Schooled to Fail?

Apparently we have schooled ourselves to fail. At least that’s the buzz where the economy is concerned. Writing in The New Republic, Bradford Plumer reports on the backlash against business schools who, for years, have charged exorbitant fees to train thousands and thousands of MBAs, nearly half of whom took up executive positions in “large investment banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms.” What did these students learn? They learned how to make big numbers in the short term with shallow programs designed to make everybody happy, but without regard for the future or the larger stakeholders in the firms they were employed to serve. Failing banks, failing businesses, lost jobs, eroded 401(k)s, and an economy reeling out of control are the result of two generations of bad schooling. Wait a minute…short-term numbers? Shallow programs? Hopes fading? And all under the leadership of highly-trained, master’s level experts? Church attendance is declining. The population of born-again Christians is not keeping up with the rate of population growth, and although the “born-again” numbers are increasing, less than half of them believe in absolute truth, increasing numbers of them doubt the value of sound doctrine,