Yes professors from good schools who teach at bad schools are on the whole less qualified and couldn't teach at a better school. Of course there is no absolute but nothing is and at the end of the day it's about about correlations and averages.
And I'll leave you with a couple average statistics:
HBS
-Avg GMAT: 708
-Cost of $78K
-Average financial aid of $45K
-Median starting base salary of $100K (not including bonus and bonuses without business school are usually at least 30K right out of college).
-Median signing bonus $20K (not yearly but signing only)
-Median other compensation $35K
University of Florida
-Avg GMAT: 650
-Cost of $10K to residents and $37K to non residents
-Average financial aid of $96
-Median starting base salary of $58K (not including bank)
-Median signing bonus of $5K
And here is a little bit on who was hired from Florida:
Top 15 recruiting firms that hired the most graduates in the past 12 months and the number of students hired:
Firm Graduates Hired
1. DHL 2
2. William R. Hough & Co. 2
3. Ernst & Young 2
4. Accenture 1
5. Blockbuster 1
6. Citibank 1
7. Cox Communications 1
8. Danka 1
9. General Electric 1
10. United Rentals 1
11. Dept. of Labor 1
12. BB&T
This shows just a bit of the difference in hiring after school and the costs. I don't feel like pulling stats on teachers, alumni, and other students there but obviously the higher test scores, income, and better jobs lend to the correlation that they are smarter at Harvard than at Florida.
Now the fact that an MBA is worthless on its own. The article below is just one of many examples:
Latest embodiment of inflated value:
an MBA 40-year analysis
Heather Sokoloff - National Post
Wednesday, July 03, 2002
A business degree does not guarantee a successful career or a higher salary, a Stanford University business professor concludes in an analysis of 40 years of research on the economic value of the MBA.
Little of what is taught to students in business school prepares them for the corporate workplace, said Jeffrey Pfeffer, an expert in organizational behaviour who has taught at elite U.S. business schools for 30 years.
Rather, students are paying for prestigious names to add to their résumés and the opportunity to network with like-minded colleagues, Dr. Pfeffer said.
MBA programs in the United States can cost more than US$100,000, while tuition at the best Canadian schools ranges between $7,000 and $48,000.
"The simplest advice is that if you don't get into a leading business school, the economic value of the degree is really quite limited," said Dr. Pfeffer, whose paper, co-written by a Stanford business student, will appear in the fall edition of the journal Academy of Management Learning and Education.
"Obviously, if you get admitted to Harvard or Stanford or another elite school, the very fact of your admission is going to increase your worth in the job market," he said. "But there is not much evidence the actual education does very much."
Employers who hire brand-name MBA graduates do so on the basis of the quality of the student body at those schools, not whether students have acquired specific skills or knowledge with their degrees, Dr. Pfeffer said. He found a student's employment prospects were unrelated to grades earned.
Dr. Pfeffer's research has raised the ire of business students, especially his own at Stanford, who say they are highly satisfied with their investment.
Fellow professors, on the other hand, have voiced little objection to the findings. "To be brutally honest, everyone knows this. This is not a big surprise," he said.
Dr. Pfeffer said he has long been skeptical of the value of an MBA. He became convinced after a group of consulting firms and investment banks did their own research comparing the performance of business school graduates to those trained in two- or three-week programs teaching new employees business basics.
The internal studies found the non-MBAs did no worse, and in some cases better, than their peers with a business degree. The studies also found more education did not result in higher salaries.
For example, a study of consultants at McKinsey & Company who had been on the job for one, three and seven years found that at all three points, employees without an MBA were as successful as those with one.
"You have to question what goes on in the two years it takes to get an MBA, if someone can virtually be equivalent in two or three weeks," Dr. Pfeffer said.
"What that suggests to me is that if you take a smart person, and give them a relatively short course, a mini-MBA, if you will, they basically do as well as the MBAs."
One of the problems, Dr. Pfeffer said, is that much of the business school curriculum has remained unchanged since the 1960s. He found little evidence that business school research is influential on management practices. Many of the theories and analytical techniques imparted by the institutions "can be readily learned and imitated, at least by intelligent people."
The U.S. schools have also become slaves to magazine rankings, leading them to develop coddling devices such as professor-written lesson summaries to bolster their "student satisfaction" appraisals.
"When students are relieved of any sense of responsibility for their learning ... they learn much less," said Dr. Pfeffer, who cautioned Canadian business schools against developing a similar obsession with rankings.
Dr. Pfeffer's findings echo a recent report from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the primary accrediting body in North America.
That report lambasted its members for maintaining a curriculum that is out of touch with modern business practices. "Preparation for the rapid pace of business cannot be obtained from textbooks and cases," the report said.
Still, Dr. Pfeffer said he doubts the criticism will discourage a record number of students in Canada and the United States from applying to business schools this year, giving the schools little reason to change.
-Rudey
--To each their own. I want an ipod though.
Quote:
Originally posted by AXiD670
Again - you are putting words in my mouth. I NEVER said that the Harvard grad has the advantage a lot of the time. I said, yes, he will have the advantage some of the time. The other guy will have the advantage some of the time. It just all depends on a number of things. And no, my last statement doesn't even imply that an ivy-league MBA is worthless. I don't know how you're getting that.
Also - it is not an absolute that those who graduate from the top 10 schools will earn more money, get the better job, get promoted faster, learn from better teachers and share experiences with smarter students. Yes, it is LIKELY that these things will happen, but it is not in any way a guarantee. So, what then do you think of the professors at these "lower" schools that have degrees from the top 10 schools? Are you saying that someone with a Harvard degree who teaches classes at Joe Blow U all of a sudden loses intelligence or credibility as soon as he accepts that teaching position? Someone is teaching those classes at the non-top 10 schools, and a lot of those people are these ivy-league grads of whom you speak.
All I am trying to point out is that it doesn't matter where you have your degree from as long as you have your degree. I haven't taken any MBA classes yet so as to your claim that you could learn it all in a 1-week program, I don't know, but somehow I doubt it. I just don't agree with your point that anything other than something from a top 10 school is worthless. You can't sit here and say that only ivy-league grads get the "non-crud jobs." You tell me to bring facts and figures but you haven't either.
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