MBA - Master in Business Administration. Really?

Dear Blog,

The other day, while Dad and I were on a train journey, we just got talking about the education field and the various options…and also the reaction of our relatives on my completing my MBA and still choosing to join the business, when Dad came across what I think is a very valid point – Why call this degree/diploma an MBA? Before you develop any notions/opinions, let me explain…

You see, every post-graduate degree/diploma has a “Masters” prefixed to it, so you have a Masters in Finance, a Masters in Psychology, a Masters in Education and so on. But none of the “Masters” has been glamorized so much by the academic fraternity, public or the corporate world, except Masters in Business Administration. The effect of this being that the perception about an MBA grad is that he has been taught some secret formulae of success by which he has the weaponry to “Bring a better Future” or “Change the World” or, at least, become a “Money Magnet”!! The "Masters in BA" is seen as "Master of BA" !!

The truth cannot be far from it! We’ve never been taught how to create the future. No one can be taught that. What we have been taught largely is success stories of the past, mostly penned by those who never did an MBA!

We’ve been taught is to think in a sort of structured manner. Ironically, we’ve been taught to do so in a structured environment, whereas what we need is to think with a level head in an unstructured, “real” environment! True, Institutes can’t simulate the exact outside environment inside the campus, but they can – if they want – get pretty close to it.

I am digressing…let me come back to the moot point – why glamorize this discipline so much that it stops a person from coming back to his earlier “normal” life? The perception about the person changes not only in among the people, but in the person himself too, so much so that he may find it difficult to believe that he is the same old version before the diploma!

After all, we’ll all agree…the theoretical knowledge that we gather on campus doesn’t really help us much in isolation – the real learning starts when one is out of the campus in the practical field. All it does is provide us a fancy, comfy ‘cushiony’ start in the name of “Placements”.