Some things never change

I was in the Strategic Partnerships class today. We were discussing the airline alliances case, specifically about Star Alliance - dunno if you have heard of this. I hadn't. I just new BA's One-world alliance. This was new to me. Anyway, thats not the point here.

Some things I realized after the class discussions in Term 8. Maturity levels are still the same. I mean - they were quite low to start with and have pretty much stayed there. One thing that didn't interest me is that we were actually discussing case facts. Whats the point in talking about something that someone has already written. Anyway, that was the structure of the lecture, so we cant debate that. But then lets turn around and look at the so-called MBAs who are going to graduate out of this place in a little more than 2 weeks. They still talk like politicians. They just know that they have to say something - in all probability, whatever they say will be totally unconnected what the Prof is asking. But still, they would make their point. Its felt like sitting in a Summer session of the Indian Parliament. So, the Prof asked one student about his reaction to someone's comment. Clearly this person did not have an answer. I could see that stupid look on his face. But then he had raised his hands and the Prof asked him. And this was his only opportunity to get those 2 marks for class participation. He promptly replied - "Actually, I have a different view" and I was like - "Yeah, you will".

I had this idea in my mind that somehow things will turn around, the placement season would set things right for a lot of people, it would change their attitude. I thought they would get wiser by the day. Its been a total let down. Even though the MBA has taught so many jargons; marketing & financial models, it has still left a big hole in the personal skills space.

The buzz on campus is about graduation passes. People have generously invited their uncles, aunties and everyone beginning from their three year old cousin to attend the graduation. And now they have started spamming the batch asking for someone to donate extra passes to them. Well, we spamming doesn't really work well with MBAs. So what do we need? Yes, an EXCEL Sheet. A new excel sheet has been created in the shared drive for this purpose. After all, what are MBAs for. They can make good presentations, write some numbers in an excel sheet that no one can understand and comment about anything and everything in this world. I am sure that Bill Gates must be a strong supporter of B-Schools for having propagated the use of Microsoft Tools. And I am happy that he has kept most of them on the consumer side and not a part of his business.