expense account. 

Now, as The Wall Street Journal has been telling us for a few years and again today: The marketability of that degree has declined. That's because employers not only value hands-on skills more than education. The MBA sends the wrong signals. Those include:

Expectations of higher wages

Entitlement for special treatment

Stuck in school-learning that has to be unlearned.

Too clever by far. There is the stigma of being branded negatively as the smartest kid in the room and, as with Jeff Stilling who was a Harvard MBA, winding up in prison. 

The update on the crash of this professional degree is that some educational institutions such as Purdue and Johns Hopkins are providing steep discounts on tuition. 

Meanwhile, though, even those prestigious settings like Harvard Business School are producing graduates who can't get jobs. The latest figure is 23%. Sectors which absorb them such as consulting are contracting. 

In contrast, applications to law school continue to surge. The ambitious are blowing off warnings from the US Supreme Court chief Justice John Roberts, partner at Paul, Weiss Brad Karp and co-founder of Quinn Emanuel John Quinn that AI will significantly reduce demand for junior lawyers.

Paul, Weiss and McDermott recently cut the number of associates. 

Just this week law firm MinterEllison slashed junior lawyer hiring by nearly a third. It was blunt about why: AI bots will be replacing inexperienced lawyers. 

The Predictions market could be taking bets on how many summer interns this year will be receiving offers to return as a full-time associate and if the JD Class of 2027 will the first to experience a perfect storm of cost-efficiency mandates, AI and offshoring. 

In coaching I guide the despondent as well as the overconfident to seek out their own intel about ROI on not only professional degrees but also all kinds of training. Scams are exploding. Then I push them to connect the dots in a totally pragmatic way. Ditch passion and purpose. Assess risk.  

Earning a Good Living in 2026 Involves Mental Combat. The enemy is usually your own thinking.

Complimentary consultation. No Pressure. Solid Guidance. Contact Jane Genova janegenova374@gmail.com.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

America Not Hiring in 2026: Back to Golden Age of Solopreneurs?

 For hiring, 2025 was a brutal year to search for a job. The Wall Street Journal reports that 2026 could be worse: "At a gathering of CEOs in Midtown Manhattan this month organized by the Yale School of Management, 66% of leaders surveyed said they planned to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams next year. Only a third indicated they planned to hire." The WSJ adds that pullback from adding manpower could be temporary. But given shareholders' demand for cost-efficiency and the continual improvements in AI, chronic unemployment could become standard. However, there is a solution. An old-fashioned one. That's becoming a solopreneur, that is setting up your own business without partners or employees. The model dates back to ancient times.  The golden age of the solo business owner in America had been from the late 1800s to about the mid 1920s.  There had been a wave of immigrants, discrimination against them and few jobs. They drove pushcarts ...
Read more

Newly Minted PhDs in Economics Face Unwelcoming Job Market: Of Course, I Left My PhD in Humanities Off the Resume

Monitor postings on Reddit subunits focused on careers and it's no longer news that PhDs, both newly minted and those already in the labor market, generally are finding the credential an obstacle in the search for a job or even contract assignments. No, not an asset.  Let's cut to the chase. The highly educated have to get smart about this, fast. With some exceptions, I advise those I coach to leave the PhD off job-search materials. The negative assumptions among those hiring range from that you expect too much money to you'll be a know-it-all.  When my boutique collapsed post-9/11 and I had to land a survival job I lopped off everything but the BA. At the interview I dumbed-down my vocabulary. Sure Harvard was started in 1636 but America remains anti-intellectual. In addition, the integration of AI into strategy and operations makes knowledge work in general less and less marketable.  That's the narrative of our times: Advanced degrees having low or no ROI. The result,...
Read more

Sex-Economy a Global Growth Business - The Economist, Skadden Former Partner David Eisman and More Agree

The March 21st - March 27th 2026 edition of The Economist documents the monetary aspects of the global sex economy. Here are snippets: Porn - $100 billion   Exchange of Sex for money - 0.6% of females over 15 of age   Virtual companionship - to be determined. And,  OnlyFans - $7 billion.  That could expand exponentially.  According to Bloomberg , OnlyFans is in advanced talks for a possible sales deal for a stake in the business. The buzz is that this is fertile territory for M&A.  To assist with those kinds of deals, Bloomberg Law just reported that OnlyFans poached from elite law firm Skadden partner David Eisman. The position is general counsel. In his 20-year career at Skadden he specialized in entertainment and media and was a key player in the M&A group in Los Angeles. Will there be snickers throughout the legal sector about Eisner's new employer? Will Skadden CMO Luke Ferrandino have to go on the defensive?  Maybe not. ...
Read more