Abstract
"He used to come from Harvard and about five other campuses. Now he comes from Harvard and, at a generous estimate, perhaps a dozen other places as well. He used to come equipped with enormous self-confidence, a modest amount of book learning, and a fervent belief in the value of spending two years learning to analyze and hammer out business decisions through discussion and debate--the time tested 'case method.' Today he comes equipped with all of that plus a dollop of Freud, an idea of what Tawney said in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and cool confidence in the power of mathematics--in quantitative methods of analysis and decision making that were not even widely understood, much less widely taught, fifteen years ago. | By temperament and training, he is said to be uniquely equipped to analyze, to integrate ends and means -- in a word, to manage other men and affairs -- not as a functionary in the ranks but most specifically, and sooner rather than later, at the top of the chain of command. His mind is keen, his ambition is endless, and his guru is Robert McNamara. He is, in the view of one doting dean, nothing less than 'a man for all seasons.'" | Is this the typical MBA graduate? Does he possess the above-mentioned attributes? If he does have such qualities, he should be able to fare pretty well in the business world. Will the MBA degree mean as much to the graduate as it does to the typical Wharton MBA who expects to earn about $10,000 a year for his first assignment? Or, will the employers in industry, commerce, and government hire the recent MBA graduate of a prestigious university at a $12,000 annual starting salary? Could it be possible that the recently graduated MBA might come close to the position and salary of Gary Rogers, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with an MBA from Harvard and a member of that school's honorary Baker's Society, who was to have begun work in the summer of 1968 for McKinsey and Company, one of the top-ranked management consultants, for $17,000 a year? Mr. Rogers declined positions at other companies which offered him up to $32,000 annually. Then there is a contemporary of Gary Rogers named Jim Fisher. Mr. Fisher is a 1964 honors graduate (in political science and economics) from the University of Toronto. Like Mr. Rogers, Jim Fisher was a 1968 Baker Scholar at Harvard where he obtained his MBA. Also like Gary Rogers, Mr. Fisher was to have begun work in the summer of 1968 for McKinsey & Company at an initial annual salary of $15,000.