I was all set to share with you a counterintuitive, research-based approach to studying that has proven to be highly effective with my students. And then an article from Sunday’s New York Times crossed my desk: “I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down,” by Chris Marquis, a professor at Cambridge Judge Business School who has also taught at Harvard and Cornell.
And I said, “Well, there goes Plan A!”
Buckle in for a longer one here today. :-)
Marquis makes a provocative argument about the value of business schools. But one of his underlying points got me thinking about a question that extends well beyond the MBA: What are we actually choosing when we choose a school?
We tend to think of education as a transaction. We invest time and money, acquire knowledge and credentials, and leave better equipped to pursue goals we already have. Marquis asks us to consider something more consequential: institutions don't simply prepare students for the futures they envision. They can also influence what students value, what they aspire to, and what kind of future they want in the first place.
That possibility has implications for anyone choosing a college or graduate program. It suggests that we should look beyond a school's reputation and ask what attending it might actually mean for us.
What reputation does — and doesn’t — tell you
I've worked with many MBA candidates who tell me they want to attend Harvard Business School. That's understandable. HBS has a top-tier reputation, a formidable network, and access to opportunities that can be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
But when I ask why HBS specifically, the answers sometimes amount to little more than the school's reputation. The assumption seems to be that because HBS is among the best, it must be the best choice for them. Just get in and figure out the specifics later, right?
That skips an important step.
There’s substantial variety in how different MBA programs approach education. HBS is strongly associated with the case method, in which students analyze business situations and debate decisions. Down the street, MIT Sloan emphasizes action learning and applying ideas to real-world problems. Stanford Graduate School of Business, by contrast, places considerable emphasis on leadership development and the personal questions that accompany it.
These are broad characterizations, not mutually exclusive categories. HBS students work on real problems, MIT teaches through cases, and Stanford offers rigorous analytical instruction. No school has a monopoly on any one approach.
Still, differences in emphasis matter. A candidate who learns best by working through practical challenges may prefer a program that offers extensive opportunities to do so. Someone who wants to examine their leadership assumptions may place particular value on a different set of experiences.
The question isn't which approach is objectively superior. It's which combination of teaching, opportunities, people, and culture is most valuable to a particular student.
Prestige can tell us something important. It may signal employer recognition, the strength of a network, or access to recruiting opportunities. Those are legitimate reasons to care about a school's name. But prestige doesn't, by itself, tell us whether the educational experience is a good fit, whether the program's incentives align with our goals, or whether we'll find its culture appealing.
A school's reputation can be evidence of its value without being a complete explanation of that value.
The burden on schools and applicants
One of my clients recently attended a panel for a prominent MBA program (named “Westbridge” to keep it anonymous!) in which she heard prospective students and school representatives asked why they should choose Westbridge over other excellent schools.
The answers were essentially, “It's Westbridge,” and “Why wouldn't you want to study at Westbridge?”
I found the exchange revealing. The speakers were treating the school's reputation as both the premise and the conclusion of their argument. Westbridge was desirable because it was Westbridge.
But this raises a question for the institution, too. If a school wants applicants to make an informed choice, shouldn't it be able to explain what makes its educational experience valuable—not merely why its name carries weight?
A panel isn't a comprehensive account of a university. Representatives may be nervous, unprepared, or simply poor at articulating what makes their institution distinctive. A weak answer doesn't prove a school lacks educational value.
Still, applicants should investigate further. Talk to current students and recent graduates. Ask about specific classroom experiences, how students spend their time, which opportunities they actually use, and what the program rewards. Look beyond the brochure to how the institution operates. Then ask whether you can identify a compelling reason to choose it over the alternatives. If you can't, don't take the name as the answer. You may need to do more research—or reconsider whether the school belongs on your list.
I've heard the undergraduate version of this problem, too. “Penn’s my top choice.” “Why?” “Well, Wharton’s one of the best business programs in the country. And a lot of people I know who I look up to went there.” Not bad, but that’s gotta just be a starting point, not the end of the research. Another memorable exchange:
“All right. We’ve done all this SAT prep. You earned your way into the 1500s! And you’ve got a solid profile overall. Now, why Duke?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just always heard it’s a really good school.”
Bruh.
Now, these are terrific schools, and these students could very well fit in well at those schools. But this kind of reasoning, left underdeveloped, can lead to disappointing admissions outcomes and to subpar college experiences (not to mention the long-term trajectory).
Neither student had explained why the school's excellence mattered to them personally. They had identified evidence that a university was highly regarded without articulating what they hoped to gain from attending it.
That's the distinction: knowing that a school is excellent isn't the same as knowing why its particular strengths make it the right choice for you.
A student interested in business might discover that a less obvious university offers a curriculum, a student community, or access to a particular industry that better serves their interests. Another might find that a school's teaching approach suits them unusually well. Someone else might realize that the opportunities that initially attracted them aren't actually the opportunities they want most.
The point isn't to ignore rankings, reputation, or advice from people you trust. It's to use those things to generate better questions rather than treating them as substitutes for answers.
What institutions can change
This is where Marquis's argument adds something important to the familiar advice to research colleges carefully.
It's one thing to ask whether a school will help you achieve your goals. It's another to ask whether attending it might change those goals.
An institution shapes more than what students learn in class. It influences whom they meet, which ideas they encounter, what kinds of behavior they see rewarded, and which paths become visible or desirable. These influences can be subtle. Students may not notice them while they're happening.
Consider an MBA candidate who enters business school hoping to build a company, work in a particular industry, or pursue a career with a meaningful social impact. She finds herself in an environment where certain employers dominate recruiting, particular career paths confer status, and classmates increasingly define success in terms of compensation or prestige.
That environment doesn't determine what the student will do. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with high-paying careers or competitive recruiting. But the student may gradually find herself pursuing a path because it is celebrated and accessible, rather than because it remains consistent with their original priorities.
The reverse can happen, too. A program may expose a student to an unfamiliar field, a different way of thinking, or a form of work that changes their ambitions for the better.
This is the more consequential possibility in Marquis's argument. Education may alter not just our capacity to pursue a goal, but the goal itself.
Better research can help applicants understand the environments they're considering. It might uncover:
A better-suited educational approach: a less obvious school may offer more of the kind of learning experience that helps a student thrive.
Opportunities more relevant to their goals: a school's particular courses, projects, networks, or industry connections may matter more to a student than its general prestige.
A culture that pulls in a different direction: recruiting patterns and peer expectations may make a career path unusually attractive—even if it isn't one the student actually wants.
This doesn't require prospective students to investigate every aspect of every institution. That's impossible, and it would make an already demanding process unmanageable. The goal is to identify the differences that could plausibly change a decision.
Early in the process, research can help students build a list by revealing educational approaches, programs, and opportunities they hadn't considered. As the list narrows, research should become more focused: What distinguishes these remaining options, and which distinctions matter most to me?
There are limits to what research can establish. Applicants can't predict exactly how they'll change over four years of college or two years of business school. Nor can they know in advance which relationships, classes, or experiences will prove most consequential.
The point isn't to eliminate uncertainty. It's to make a more informed decision about the environment in which that uncertainty will play out.
Questions worth asking before choosing
For parents, one useful question is:
If your child were admitted to every school on their list, what specific reasons would they have for choosing one over the others?
The question isn't designed to prove that reputation doesn't matter. It's designed to reveal whether a student has considered what lies behind it.
For MBA candidates, I'd put it this way:
If the name of the school weren't on the diploma, what features of the program would make you willing to invest two years and six figures in it?
Of course, the name does matter. It may open doors long after the formal education is over. But the thought experiment helps distinguish the value of the credential from the value of the experience that produces it.
Cost belongs in the comparison, too. For undergraduates, financial aid and differences in cost can substantially affect the value of a choice. For MBA candidates, tuition is only part of the investment; two years away from full-time work can mean significant foregone earnings.
A school's advantages may justify a higher price for a particular student. But that conclusion should follow from an examination of those advantages, not simply from the assumption that the more prestigious option must be worth more.
These questions don’t have to be answered perfectly before you apply. Rather, they're ways of directing attention: toward the educational experience itself, the opportunities that matter to us, and the environments in which you might spend several formative years.
The question that remains
Marquis's article is provocative because it challenges the idea that education is merely a transaction: pay tuition, acquire knowledge and a credential, and move on. Institutions are environments that shape what students encounter, whom they meet, what they practice, and what they see rewarded. Those influences can matter alongside the curriculum and the credential.
That doesn't settle Marquis's case for shutting down business schools. But it does give prospective students a reason to look more carefully at the places they hope to attend.
I've been thinking about several questions this article raises beyond what I've written here today, and I suspect we'll return to some of them in the weeks ahead.
If you've encountered an educational institution that changed not only what you knew or could do, but what you valued or wanted from your life, I'd be interested to hear what changed—and what about that institution prompted it.
Perhaps the most consequential question isn't simply whether a school will help you achieve your ambitions. It's whether, by the time you leave, those will still be your ambitions. Choosing a school isn't just about deciding where you want to go. It's also about considering who you might become while you’re there.
Tom