I B Te icign aiy - ednsday Feb uar s0 Why the BMShOIB0Is overrated The Ross School of Business dupes the rankings and trades imagination for group work 0 0 0 Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - The Michigan Daily 4 QUOTES OF THE WEEK "I could sit here and talk to you about the buildings I'm cc I am surprised, frank- building in Chicago and Las ly, at the amount of Vegas, but I'm sure you'd distrust that exists in much prefer to see Andy Dick this town. And I'm actually forcefully removed sorry it's the case, and from the stage." - IVANKA TRUMP, daughter of Donald Trump, I'llwork hard to try to after comedian Andy Dick was removed from "Jimmy Kimmel Live by security guards when he continu- elevatei , io ously rubbed her legs and hair. -PRESIDENTBUSH Wa s "Our job is to bash the presi- political chilly climate in an inter- dent. That's what we do." view with National Public Radio's - EVAN THOMAS, a top Newsweek edtior, when Juan Williams asked about a media bias at the magazine. TALKING POINTS Three things you can talk about this week: 1. Gay sheep 2. How Al Gore made it too cold to walk to class 3. Biden's slip And three things you can't: 1. The Superbowl 2. New York Fashion Week 3. Aqua Teen Hunger Force undreds of students send in an application to the Ross School of Business every year, and hundreds get only a rejec- tion letter. The lucky few who are accepted become one of the 1,200 elite students admitted into a school that consistently places within the top five in national rat- ings. I was one of them. But after a semester, I couldn't take it anymore. I dropped out. Not because of bad grades or a tough curriculum - far from it. I dropped out because I knew that I wasn't going to learn anything valuable sitting in those over-renovated classrooms, regardless of what The Wall Street Journal say. And even though there are Ross alumni in all walks of life - CEOs of major companies, mail room clerks and the middle managers in between - that will sing its praises, Ross, hopelessly dedicated to ratings, has become hopelessly overrated. Ross isn't designed to produce innovators like Larry Page, the Google pioneer and an alum of the University's College of Engineering. Actually, the program is most effec- tive at churning out uninspired office functionaries and managerial consultants. The B-School prepares you for the sort of professional business careers that are essentially dead weight in the economic sys- tem. It's the type of career idea men - notably Warren Buffet - publicly disdain. But all that is a well-kept secret. In finance class you'll never see a diagram with "middle manage- ment" or "consultant" next to your name. You also won't hear that for the most part you'll just move, play with, analyze and talk about wealth, rather than create it. That's for the engineers. Except, of course, when it's not - then it's just for the graduates of a better business school. The coursework is a torrent of fanciful, fictional case studies in which corporate strategy boils down to a simplistic system of equations and cryptic variables. Students endlessly calculate prob- lems involvingthe distribution of product A to Firms B and p with x trucks and y dollars. To the mas- terminds of the B-School program, management is a science, and busi- ness is a problem that can be solved if you have the right variables. It's a dangerous mindset, and the wrong one. The admissions process is geared toward students with good GPAs in introductory classes who spend their spare time earningtitles like marketing director, head of stu- dent relations and executive vice president in various student orga- nizations. Because the admissions committee only uses a student's first year at the University in its analysis, and because it's difficult to differentiate yourself from oth- ers taking the same prerequisite classes, students are encouraged to join organizations - not for the cause, but the rdsum6 line. A likely candidate would lap up conversation about deliverables, corporate strategy and mission statements, but zone out when the conversation turns to better ways to sell sandwiches, or what drove Facebook's growth or why the Michigan Union's Wendy's fran- chise is among the highest-earn- ing in the country. After all, those things couldn't possibly show up on the test. The curriculum is accordingly bereft of rigor. In operations and management science class, for instance, students learn material over an entire semester that would take 45 minutes in an LSA econo- metrics class. Students spend three weeks discovering that flipping heads with a quarter three times in a row has a probability of 1 in 8. They power through Excel spreadsheets with longcolumns of data. And learn Bayesian statistics by plugging numbers into tables. While Bayes- ian statistics could help later in life, most students would benefit more from simple arithmetic. And advanced arithmetic - at YOUTU BE VIDEO OF THE WEEK One more reason to read the Economist OK, you succumbed to the Econo- mist's "Get four issues free!" pop-up advertisement, but the magazines just now stopped arriving. while you mull over whether to continue letting the magazine paint you a clearer picture of the world - no longer free, but at least 67 percent off newsstand prices - watch thisEcono- mist commercial from the 1990s. It begins in the first-class cabin of an airplane. "You're sitting in seat 2A, wondering who'll be sitting next to youinseat2B,"intonesadistinguished British voice over a mildly pomp-and- circumstance-esque tune played by a trombone. While the "you"insuspenders and natty side-part reclines with a glass oftwine, the flight attendant leadsothe occupant of seat 2B to his place. Who is it? Henry Kissinger. "Ready for a good chat?" con- cludes the commercial's narrator. How can you not immediately jump to your checkbook when reminded that you could have for- mer U.S. secretaries of state as fel- low readers? -KIMBERLY CHOU See this and other YouTube videos of the week at voutube.com/user/michigandaily BY THE NUMBERS ANGELA CESER E/Daily Groups of Business School students toil over mandatory group work. Wadingthrough coursework laden with cryptic math prob- lems, are students taught to think outside of the box? least the practical kind - is lacking side." I also got docked on a problem students can use Excel and Pow- as well. We'd pull numbers from set because my group's names were erPoint and instill management the back of the book rather than not in alphabetical order. The focus "best practices" (there's actually a derive them, or use rules instead was clearly on the terms and pro- whole class that basically teaches of analysis to answer a question cesses, templates and formatting you how to write professional (for example, we were taught to - the skeleton of the problem. The memos. But do they practice what read Excel Solver output by saying real intellectual meat is an after- they preach? One description for a "If this number is0, then it means thought. three-paragraph assignment ran X" without being told why. The Maybe the cause of all this is two pages long). In short, they do answer, incidentally, had to do with that business professors are by whatever sounds good on a rdsu- negative marginal returns). If a definition not quite right for their m6. The profs don't run companies program is rigorous, even remedial jobs. At least in math or even eco- or make great products. Most have kids will do great things, but if it nomics departments (at the top no place at all in the actual world only teaches procedures, it makes universities), the people who teach of business. everyone a robot. are leaders in math and econom- So what really propels Ross into An almost mechanical obsession ics; they publish important papers, the highest realms of college rank- with formula haunts the curricu- work for influential committees ing? lum. I lost credit on a problem for and then run classes in their Group work - the sine qua non writing100A =200 - 20B instead of spare time. B-School professors of the undergraduate business cur- 100A + 20B= 200 because they "pre- make it clear they've been reading riculum. fer all the decision variables on one The Wall Street Journal, ensure See ROSS, page 7B Billions of dollars in the president's proposed budget thatwould be dedicated to military operations with all supplemental requests are added Percent of the proposed federal budget dedicated to defense-related expenditures Number of billions of dollars the proposed budget will direct toward the National Endowment for the Arts Source: Slate.co and The Washington Post I PIVIW AIK I YT )UbUU ) I 1lvi Mock Rock - Dress up like your favorite athlete dressed up as a character from the Lion King. If you're feeling really generous, charge guests extra for beer and donate the prof it to Mott Children's Hospital. Throwing this party? Let us know: TheStotement@umich.edu RANDOM WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE OF THE WEEK General Custer George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839-June 25, 1876) was a United States Army cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the Indian Wars. Promoted at an early age to brigadier general, he was a flamboyant and aggressive commander during numerous Civil War battles, known for his personal bravery in leading charges against opposing cavalry. He led the Michigan arigade whom he called the "Wolverines" during the Civil War. He was defeated and killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn against a coalition of Native American tribes led by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. This maneuver of pushing a situ- ation to the brink succeeds by forcing the opposition to back down and make concessions. This might be achieved through diplomatic maneuvers by creating the impression that one is willing to use extreme methods rather than concede. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear force was often used as such an escalating measure.