Your quora piece first argues that MBAs have negative impact because a bunch of the people involved in the financial crisis had them. They also had undergrad degrees and were all human. To actually know if MBAs have a negative impact we need to compare a treatment group (with MBAs) with some kind of control (without them).
As for your view of the "average" MBA, that may very well be the case. There's plenty to write about how MBA programs suck, even (or especially) the "elite" ones. From that to argue that we as a society should have no ambition to teach business seems strange to me.
I disagree. To actually know if greenhouse gases have an impact on Earth's average temperature, do we need a control Earth? In both cases the evidence is pretty clear.
On the other hand, doing a controlled experiment wouldn't be a bad thing, either, so if we just shut down the business schools for the next 50-100 years, perhaps we can find the answer at the end of the study and decide whether or not to open them back up again. :)
>I disagree. To actually know if greenhouse gases have an impact on Earth's average temperature, do we need a control Earth? In both cases the evidence is pretty clear.
We have much better evidence for global warming than "the temperature has been rising and CO2 is also present in the atmosphere". You say that "the evidence is pretty clear" but at least in your piece there's only your anecdotal experience with an unspecified number of people.
>On the other hand, doing a controlled experiment wouldn't be a bad thing, either, so if we just shut down the business schools for the next 50-100 years, perhaps we can find the answer at the end of the study and decide whether or not to open them back up again. :)
I know you're joking but that experiment has already been ran in reverse (from no MBAs to the present state), so that data should already exist. It's not much of an experiment though as you have a bunch of other relevant factors evolving at the same time.
As for your view of the "average" MBA, that may very well be the case. There's plenty to write about how MBA programs suck, even (or especially) the "elite" ones. From that to argue that we as a society should have no ambition to teach business seems strange to me.
Full Disclosure: I have a Stanford MBA