Can someone tell me what are “Kennedyesque cadences?” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/business/17shelf.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin PHILIP DELVES BROUGHTON lived out a fantasy. In 2004, dismayed over the gloomy state of newspaper journalism and his own career prospects, Mr. Broughton, then 32, quit his job as Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London and enrolled in Harvard Business School. As he recalls in “Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School” (Penguin Press), his motives were a mixture of idealism and self-interest. “I went there to recover from writing, to stop looking at the world around me as a source of potential stories,” he says. “I wanted to learn about business in order to gain control of my own financial fate, and more important, my time. I was tired of living at the end of a cellphone, prey to an employer’s demands.” “Ahead of the Curve” is a cautionary tale for those who believe that the grass — and their future paycheck — would be greener if only they could jump the fence into the rarefied world of the Masters of Business Administration. Much of the insider information about Harvard Business School and its case-study method has been reported previously in other books and magazine articles. But Mr. Broughton goes beyond the regurgitation of classroom notes on management techniques to offer a sociological critique of the school’s stated mission “to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.” “Business schools no longer produce just business leaders,” Mr. Broughton says. “M.B.A.’s determine the lives many of us will lead, the hours we work, the vacations we get, the culture we consume, the health care we receive, and the education provided to our children.” So who are these future leaders and where do they come from? Although Mr. Broughton changes names and biographical details in describing his 895 classmates, he pulls no punches in his characterizations. Many of his peers, he says, hailed from one of the “three M” backgrounds: Mormons, former military officers, and former McKinsey & Company consultants. There was also a large contingent of so-called “international” students — Indians, other Asians, South Americans — most of whom had actually gone to colleges and/or high schools in the United States. A second-year student who delivered a welcoming speech “told us that simply by getting into H.B.S., ‘You’ve won,’ ” Mr. Broughton reports. “From now on it was all about how we decided to govern our lives. There was something creepy about his Kennedyesque cadences and his well-practiced call to arms. But what he said would be repeated throughout my time at Harvard. H.B.S. was a brand as much as a school, and by attending, we were associating ourselves with one of the greatest brands in business.” Mr. Broughton stresses that “in many ways, I loved my two years at Harvard.” His teachers were, “for the most part, inspiring and committed,” he says, and “smart and considerate” is how he describes his classmates. “For me, and everyone I knew, Harvard changed the view of our futures and the possibilities available to us through business,” he observes. Yet among his fellow students, he also saw evidence of “arrogance” and an obnoxious “sense of entitlement.” Lacking a financial background, Mr. Broughton had to struggle to keep up in class. He says that before enrolling, he had never even opened the Excel program on his computer, much less created a spreadsheet. During lectures in the introductory finance course required of all students, he often felt as if the professor were speaking to him in unintelligible “dog whistles.” And he was puzzled by an accounting course in which the professor made distinctions among book accounting, tax accounting and “the search for economic truth.” Along the way, Mr. Broughton says, he discovered that his classmates generally operated in only two modes: “deadly serious” and “frat boy.” He describes parties at which students slurped vodka poured down a channel in a block of ice called “the booze luge.” He recounts serving as the auctioneer at a charity fund-raiser during which he obligingly stripped off his shirt and tie and allowed himself to be handcuffed to a “muscular bond trader” as his classmates brayed with delight. Mr. Broughton also details a scheme for acquiring “financial aid BMWs”: Upon being accepted at the business school, some students deliberately emptied their bank accounts to buy BMWs for themselves. Since they were not required to list vehicles among assets on their financial aid applications, they often qualified for extra financial aid. “So basically, Harvard buys you a BMW,” a classmate informed Mr. Broughton. AS fate would have it, Mr. Broughton says he ended up as the only person in his 90-member class section not to receive a job offer upon graduation. Married and the father of two young children, he shelved an entrepreneurial idea for opening a high-end laundry in favor of doing some media and film consulting and returning to his journalistic roots to write this book. Mr. Broughton says he was glad to have learned “the language of business, the modes of thinking.” But he also contends that “business needs to relearn its limits” and that the business school should revise its stated mission of educating leaders for the world at large. “H.B.S. need only promise to educate students in the process and management of business,” he says. “It would be a noble and accommodating goal and would dilute the perception of the school and its graduates as a megalomaniacal, self-sustaining elite.”
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” and picture Kennedy saying it. Now picture some douchebag saying “You are now a Harvard man and you will always be a Harvard man”
He went to Harvard to open a dry cleaner. lol
that was empathetic storko
Hmmmm…I need to figure out how to spend down my assets so I can get max financial aid.
storko Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > He went to Harvard to open a dry cleaner. lol making his mark on the world.
or - removing other peoples marks on the world…
wow, that was really good!
it’s pretty well known that business school for the most part is a big joke i plan on going to b.school in the future for the “credentials…” i expect it to be easier than my undergrad
Why was he the only guy with no job?
I’m generally unimpressed with the MBAs fresh out of school. Granted they are not Harvard, but usually Columbia, NYU, Georgetown and a few other schools ranked between 10-30. I’m convinced that business school won’t teach you anything unless you already have a prior background in the industry.
Just thinking out loud here, but wouldn’t, ya know, actually successful people not go to business school? Even Harvard–I mean, if you’re really that smart and already successful (as the top business schools say they want you), why the balls would you need to drop 100 grand and forego 2 years of income?
supersharpshooter Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > it’s pretty well known that business school for > the most part is a big joke > > i plan on going to b.school in the future for the > “credentials…” > > i expect it to be easier than my undergrad chuckle…boy, are you in for a lil surprise
> chuckle…boy, are you in for a lil surprise being taught arrogance is easier for some than others.
this guy at my work went to some Harvard Program like HBS EXECED program. i have seen his resume and he almost makes it sound like he got his mba from harvard. although it seems like the program is only a few months long. anyone know how competitive this is or have any insight? sorry i dont know more
kkent Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Just thinking out loud here, but wouldn’t, ya > know, actually successful people not go to > business school? Even Harvard–I mean, if you’re > really that smart and already successful (as the > top business schools say they want you), why the > balls would you need to drop 100 grand and forego > 2 years of income? Haha, yeah. One of my coworkers went to HBS and he always jokes that it is “the home of highly successful failures.” You have to be wicked smart and good to get in, but if you were really THAT good, wouldn’t you just skip it? I know the answer is not always yes, but certainly some people at HBS have stalled out in their careers, failed at a venture, etc.
“but certainly some people at HBS have stalled out in their careers” My Dad - Baker scholar at HBS - hasn’t worked since the early '80’s…
SkipE99 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > this guy at my work went to some Harvard Program > like HBS EXECED program. i have seen his resume > and he almost makes it sound like he got his mba > from harvard. although it seems like the program > is only a few months long. anyone know how > competitive this is or have any insight? sorry i > dont know more lol.yea. my army buddy matriculated into Upenn because that was the closest school to his base, or so he said