Review by Caroline Baum
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- What do some of the world's most successful business leaders, savviest entrepreneurs and reviled felons have in common?
Six initials: HBS MBA.
A Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School is an elite calling card. It opens doors, provides a network worthy of Who's Who and can be the first step on a path to untold riches. (So what if former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling ended up in jail?)
Intrigued by the opportunities open to someone with this golden degree, journalist Philip Delves Broughton quits his post as Paris bureau chief for London's Daily Telegraph to attend HBS. ``Ahead of the Curve'' is the funny, insightful story of his experience.
Delves Broughton, class of 2006, was one of 895 students selected from a field of 7,100 applicants, a 12.6 percent acceptance rate. Once you're in, though, it's ``almost impossible to fail,'' the author writes. Students in the bottom 10 percent are given ``every kind of support.'' The only involuntary way out is failing to show up for class and being ``mean to everyone who tried to help you.''
That doesn't mean the program isn't without its challenges. The competition is intense, the workload daunting and the pressure to secure a $400,000-a-year job with a hedge fund or private equity fund never far from students' consciousness.
Cold Calling
Students are taught business using the case method, adapted from the law school. Instead of listening to lectures, they learn business principles by analyzing real situations in class. Professors ``cold call'' students to present the assigned case, intensifying the pressure to be prepared.
The first year's required curriculum -- 10 courses, five per semester -- covers the fundamentals of business, including finance, accounting, marketing, organizational behavior, leadership and corporate accountability. The second year curriculum is elective.
Some students come to HBS with a purpose: Their companies send them, or they want to make a career change. Others come to find themselves. Our narrator falls into the second category.
He struggles with technology (Word is the only Microsoft application he's ever used), concepts (liabilities are the money banks have, assets the money they don't) and a constant sense of being behind his classmates, many of whom have started companies, run factories, served in the military and worked as consultants and public servants.
Vice Presidents Anonymous
Where Delves Broughton excels is in applying his journalist's eye for detail. He's at his best -- and most hilarious -- when describing his classmates and, by design or default, deprecating himself.
For some members of his class, accustomed to 80-hour workweeks, the 55 hours of academic work expected of students seemed like a vacation, he writes. One veteran of a private equity firm ``did not expect to learn much, but she was looking forward to sleeping, working out and taking long vacations.''
HBS is all about leadership, starting with the school's mission statement: ``to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.'' Even lowly positions at student clubs are advertised as ``leadership opportunities'' and carry the title of vice president.
``One day we, too, might be part of corporate America's bulging vice-presidential class, so we may as well get used to the weightlessness of the title,'' the author writes.
Advice and Consent
Delves Broughton wrestles with the prospect of corporate life. He tries to reconcile the advice of the business luminaries who come to HBS to share their wisdom -- do something you love, the money will follow, family comes first -- with the reality for most graduates.
``The degree enabled them to get jobs that robbed them of their private lives,'' he says. The consolation is that the money they accumulate eventually allows them ``to live the lives they wanted.''
After many job applications, dozens of interviews and a series of rejections (McKinsey & Co.) from employers he didn't reject first (Google), Delves Broughton comes up empty-handed. (``You went to Harvard Business School and couldn't find a job?'' he imagines people thinking when they meet him.)
That doesn't mean the two years and $175,000 for tuition and living expenses was for naught. In the end, he realizes HBS isn't about getting a job. ``It was about putting up the structure for a more interesting life,'' he writes.
That may sound like a rationalization, but if this book is any indication, Philip Delves Broughton got his money's worth from Harvard Business School.
``Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School'' is published in the U.S. by the Penguin Press (283 pages, $25.95). It's published in the U.K. by Viking under the title ``What They Teach You at Harvard Business School'' (12.99 pounds, paperback).
(Caroline Baum, author of ``Just What I Said,'' is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Caroline Baum in New York at cabaum@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: August 4, 2008 00:01 EDT
