In the midst of today's economic carnage, whether in banking, the auto industry, real estate, or the perennial state of gross inefficiency in government, one culprit in the finger pointing blame game has been missing, and that missing party is the one principally and often times exclusively, responsible for all of our current woes. I refer to higher education in general, and specifically, MBAs.
It is probably safe to assert that the vast majority of individuals in positions of authority and control in this country, whether in business or government (and many of these individuals move effortlessly between the two sectors) are products of the best academic institutions our educational system has to offer. These are the people who gave us credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligations, and other exotic forms of financial structuring which has led to today's mess. It is also a fact that the cost of a four college degree today is over 1000% more than it was 30 years ago.
I don't see any of my friends without MBAs who would have dreamed up economic calculations and scenarios in which borrowers with no provable income are enticed to get loans to buy real estate for 100% of the "appraised value" of the real estate, with the loan being guaranteed by a "government sponsored entity" (FNM FRE), and authorizing the GSE to borrow ten times the amount of these dubious loans to finance its own existence.
Higher education has been the death knell of common sense and fundamental understanding of physical and natural laws of resources and economics.
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