Change Agent - Issue 38

I thought maybe I'd open a business school. This is particularly ironic given my past: No student in the history of the Stanford Graduate School of Business has ever come closer to not receiving an MBA than yours truly.

When I was at Stanford (it seems like decades ago -- probably because it was), I thought that the environment there was terrific, and I truly enjoyed some of my classes. But before the start of my second year, I got an irresistible job offer -- which prompted me to try to go to school and work at the same time. I soon realized that the classes were in Palo Alto, and the job was in Boston. But, thanks to some help from TWA and a bizarre willingness on my part to fly on the red-eye, I managed to commute for a semester. After that, a kindly professor decided to stop the madness and just give me the rest of my credits, so graduate I did.

Despite my less-than-stellar attendance record at business school, I've since found that teaching business is a blast. I taught a class to second-year students at NYU this year and discovered that aggravating 90 soon-to-be-graduating students is great fun. I had so much fun, in fact, that I started thinking about what business school is, what it's good for -- and what it's not good for at all.

As far as I can tell, there are only three reasons to apply to business school. My school, the New Order Business School (NoBS), will focus on excelling at all three.

First, business school provides a tremendous screen for future employers. If you go to Harvard Business School, for example, you are doing a tremendous thing for your personal branding, and you are guaranteed a job interview -- at the very least -- virtually anywhere in the world. When it comes to business, Columbia, Stanford, Wharton, and a few other schools aspire to Harvard's level. And in some industries, they even surpass it.

Just as Internet investors have successfully trained themselves to look past the present and to invest in companies that have a wonderful future, some employers have realized that waiting for someone to graduate from one of these august institutions is a waste of time. Instead of hiring students after they finish classes (which, after all, don't teach why the brand is so valuable), why not just hire people as soon as they've been accepted to business school?

The student who drops out of school after getting in but before beginning classes saves about $55,000 in tuition -- as well as another $180,000 in opportunity cost. Add to that the stock options and a chance to change the world that much sooner, and you can see why this is a no-brainer for all involved.

At NoBS, we offer a special program for just this sort of student. Basically, it's the most exclusive business-school admissions program in the country. We guarantee that only one out of every 1,000 applicants will be accepted to our school. And we guarantee that upon being accepted, every single person will receive at least three job offers -- each with a minimum salary of $65,000 a year.

The fee to have your application considered is $300. After all, as an admissions-based institution -- actually, as an admissions-only institution -- we have to do a great job, so it's $300 well spent.

There are few classes. There is no degree. You apply. You get in (or, more likely, you don't). That's it. We're done. (Oh, and by the way, the profit margins are huge! But you figured that out already.)

Think about the prestige associated with being the one in 1,000. Think about the pride in knowing that you are one of the few people smart enough, motivated enough, and crazy enough to apply to a school that exclusive. Stuck in a dead-end job? Work like crazy on your GMATS and your essay, and you too may be able to break through the clutter of applicants and become a NoBS standout.

The second reason that people go to school is to build a network. This is another way of saying that there's a social insurance policy among students. If someone in your class actually becomes successful or lands a powerful job, the rest of you have someone to go to for favors or even cash.

It's sort of astonishing how powerful networking can be. One investor I know gives preference to companies whose staff includes an alumnus of Camp Tahigwa. Employees don't necessarily have to have attended Camp Tahigwa at the same time that the investor did -- so long as they know the same camp songs.

At NoBS, we offer a concentrated program, half of which focuses on just this sort of networking. Rather than waiting for networking to occur through random osmosis -- through unpredictable events like working on a project together in Cost Accounting 101 -- students at NoBS gather for two weeks every six months to engage in some intense team building. They row crew. They play chess. They build houses for the disadvantaged. They stay up all night putting a VW Beetle on the roof of Larry Ellison's home.