Monday, May 14, 2012

M.B.A. Students as Special Projects Interns

The media reports that some major companies are paying a fee to colleges for the right to then hire a few of the schools’ M.B.A. students as non-paid interns for a relatively short term, in order that the students be in charge of  management or marketing projects. This makes little managerial sense.
The purpose for taking an M.B.A. course is to learn about business. I have always had misgivings about what can be taught at an advanced level in graduate school about business; most of what you learn is on the job. But here, the student is generally being placed in a responsible position right from the start. Such as, for example,  taking over the marketing of whole brands, etc.
Why not have a conventional internship program without the university fee involvement and the M.B.A. mumbo-jumbo? It all appears to be a school marketing gimmick, rather than an instructional program.
And why the assumption that M.B.A. students are qualified to take over such responsibility from the start? (See the Earl J. Weinreb NewsHole® comments.)

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