Think Inside the Box

The MBA Degree in a Box, the latest gift-wrapped fun from the creators ofMental Floss magazine, promises “all the prestige at a fraction of the price.” In addition to the coursework, it includes your very own MBA diploma. (How generous to assume we did well on the exam!)

After adding an MBA to our résumé, we asked Mark Hauserman, director of the Muldoon Center for Business Entrepreneurship at John Carroll University, to give our coursework a look-over to make sure we didn’t jump the gun. Hauserman (who, by the way, went to a brick-and-mortaruniversity forhis MBA) got a chuckle as he sifted through the kit: “This is great.”

 

Flip over the pictures of these well-known business titans to see their career stats. Hauserman put these in his “keep it” pile: Steve Jobs, Sam Walton and John D. Rockefeller, whom Hauserman describes as “the original entrepreneur.” But if you can’t get anyone to trade for your Donald Trump rookie card, you might as well stick it in your bike spokes. After all, Trump’s biggest claim is his role as “the king of self-promotion.”

Case Study Flash Cards
The 10 case study flash cards each have a different business dilemma on the front and a “real world solution” on the back. Hauserman says he could actually see using these in the classroom.

Final Exam Trivia Challenge
As he unfolds the trivia challenge leaflet, Hauserman laughs again. He’s entertained by the second question, “What year was the first issue of The Wall Street Journal published?” Irrelevant information. “It’s more important to be able to read The Wall Street Journal,” Hauserman says.

Comprehensive Textbook: Business School in 96 Pages
This is where it all starts to fall apart. Turns out we’re outing ourselves as posers trying to look like we have an MBA. The first chapter, “Looking and sounding the part,” stresses wearing a suit, which, Hauserman says, is not important at all. Of the business people he knows, “very few” wear suits. That useful business jargon page? He warns that every company has its own lingo, and you must be careful about corporate speak. “Just speak English,” Hauserman says. And he didn’t dig the book’s version of networking. “This is the old pyramid scheme,” he says as he reads. “Classic networking doesn’t get you where you want to go.” Hm, perhaps we’d better reschedule tomorrow’s surgery; this is making us question that M.D. in a Can we just purchased.