HBS: promoting money, greed and immorality above society’s needs ? | Wall Street Financier: Notes from High Altitude©

There is a new book coming out “The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite” written by Duff McDonald to be published by Harper Business on April 25, 2017. “To the author, who spent two and one-half years reporting and writing The Golden Passport, HBS is an institution that promotes money, greed and immorality above society’s needs, a school whose teachings are complicit in the moral failings of Western capitalism. It is the most critical work on HBS since the publication of the New York Times’ bestseller Ahead of the Curve by Philip Delves Broughton who chronicled his two-year experience as an MBA at the school.” (John A. Byrne)

Harvard Business School apparently didn’t cooperate with the author in allowing him access to their archives, and chose to regard his work as critic towards the school, even though the largest portion of the book is dedicated to the school’s history. From John A. Byrne’s interview with McDonald:

“The school did not do a good enough job at providing a sense of values to the masters of the universe they trained. They didn’t have a full course on ethics until 2003 or something.”

In that same interview McDonald says that the case method (pioneered at Harvard but now widely used nationally) warps everything around the money narrative. MacDonald passes on a critique of HBS guru Michael Porter, a familiar name to all business students.

John A. Byrne calls Duff McDonald the “Barbarian” at Harvard Business School’s gates. McDonald himself thinks he has written a book on constructive criticism.

Awful introduction #Buffet and #Lemann @HarvardHBS #powerbrokers .https://t.co/tMbsi43iRl Riddle #hbs pic.twitter.com/ajSNrnzQ7A

— Max Cantor (@FinancierGuru) April 19, 2017

Criticism, in general, accomplishes very little. And “blame is a tool employed by the weak-minded“.-Max Cantor quote. Criticism of what ? Of building an elite factory ?

Here is how Harvard, and any other large institution of higher ed works: the school receives money from corporations that have the largest percentage of alumni. So HBS and its endowment investors and grantors are former alumni with the largest share of wealth -you can download the Wealth X Billionaire Census 2017 here. “Harvard has the highest number of billionaires with 52 and the largest number of UHNW individuals with 2,964. That group has $622 billion in net worth. The University of Pennsylvania, which has 1,502 UHNW graduates with a total of $242 billion in assets, is a distant second in aggregate UHNW assets. Of the top 20 universities in the world ranked by the number of UHNW alumni, the three that aren’t in the U.S. are the University of Oxford with 401, the University of Mumbai with 372 and the University of Cambridge with 361. (WealthX, 2013 Report).

Reinforcing money and raising moneymakers is not unique to Harvard. In fact, all institutions do it. There is only one reason, I suppose, to single out HBS: their disproportionate share of wealth, worldwide. It’s what the “golden passport status” title of this book is about. To even think that HBS is interested in teaching anything but profit logging is to be thick as two short planks. HBS alumni push for hire from the school to the exclusion of the weaker, less known schools graduates. It is called my tribe, building a close knit community of influencers and powerbrokers.

“I don’t have a shot at this job at -[Silicon Valley co name omitted]- because I didn’t go to an elite top 20 school” -that’s an email I got.
“Somebody lied to me.- I thought I get this and that”-another, quintessential email.

I understand your prediction. You may never get a shot at that “dream job”. But if an overextended real estate developer with bankrupt casinos like Trump got a shot at the Presidency, you can do better. You can be an old coot with below average intelligence and still get that dream job. What makes you think that was your dream job, anyway ? The name of the employer ? Compensation ? What exactly is a “dream” job ? A “dream job” should be something fulfilling, rewarding and inspiring, unlike being a numb rat numbers spinner. A dream job is much more than the name of the company you work for.

Where you went to school it doesn’t matter.

Where you start your career it doesn’t really matter as long as you start at the bottom and slowly build up.