Email: Academic Question

Dear Sean

Maybe I misunderstand your view on education. But how do you reconcile your disdain of academics with the fact that both Christensen and Kim/Mauborgne are professors at prestigious business universities such as Harvard and INSEAD, and that the two books you so often cite from are direct results of academic research?

Both books are against the typical business school teachings. Christensen himself said that the reason why businesses end up inevitably destroying themselves through “good management” was because of what was being taught at the Harvard Business School.

Remember that Christensen made it big in business before he went into academia. Christensen is also one of the very few who could exit academia and be making a billion dollars (no exaggeration). He stays in academia because he believes in the cause of disruption. He knows, and others are beginning to see it too, that disruption is a very microscopic view of Joseph Shumpeter’s “Creative Destruction”. “Creative Destruction” is, as Shumpeter wrote, the polar opposite of Marxism. Just look at what the teachings of disruption did to this one industry of the “Game Industry”. Now imagine it in all industries. Panic and fear would be gripping the very big businesses as well as politicians. In a way, many of the recent events going on the past year appear to be exactly that.

My disdain for academia is more about how we are creating a new Educated Underclass. There are increasing amounts of young people who are ‘educated’ and have degrees in drama or English literature and cannot find a job. Universities are not designed with the real world in mind. This is why young people are so shocked once they get out of school.

We are doing great harm to young people by hiding from them the real world. And the real world depends on your knowledge of finances and business. Someone not knowing how to read a financial statement is like someone not knowing how to read.

I see many of the universities as old towers of the Industrial Age that is rotting away. The modern university, as we know, appears destined to go the way of the newspaper. (In fact, Christensen has even written a book on this subject as well.)

The value of the university degree is not going up. It is going down. And the cost for that university degree is going up. Something is going to give very soon.

Above: No, this isn’t from the 70s. This is just a few weeks ago.