A Totally New Direction for Management Education: A Modest Proposal

“The major problem with business school graduates,” a businessman told us recently, “is that I have to train them for two years after graduation to do me any good. The first year they have to unlearn what they learned in school, and the second they start learning the business.”

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of management education, but is repeated too often to be ignored. Despite the undeniable accomplishments of graduate education in management, many managers ruefully agree with Robert Townsend's advice not to hire Harvard MBA's. The article proposes a completely new way of educating managers in business schools so that they perform better in real practice.