Bryan Caplan asks a great question, What Did You Learn in Business School? He goes on his post to clarify that he’s looking for things that you learned that you actually use in your career. I believe he is doing research for a book. I can’t wait to read it.
We live with the mostly unchallenged general belief that all school is good and the more school the better. I think that belief is something that more of us should challenge.
To answer Bryan’s question about what I learned that I use in my career, very little. Much of what I do I learned on-the-job or by researching topics on my initiative.
I’ve been thinking about this question myself a lot lately. I’ve been working on a blog post with the same theme.
One of the first things I credited b-school with was teaching me how to read financial statements. But, then I remember that I took an accounting class one summer while I was attending engineering school. I was interested in finance and thought that would be a good way to dip my toe into it.
I took a community education course, taught by the finance manager of an auto dealership. It cost $40. We met twice a week in the classroom of a junior high school. I remember one classmate of mine was a floral designer at grocery store who was considering a career change.
Later, when I took the accounting course offered in my university MBA program, which was taught by a PhD who advised state treasurers, I remember being underwhelmed with how remarkably similar it was the $40 community education course that I took.
Next, I thought that maybe b-school taught me how to value business and business cases, something I do a fair amount of now. I think it laid some groundwork, but after b-school I read Robert Hagstrom’s book on Warren Buffett’s investment decisions, The Buffet Way, and was impressed with the simplicity and elegance of the valuation approach Hagstrom described. I thought it was better than what I learned in b-school, so I adopted it and have done better in that regard than many of my b-school peers who have not read the book and struggle to even express in words what exactly a stock price is.
What about economics? I think a broad base in the economic way of thinking is a good tool to have a business analyst or manager. I loved micro and came as close as I could to not passing macro in my MBA program. But, neither did much for me. By the way, that was the second time I had taken both. The first time was as an undergrad. Economics was an area of emphasis (whatever that means) I remember being impressed with the “multiplier” in macro as an undergrad and I scored better there.
But none of the economics courses did much for me. It wasn’t until I read Thomas Sowell’s book, Basic Economics, later that I gained a better understanding of the economic way of thinking. Since then I’ve become quite the pop economist, thanks to reading many more pop econ books, a few heavier econ books and years and years of economics blogs, along with learning exchanges in the comments sections of those blogs (sounds a lot like an online course).
As I posted here, I think it would be good if b-school were to transition into more of an applied experience. Go do something. Start a business. Do a project for a business. Buy a business, try to grow it and sell it. You’ll learn a lot more valuable stuff and you will probably end up adding more value to the economy than hanging the standard sheepskin on your wall.
Our Dinner Table 