The Vapidity of Business School

Photo by Kit from Pittsburgh, USA. http://www.flickr.com/people/97632390@N00

Nearing the Big G

I’ve been tortured these past few days. I only have 2 months before graduating and like many in the same situation, I’m reflecting on what I’ve done and where my “real life” is headed. “Real life” as though the past 5 years and multiple thousands spent on an alphabet soup of B’s and D’s, and a piece of paper with a fancy wax seal, aren’t real.

I’m not sure what I expected when I first applied to business school, but I know that I got rejected due to my high school performance. I decided then to go for another Major, work on my business school prerequisites then apply again. I chose Sociology because at the time, my thinking was “Yeah, let me do this easy thing since it won’t be too much work.” During my first semester, I took a few classes one on a Saturday afternoon called Introduction to Sociology, a psychology class, an epistemology class, statistics in sociology and the Introduction to Marketing class.

Guess which class I enjoyed the most? I’ll give you hint, it’s not the marketing class. It was sordid! The class was based on such basic thinking, using only anecdotes to communicate any form of “lesson” but without actually diving any deeper on the art of thinking.

I was now very confused. I was a 17 year old that found himself in a new country with no friends, and the promise of mind-expansion from what I thought I loved, my beloved world of marketing, was being shattered.

I was now in dilemma. I was afraid that the work I was going to begin putting into the prerequisites for business school was now going to go to waste as my soul was sucked out by these bleak classes. I spoke to some people, got their opinions on the marketing classes and was told to give it time. “Things will look up!” the said. “It’s just an intro class!” they said.

I persevered. Between some form of being too afraid to stay in an arts program because of “unemployability” and the need to continue my original post-high school dream of becoming an adman, my decision was to continue with the business degree.

My First Step Into Adman-ship

Now it’s year 2 of my university life. I did the maths, economics and computer literacy classes that were required of me, and succeeded. Year 3 and I’m in my first officially recognized year as a business student.

“I’m here. Now what?”

If ever you’ve caught yourself thinking this in business school, believe me: You are NOT alone. I can safely tell you that if you found business school an enriching and exciting experience, you may find that this article will not mesh well with you.

Rather, I am talking to you, dear student. You with a passion for knowledge and a curious bone in your body. My first year in my business school, I realized that I had abandoned any earthiness and humanity across the street in my humanities building. Men here buzzed around in ties and suits for a simple class! Girls strutted about, click-clacking their way to class in pumps. There was no learning going on. This was a cesspool of business card chucking and for-benefit socializing, called “networking.” Stopping to ask someone what they thought of the professor’s comments in a class invariably got responses like “Pff, it was a waste of time bro” and when I’d press further, asking why they’re here if it’s a waste of time the reply was always “Cause business is where the money’s at.” Occasionally, I’d run into someone who’d give me a curt “I didn’t know what else to do.”

There was no passion for business here. It was but a transitional phase in people’s lives that was built as means to acquire a paper that will give them the ability to apply for a job.

I don’t blame the students around me in my classes for not being interested or passionate. Some people really do go into something without knowing what to expect from it. What worries me is the style of teaching that often just involves mechanical repetition of core equations and pointless anecdotal exchanges about famous business stories. Business schools tend to float along this easy path, going further away from the original purpose of a university: To quench the thirst for knowledge.

“Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” -Leonardo Da Vinci

Egoversity

The trend in business schools tends to be that the students actually believe that they are all going to be successful. I’ve yet to find a concrete reason as to why this is. I’m in my last semester of business school and out of the 600 or so people I’ve met (thank you Facebook for making this an easy task), I’d probably employ about 10 of them.

Fuffing about, getting drunk at night then waking up, going to your group projects and getting A’s on cookie-cutter reports and presentations is not success my friend. It’s nothing. It’s as valuable as your degree: $XX,000 in debt accumulated across 3-4 years. Go ahead and ask everyone you know and make a tally about how many of them either:

1. Applied anything they learned at school in their work
2. Found a job based solely on their degree

If you find someone that did 1 of these 2 things in any meaningful measure, please contact me here: gedeon.charles(at)gmail.com, I’d like to go for coffee and talk about it with you.

BCS Epidemic (Bland Conversation Syndrome)

If you’ve gone to business school, you’ve had this conversation before:

“Hey, how’s it going?”
“Not too bad, working hard.”
“Yeah, tell me about it, those group projects?!”
“Ugh… ****ing waste of time!”

Then you walk off, sit at your laptop, load up 9gag and flip through it for a few hours only to have someone you know spot you, join you at your table, ask you how you’re doing and then you reply:

“Not too bad, working hard.”

The fact that we study “business” and nothing else, limits your exposure to anything other than the examples of successful or failed companies that come up in our outdated, overpriced textbooks.

This is probably the most dangerous aspect of business school. Unless your friends are all interested in the stock market, it is virtually impossible to have a dinner conversation that revolves around business. The discussion will get boring fast without going to other topics that come out of what business is actually about: the selling and trading of everything.

Why then are we studying nothing but “business”?!

Business school does not actively encourage people to be interested in anything. The importance of knowing things from other majors is not only ignored, but there is a condescending undertone throughout the student body that the humanities and fine arts are “wastes of time” and the sciences are for nerds and geeks.

I was guilty of this thinking before my experience in sociology.

Diamond in the Rough

This is not to say that no good came out of my experience here. Between the pointless classes, uninteresting exchanges, and the feeling of having a bleak future that starts with a job behind a computer, so far down the hierarchy that I can’t see my own boss’ asshole with the Hubble telescope — I made some friends whom I really cherish.

I’ve made friends here that also believed that business could be seen as more than what it is. I met someone that will work for 7 hours a day and still find time to study, get a 4.0 GPA and work, unpaid, in a student association. I met kind people that were willing to let me fail at my job so that I may blossom into something better — a rare professor that motivated us to break the trend and become well-rounded business folk.

Business students have something that others don’t tend to have: they’re go-getters. It’s for this very reason that I feel so strongly about teaching more humanities, arts and sciences. These teachings will help create deeper understandings of the world that business often violently introduces itself into. We can see meaningful change if we opened the eyes of students to topics that they may not have chosen themselves — even if it’s just a hint of it.

Valedictory

On my upcoming graduation day, I want to feel proud of my experience, but ultimately I will always have a hint of pain in my memory. A pain that comes from myself primarily, for copping out and not pursuing a degree that may have been more aligned with my beliefs. A pain that comes from knowing that business school could so very easily be done better, but slow, outdated systems prevent it from moving forward. A pain that comes from knowing that people with amazing potential are not being exposed to elements outside their comfort zone which is crucial to human creativity.

However, I would not have done it any differently. Growth only comes with pain. Learning only comes from past failures and my dream to see a better educational system would not have been so vivid, had I not seen this side of academia.

If any segment of this resonated with you, then I have a favour to ask of you. Stop dwelling on it and take a step in your own direction. Follow your passion with this business framework. Vibe off the energy of those around you and channel it to make a difference in your life — it may not always work, but at least you will have the ultimate success of satisfaction. Be inspired by the other vapid go-getters around you who are constantly working and work instead towards something meaningful!

Worldly knowledge is as useful as you make it to be. The pursuit of knowledge is beautiful, but business students, more than the students of any other major believe that they will succeed and that’s what makes the difference. That’s what makes you the most ideal candidate to work with the information of the universe to help you achieve your own life satisfaction — even if that doesn’t single-handedly change the world.

For my thesis project, I’m attempting to tackle education, learning and curiosity. You can read about it here: https://charliegedeon.com/tagged/thesis

Another extremely interesting proposal from Martin Parker at the University of Leicester: http://theschoolof.org/Organizing.html