The teachers join the students distancing themselves from the culture of greed in higher education

Soapbox: Students need to be wary of ‘greed is good’

By Kamal Munir, Financial Times, June 22, 2009

Recently, teaching a group of finance students – many of them ex-investment bankers – at Cambridge, I asked if any of them had seen Oliver Stone’s famous film about corporate greed, Wall Street.

The entire class chuckled and one girl replied with mock astonishment: “You mean how many times have we seen it?”

MBAs trying to shed the image of public enemy no.1

Following a previous initiative at Thunderbird, Arizona, some years ago, some Harvard, Massachusetts, MBA graduates have signed a oath, now extended to graduates from elsewhere, also through a dedicated website.

Apparently, the under signers and their mentors, would like to use this oath as a tool to shed the negative image that the ongoing international financial crisis, and the inherent scandals, brought upon them. More and more MBAs see their future careers more in the non-profit sector than in the banking and consulting business, so they dare "to strive to create sustainable economic, social, and environmental prosperity worldwide", among other similarly sounding vacuities.

Genuine idealism or opportunistic hypocrisy?

You may read some of the pieces on this story clicking on the following titles and leave your opinion as a comment in this blog.

"A Hippocratic oath for managers, Forswearing greed", The Economist, Jun 4, 2009

"Harvard's MBA Oath Goes Viral", by Anne VanderMey, Business Week, June 11, 2009

"The students who swear by a business school", by Michael Skapinker, Financial Times, June 23, 2009

Academics have more to declare than their genius

Under this title Devesh Kapur, from the University of Pennsylvania, published in yesterday's FT a comment on potential conflicts of interest by academics. He questions:
"Universities are about research and teaching – but they have also become about big money. It is a symbiotic relationship and one should have no illusions about how hard it is to do the former without the latter. Taking intellectual risks, having the freedom to research and publish on anything of one’s choice and having the right to make mistakes is the life-blood of academia. But should one not ask of academics the same standards of transparency we demand elsewhere?"
You may read the full text of his comment here and give us your feedback at this blog.

Take more of MIT / Toma lá + MIT !

If we believe this abstract, we, Portugal, are on the way to become part of the 17th or 11th largest economy in the world. Why am I not so happy, then?

"Research- and technology-intensive universities, especially via their entrepreneurial spinoffs, have a dramatic impact on the economies of the United States and its fifty states. A new report on just one such university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, indicates conservatively that, if the active companies founded by MIT graduates formed an independent nation, their revenues would make that nation at least the seventeenth-largest economy in the world. A less conservative direct extrapolation of the underlying survey data boosts the numbers to 25,800 currently active companies founded by MIT alumni that employ about 3.3 million people and generate annual world sales of $2 trillion, producing the equivalent of the eleventh-largest economy in the world.

These findings result from an analysis of MIT alumni-founded companies and the entrepreneurial environment that fosters this new-company creation. Conducted by Edward B. Roberts and Charles Eesley of the MIT Sloan School of Management, the report is based on a 2003 survey of all living MIT alumni, with additional detailed analyses, including verification and updating of revenue and employment figures to 2006 from records of Compustat (public companies) and Dun & Bradstreet (private companies). "

Abstract from "Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT" by EDWARD B. ROBERTS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - Entrepreneurship Center, eroberts@mit.edu and CHARLES E. EESLEY, Stanford University
Email: cee@stanford.edu (free downloadable from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1352633)

The first MBA president

"Why politics isn't business as usual"

Under this title Charles R. Kesler published July 03, 2006 a story on The Los Angeles Times that might not be very flattering to MBAs and business schools, let alone to George W. Bush, the president in question.

Read on here http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jul/03/opinion/oe-kesler3

MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1?

Business Week May 20, 2009

Read the story clicking MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1?

The debate over business schools' culpability in the financial crisis rages on, with no clear end in sight

By Francesca Di Meglio