I really should like business schools. Once or twice a year I teach a case study about PizzaExpress (a restaurant chain I used to run) at London Business School. Overall I find these occasions stimulating: the students are bright and motivated and tell me the sessions are worthwhile.
This sort of experience makes me feel that business schools and MBAs have merit. I like to think with my case study I am transmitting knowledge that will benefit my classes in their future careers. But I am both schizophrenic and perhaps even hypocritical about business education. For when it comes to areas like entrepreneurship, I feel the only way to acquire the necessary understanding is by practising the art, rather than studying it. Running or starting enterprises are not endeavours that translate well into lectures and academic analysis. It is fundamentally a practical matter – selling goods, meeting a payroll, hiring the right team, haggling with suppliers and suchlike. Essays and formulae will not help you here: what you need are common sense, gut instinct, luck and a veteran's wisdom.
I am also suspicious of quite a few faculty in business schools whom I've met or read about. They are too often highly theoretical in their outlook and too distanced from the nitty gritty of managing a company. Not enough of them have hands-on skill acquired in the battlefield of commerce. My impression is that too many academics care more about their next article in a learned journal than whether their teaching has useful applications in the real world of capitalism in the 21st century.