BusinessWeek bats about the predictable responses to the Personal MBA:

• "reading 30 or 40 books, along with some solid experience, could probably give you the same education as a top B-school [and save $150,000]"
• "the MBA is flawed because it passes business education as management education"
• B-schools' competitive advantage: "a completeness...and that completeness has a price tag"
• "The best of the best MBA programs accelerate personal development. Someone comes at 27 and leaves at 29. But they've added five years of maturity"

In the article, and on Josh's blog, PMBA proponents keep mentioning the 80/20 principle, arguing that you can get 80% of the benefit of the MBA through the PMBA readings and discussion.  I argued against in Josh's comment section:

I understand that the PMBA is designed to Pareto’s 80/20 principle, but respectfully I agree with Kevin, I don’t think these books provide 80% of a complete MBA education.

I just did a little excercise, coming up with the top 5 things I feel I’m getting out of an MBA and rating their contribution to the total. Reading/content accounted for about 15%, but Assignments/Exams (20%) and Classmates/Interactive (30%) easily make up half of my MBA experience. Furthermore, the program often looks at the same organizations through the different disciplines (financial accounting, microecon, macroecon, finance, human capital/HR, etc) so there is a synergistic effect (15%) to a curriculum (and trust me, I hate the misuse of the word ’synergy’) that just can’t be matched by reading unrelated books. Guidance from and access to professors contributes the final 20%.

So while it’s a great initial effort, I’m afraid the PMBA only can claim to cover the 20%, not the 80%.

[Yes, I realize I just quoted myself.  No, I do not take myself too seriously.]

More...
    BusinessWeek: Is the MBA Overrated?
    That Kid In The Corner: The 3 minute 17 second MBA

Tags: PMBA, MBA