The Homa Files

Excerpted from WSJ review of : Ahead of the Curve, Philip Delves Broughton (Penguin Press, 283 pages, $25.95)

Broughton had one of the most desirable jobs in newspapering …  quit and went back to school to study accounting  … at Harvard Business School.

He emerged with an ambivalence toward the HBS brand  … particularly the sense of entitlement for which its students and faculty are famous.  

Most graduate business schools, you might have noticed, award MBAs. HBS, according to the dean, specializes in “transformational experiences.” The dean says that  HBS grads reject so many routine job offers that of course recruiters are going to resent the school.

Broughton was prepared for the number-crunching nerdiness, the intense competitiveness and the unrealistically high levels of self-esteem.  “HBS,” he writes, “had two modes: deadly serious and frat boy, with little in between.”

The future titans of American industry celebrated … with  everyone … dressing as his favorite hip-hop star. … at another party, the men were to dress as women and the women as sluts. . . .

It is the other mode, the serious, non-frat-boy one, that the reader may find more disconcerting.

The jargon-choked faddishness and fatuous therapeutics of pop business books and the modern workplace have seeped into HBS too …  including New Age group bonding games and …a “personal development exercise” called “My Reflected Best Self.”

Even  Broughton …  shows signs of succumbing to a version of Stockholm Syndrome — a hostage identifying, if not with his captors. “I was happy I went.” He knows how to do a regression analysis, and he has learned how to make an Excel spreadsheet do everything but play canasta.

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A study by a banking analyst tried to track the American equity markets in relation to the number of HBS graduates who chose to go to work in finance each year. If the figure was less than 10%, the market went up not long after. More than 30% and the market was headed for a crash. In 2006, 42% of the HBS grads went to work in finance. Right on schedule.

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This entry was posted on August 5, 2008 at 6:33 am and is filed under Book Summaries, Education - Academics, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.