Why MBA is not a Professional Degree

The July/August 2010 of Harvard Business Review has an article that finally faces the truth: the MBA degree is NOT a professional degree in the way that a medical, law, or engineering degree is. The author, Richard Barker, is a professor at the Cambridge business school in England, and it is quite refreshing to see a B-school professor ‘fessing up' to what should be obvious.


Much of his commentary is based on things that have been observed by others before, and applies just as much to schools of education as to business: that there is not a well defined body of knowledge to learn to become qualified, that the key to the education is the process and ‘case studies’ more than defined content, that there is no board to measure and license those who are qualified and to ban/discipline those who do not live up to it. All of these areas are quite different than in the professions, though most of them fall short on the part about holding practitioners accountable. He points out that the content of what a medical or law school teaches is what qualifies the graduates, whereas in B-school most alumni will tell you that the classmates and discussions were more important than the content. You hire a doctor or lawyer specifically for the technical knowledge they have but managers are mostly hired for their leadership skills. Professionals provide input and expertise in a defined area but managers mostly assemble input from various professionals and ‘connect the dots’.  And as the collapse of the financial sector has shown, there is clearly no accountable and very little in the way of ethics.

This by no means means that management is necessarily an inferior pursuit. It does mean that getting an MBA is not what qualifies you to be a manager. For the most part, you should have already demonstrated the insight and leadership skills BEFORE you get an MBA, which is the reverse of professional degrees. An MBA can broaden your exposure to issues that might take many years for you to encounter on the job, but it does not provide qualifications. In contrast, you would never go to a lawyer, doctor, or engineer until AFTER they are trained. You would never trust a doctor who had spent much of his education just talking about case studies rather than gaining technical skills and technical knowledge. By way of contrast , a great many businesses are successfully  led by entrepreneurs who are very effective but not the least interested in an MBA.

As a culture we have tried to make teachers and managers into a content-based skill like engineering, but it just isn’t so. In both cases the attributes for success have more to do with personal traits than with a degree, and much of it cannot be taught. Both teachers and managers should have a ‘real ‘ degree in an area of expertise, but becoming a teacher or manager is more about dealing with people, insight, and connecting inputs across various disciplines than about mastering a body of knowledge. The reverse of that, of course, is that many professionals have mastered a key body of knowledge but have poor interactions with people. There are a great many doctors and lawyers who are very knowledgeable but very inept as well.

Ministry degrees, like the Master of Divinity, have the same issue. For all our pretending otherwise, the M. Div. degree does not qualify a man for ministry. It can enhance the knowledge of one who already has the right insight and people skills, but it does not provide qualification. While academic theology may have to do mostly with particular areas of learning, pastoral ministry and teaching is more like management and teaching. Divinity schools would do well to follow the example of many MBA programs, not accepting candidates until they have already been in ministry for several years.