Do you need an MBA (or even an Executive MBA)?

Last week I attended a breakfast presentation to launch a new Executive MBA programme run by the Harold Pupkewitz Graduate School of Business.  First, there is an intrinsic problem with breakfast functions.  Either people are really busy and have to get early to work, in which case they have no time to go to 'breakfasts', or they don't have to get up early, in which case they may skip breakfast also. 

So that with most of these '7.30 for 8' functions in Namibia, at 7.35 someone has to waken the security guard to unlock, and turn on the lights. By 8 there are usually more organisers than attendees and only by 830 may proceedings get started.  The Rector of the Polytechnic, with his well-known waspish sense of humour, pointed out that the targeted audience for this presentation was presumably either senior management or those interested in obtaining a higher qualification in senior management: both of whom  really should, for starters, have a sense of time management.

But on to the more serious things.  How important is an MBA?  Even the brochure accompanying the function was a trifle defensive, admitting that many traditional MBA programmes centre on formulaic classroom treatments of highly simplified business problems.  So every new MBA tries to be different, to stand out from the rest, to be more 'practical' and management oriented.  The head of the Harold Pupkewitz business school, Professor Grafton Whyte, took the floor and in his engaging British accent, reminding me of that of the comedian Lenny Henry,  gave an entertaining presentation of the programme - which is to be an EMBA - an 'executive' MBA - the HP graduate school of business already has an 'ordinary' MBA.  This programme is to be given in block release format, only admitting top management with extensive business experience - not to students just looking to take some postgraduate business degree.  To sceptics, Professor Whyte declared : "Ignorance is not Bliss", and promised that if participants in his programme get it right, "their salary will double in 5 years".  But we are still talking about 'salaries' I wondered, i.e. employees, no matter how senior in the hierarchy.  What about the top guys?  Are they 'ignorant' and is an EMBA the right way to escape from a state of ignorance?

I thought of Peter Thiel, the iconic billionaire who invented Paypal and had a substantial hand in the founding of Facebook, who has just published a fascinating book called From Zero to One.  He is famously dismissive of conventional business education, and offers $ 100 000 grants to the brightest IT and entrepreneurial prospects provided they ignore college and go straight into business. What would he say about MBA programmes? I think we could guess.

Of course good management training is essential to national development, and the growth of competent middle managers at least.  But another anonymous quotation came into my head: the definition of an economist - the guy who know more about money that the person who has it.

It was an excellent breakfast though.