Why Get a Harvard MBA? The Good Times and Fun People
Is a Harvard MBA worth it? Maybe, says British journalist Philip Delves Broughton, who quit his job at the Daily Telegraph to get a Harvard MBA, then wrote a book about it, "Ahead of the Curve."
BNET1's post MBA Follies: Two Years at Harvard Business gives some background on the book, as does Sterling Performance, which weighs in on What a Harvard MBA Teaches You. Both of these, and other reviews, focus on Delves Broughton's doubts about what he's done and his concerns about the experience. They suggest it is not a happy book for potential Harvard students. But The Economist's review, The factory for unhappy people, makes the book sound more promising, and even says that Delves Broughton had "a positive experience" at Harvard.
Of note from The Economist's review is that Delves Broughton's book is a kind of introduction to current management thinking, which might be a useful crib in and of itself.
Also, Delves Broughton accuses HBS of two failings.
First, it pushed the idea that its alumni would be equipped as leaders capable of solving all the world's problems, rather than merely doing a decent job of running a company....His second worry was that so many of his classmates seemed destined for careers that would leave them no space for a happy personal life.Harvard has probably lucked out that Delves Broughton's book has gotten buzz, and not HBS professor Rakesh Khurana's "From Higher Aims to Hired Hands," which argues that business schools have undermined the very idea of business education.
Instead, it will probably become the business school set's version of "OneL: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School," Scott Turow's first bestseller about the legal world, back in 1977. That would be a happy ending for Delves Broughton, and not so bad for Harvard, either.