> I haven't encountered many from the best programs and I always wonder if they require some REAL work experience where they had real responsibility first / etc.

This was the traditional MBA path for a long time. Start out in a technical field (e.g. engineering), go back for an MBA, move to a management position. A lot of the value of the MBA comes from sharing previous experiences w/ your peers. Having students go straight from undergrad to MBA dilutes that value significantly and it doesn't really do the student taking that path any justice. They'll likely come out and hit the workforce more entitled than they normally would be.

A lot of things mentioned in this discussion deal with leadership issues. MBA programs understand this and focus more on it but leadership is a difficult thing to teach. There is still some hard skills gained in an MBA program, essentially being able to jump into a business in a consulting role and be able to function across multiple departments to understand the business.

Not to defend MBAs here, but doesn't a big portion of the blame fall on organizations that are clearly putting too much weight on their candidate's degree and placing them in jobs they're not (yet) qualified for?

In an alternate scenario: an MBA gets hired to fill a position below management and the higher-ups get a clear picture if they're cut out to manage operations, only awarding the MBA a promotion to management if/when they prove themselves.

This is true, however typically the people who make that call are from the same background (MBAs themselves).

The elite programs have higher bars to entry so they generally are selecting people who seem to have potential (already smart, already personable, promising early career). Most of these people would end up being successful anyways, but the MBA from an elite program is seen as a way of accelerating that. A lot of the things you mention are people skills that a MBA isn't really going to change.

I have talked to people who have been to fancy MBA programs. The ones who had (substantial, management-related) work experience first say that they already had learned everything the university could teach them. The ones that did it right out of school said that they didn't really understand what the university was saying until they saw it for themselves in the field. These were non-technical MBAs that taught accounting concepts and management strategies (as opposed to these modern MBAs that have a lot of statistics courses), so I'm not sure how closely this aligns with the situation today.

No fancy (elite) MBA takes applicants right out of college now. Harvard, for example, does identify and grant admission very promising students right out of undergrad, but makes them wait 2 years to get professional experiences through their 2+2 program.

I think of "elite" (M7/T15/whatever) programs as an expensive recruiting mechanism.

To get in, you need great work experience, great recommenders, excellent test scores, and a great story. Basically things that signal you're generally pretty smart and can learn quickly.

By and large, the top programs admit people who already have work experience. Early career experience--executive programs aside--but something material.

not sure what the threshold is for 'elite' but a top MBA program will generally require some years of work experience, but not necessarily responsibility for other people.

Most people in MBA programs are there to either a) help jump their career into a higher bracket (i.e. management) at companies where having an MBA is one of HR's checkboxes or b) move into consulting.

Or c) move into the finance industry