Tuesday, August 7

Academics Without Academia by Gary North

A PhD or an MBA? an interesting article on whether a student should go do an MBA or a PhD? Having bummed around while pocketing MBA's and PhD's, and having working in both a University as well industry, I am not sure about some of the recommendations. If you want to be in business, nothing like an MBA from a good school to give you a potted exposure to all what happens in a firm. In an ideal situation, just like we do not give admission to any MBA student who does not have industrial experience, we would do the same for hiring academic staff as well. But it is not ideal, and the number people with industrial experience wanting to become academics at the beginning of their careers is low, specially for sectors such as Finance. Hence you do end up with academics with no industrial experience whatsoever. But they do get paid to read (a divine state of affairs! :)


But the conclusion is great and I quote, "If you want to get paid to read, academia is for you. If you want to get paid to communicate ideas, find buyers who are paying. Then find out what they are paying for. Then specialize here. But you must learn marketing. Remember the words of the late Mac Ross: "If you build a better mousetrap and don't have a marketing program, you will die alone and broke with a garage full of mousetraps."


No comments: