Re:Why Harvard Business School Is Under Fire
by smelendez on Thursday May 18, 2017 @01:55PM
(#14369440)
> In virtually every instance, McDonald contends, Harvard has obsessively pursued money, sending a disproportionate number of its graduates to consulting firms beginning in the 1950s (it was all but synonymous with McKinsey), to Wall Street in the 1980s and to entrepreneurial start-ups once initial public offerings became the rage in the 1990s — and provided intellectual justifications for its actions.
Is this Harvard pursuing money, or its students pursuing money and prestige (presumably the reasons they went to HBS in the first place--hardly anyone goes to business school primarily because of an intellectual curiosity about management theory)?
> but they don't really provide any evidence to back up that claim or to disprove it.
They are paraphrasing a book by Duff McDonald - I'm guessing the book goes into the meat of it. There is a NYT review of the book[1] that offers a bit more detail into the allegations, including the paragraph below:
> In virtually every instance, McDonald contends, Harvard has obsessively pursued money, sending a disproportionate number of its graduates to consulting firms beginning in the 1950s (it was all but synonymous with McKinsey), to Wall Street in the 1980s and to entrepreneurial start-ups once initial public offerings became the rage in the 1990s — and provided intellectual justifications for its actions. Much of that wealth found its way back to the school itself. Its professors earn enormous sums as consultants to businesses populated by their former students, who also give generously to their alma mater...
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/24/books/review/golden-passp...