B-School Students Assert Fortune Article Misleads

Business students and officials at the Business School yesterday called a Fortune magazine story, criticizing the school's focus, "inaccurate" and "exaggerated."

The article, written by Walter Kiechel III'68, a graduate of both the law and business schools, charged that the school encourages graduates to head for jobs with Wall Street companies instead of traditional manufacturers.

"In a fundamental way the Harvard B-School is growing more remote from corporate America," Kiechel wrote. "Increasingly its MBAs don't want to work there. Not in line jobs for big companies, at any rate." He said the school's professors are often investment consultants themselves, and that they use case studies geared to investment banking and consulting rather than management.

B-School spokesman William Hokinson said the article was misleading, and that the B-School does not slant its students towards these fields.

The article "was written from a particular point of view," Hokinson responded. "He selected those facts which supported his view, and omitted other facts [the B-school] is definitely not oriented to any particular field or profession in business."

Students were quick to agree. "There were a lotof particulars in the article that wereinaccurate," said second year student Fanny Allen."There's acutally a lot of negativism here towardsinvestment banking and consulting."

Students said that B-School professors actuallydiscourage Wall Street jobs.

"They constantly tell us, 'don't be beguiled bythe lure of big money,'" Allen said. "Oneprofessor told us the first day that he didn'twant any investment bankers or consultants in his'class."

"I think the B-School would like to have morestudents coming out to be general managers as acareer," said Eric D. Mankin, who received aHarvard MBA in 1986 and is now working for a PhD.

Students shifted blame from the school to theindustries themselves. "Corporate America is toblame for the lack of business school studentsentering manufacturing, not business schools,"said an editorial in The Harbus News, theB-School's newsletter. "Traditional manufacturingjobs are just no competitive in certain keyareas."

The students also said Kiechel was wrong indescribing typical case studies as "more like afinance text."

"In the cases I've read, by far the majorityare cases where a manager is presented with aproblem," said Eric D. Mankin, who received hisHarvard MBA in 1986.

"The case method is still the heart and soul ofthe school," Hokinson said. "It's not justanalyzing data, but making plans for action andgenerating solutions."

Hokinson added that Kiechel was incorrect inwriting that students were no longer required tostudy management techniques. In the article,Kiechel wrote that a required course, BusinessPolicy I, now taught formulaic corporatestrategies where it had once trained students tofurther "the mission of the company."

"On his critique of what happened to BP I,"Hokinson said, "he forgot to mention that theportion he refers to is retained in another coursecalled MPP, Management Policy and Practice."

Kiechel said he spent almost a month on hisstory, and defended the article as accurate.

"My reporting associate called between 40 and50 Baker Scholars from the Classes of 1977 and1982. I talked to 31 faculty members...I was acase writer there myself and I think I have somesense of how cases are written," Kiechel said.

Kiechel did acknowledge, however, that exceptfor one or two conversations, he did not interviewstudents for his story.

"I think we got enough information from thefaculty and graduates," Kiechel explained. "They[the students] don't, I believe, have any standardfor comparison."

Kiechel also said that he "was certainly aware"that there was another course teaching what BP Iformerly covered. "That discussion was castentirely in terms of how it came from my interviewwith [BP I professor] Michael Porter.