Is The MBA The World's Most Expensive Ponzi Scheme?

Inside the slow collapse of the MBA Industrial Complex

Since Alex and I are still on our summer holidays (this is somewhat of a lie- I have just been insanely busy and not in the same place for long enough to record a podcast with him!), here’s a latest But This Time It’s Different installment, provided in the less-than-exciting written medium!

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“Rowers” by Brian Nash

You know the three topics that never fail to spark wildfire engagement on X: Elon Musk, finance bros… and MBAs.

So naturally, I’m writing a Substack post that touches on all three- but really zeroes in on the last one. Specifically: are MBAs still worth your time, energy, and the cost of a small mortgage? Or are they just a very well-dressed pyramid scheme?

But first, the obligatory Elon detour.

Over the years, he’s “had this to say” about MBAs:

“As much as possible, avoid hiring MBAs.”
“There might be too many MBAs running companies.”
“Never hire an MBA; they will ruin your company.”

(Yes, those are straight from a Google search. No deep sourcing here. We all know Elon’s beef with management degrees, even though he supposedly has one himself… and routinely employs MBAs in C-suite roles. Case in point: Zach Kirkhorn, Tesla’s long-time CFO and human embodiment of “PowerPoint with precision.”)

So let me be perfectly clear:

Fuck MBAs.

Or… maybe not?

Here’s where it gets interesting: Elon isn’t flinging these anti-MBA grenades randomly. He knows exactly who he’s riling up- disenfranchised online startup bros who worship hustle and hate institutions. The ones who believe an Ivy League diploma is less a credential and more a scarlet letter of legacy rot.

To that crowd, MBAs aren’t degrees. They’re signals of elite compliance; badges that say, “Yes, I paid six figures to learn how to say ‘let’s circle back’ in three regional dialects.” They’re seen as the self-appointed architects of the Great Western Decline.

(This, by the way, is only partly true.)

Because while they roast the MBAs on Reddit and Twitter, the very same finance bros they mock are quietly running the fund, advising the board, writing the term sheet, and yes, flying business class to that alumni mixer in Aspen where they’ll “catch up” with someone named Carter who just closed a growth equity round.

And Elon? He may rail against MBAs publicly, but when he needs a $7 billion structured equity deal done in 48 hours, he doesn’t call “CryptoGuy88” from Discord. He calls his Wharton pal.

So maybe the better question isn’t:

“Fuck MBAs?”

Maybe it’s:

“Have MBAs become the most respectable pyramid scheme in the modern economy?”

Because think about it:

• You pay in with the hope of future returns.

• The system only works if new people keep buying in.

• The real profit goes to those who got in early—or who now run the thing.

• And the whole illusion is held together by prestige, perception, and the promise of power.

So while MBA students enter into the application process thinking they're about to buy an education, maybe they’re just renting credibility. Expensively.

And the moment the market stops believing in that credibility, like when recruiters stop caring, when salaries stop growing, when alumni mixers start feeling more like group therapy, the whole thing starts to wobble.

Because what is a pyramid scheme, really, if not a story we all agree to believe… until we don’t?

And that, it seems, is the MBA in 2025.

A glossy, gold-stamped story that is starting to lose the ability to sell itself.

*** Disclosure: I have an MBA from Harvard Business School, where I continued to work long after my Master’s degree program finished. I get countless people every year reaching out, hot and cold, asking me for my input to their B-School application. Very occasionally, for the most exceptional candidates with whom I have worked, I have written a letter of recommendation for their application.

Am I biased? Yes. Entirely. Has that bias impacted the way I see the future of MBA programs? No, I don’t think so….

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WHY DO PEOPLE DO MBAs?

(And no, “because I love case studies” is not a real answer.)

When someone asks me if they should apply to business school, I always start with the same question: why?

Why spend $300K, two years of your life, and an untold number of hours listening to an expensively-dressed Type A neuroticist named Josh or Julia or Juan explain “how they did it at Bain”?

The answer, of course, is never just one thing. It’s a cocktail of ambition, FOMO, economic reality, and spiritual exhaustion.

Reason #1: The “Up-or-Out” Funnel

This one’s easy, and most common. You work at a firm where, after two years, HR gives you a friendly little ultimatum: Get promoted, or get out. And oh- no MBA? No promotion.

Congratulations, you're now a classic Up-or-Out Candidate™. These folks are mostly consultants, bankers, and private equity analysts who have become fluent in the language of “learnings” and “levers” but somehow still need formal permission to lead a team. So, they go back to school to upgrade.

They do two years at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or whatever feels acceptably elite (or where their parents went), and then return to the same industry… just with a higher title, a bigger signing bonus, and a slightly more attractive better half.

Reason #2: Social Capital Arbitrage

This is the real currency of business school. Not what you know. Who you sit next to while pretending to know it.

At MBA programs, you’re not just “building a network” but are participating in a two-year social liquidity event. The people around you are future investors, board members, power brokers, and- let’s be honest, according to the NY District Attorney who came to speak to my Section- potential co-defendants.

Sure, you could cold-DM someone on LinkedIn. But saying, “We were in Section C together” unlocks faster capital than “I saw your thread on growth marketing and found it insightful.” When you’re launching your third startup, trying to raise from a shady family office in Dubai, or looking for intros to regulators, guess who shows up? The group chat.

This is the Network Effect, but with more lines of coke in St Tropez and fewer NDAs.

Reason #3: The Institutional Seal of Legitimacy

MBAs are the modern equivalent of papal blessings. You go to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, INSEAD: not to learn, but to get stamped. Vetted. Branded. It’s prestige as performance.

You could have built three companies and raised $50M, but people still breathe differently when you say, “I went to HBS.” (Whether it’s nausea or being impressed, it’s hard to tell). Recruiters perk up. Investors listen harder. Politicians return your calls. This is, unfortunately, just a fact.

And yes, Elon says he hates MBAs. But his CFO was one. His lawyers are MBAs. His investors are MBAs. When he needs a $7 billion structured equity deal, he doesn’t call the “self-taught finance on Reddit” who follows him. He calls Wharton grads. Every. Single. Time.

Reason #4: The Trust-Fund Sabbatical

This one’s niche, but important. There exists a small, unbothered subset of MBA students who are not there to pivot, learn, or level up. They are there to vibe.

These are the students whose last names are already on the university’s donor wall. Their summer internship is on their family’s yacht. Their startup idea is a social impact mezcal brand for billionaires. The MBA for them is two years of sanctioned indulgence. Long weekends in Tulum. Aperol Spritzes at Davos. A capstone project that’s actually just a launch party.

For these students, the MBA is not an investment, it’s a curated lifestyle product.

Reason #5: The Matrimonial Asset Search

Let’s not be coy: a significant, if unspoken, motivation for some MBA applicants—especially at the top schools—is strategic mating. Yes, love. Or something close enough to it that it can survive dual careers, international relocations, and a shared Google Calendar.

Business school, for many, is not just a launchpad for a career. It’s a curated environment for finding a partner (pre-screened, prestige-worthy, ambition- and lifestyle-aligned). Think of it as a more exclusive Raya for people who think in term sheets.

And unlike most dating pools, this one comes with its own private Slack channels, cocktail attire, and highly optimized A-Types who are definitely ready to scale.

Let’s talk numbers:

• According to Poets & Quants, 15–20% of Harvard Business School grads end up marrying fellow classmates. That’s not a cute statistic. That’s one in five.

• At INSEAD, the number is even higher—up to 30%. They even joke that the school should issue diplomas and wedding licenses at the same time.
  

Some people will naturally say that this idea is outdated. But the power couple fantasy is very much alive- particularly among dual-MBA relationships. And from my experience, it’s often openly discussed as a reason for applying in the first place

So yes- people do MBAs to learn strategy. But also… to find someone to split the $750K in debt with.

(You laugh, but in a world of uncertain returns and rising costs, a dual-income, dual-MBA household might be the best hedge you can make.)

Reason #6: The Global Visa Hack

This one’s practical and deeply unsexy. For international students, an MBA is the cleanest, most respectable way to get into the U.S., U.K., or Singapore and stay there—legally, credibly, and with access to high-paying jobs and elite networks.

And sure, as it turns out, there is no more socially accepted way to loiter in America than getting into Harvard.

So to summarize… why do people really do MBAs?

Because they’re:

• Stuck in a professional holding pattern,

• Hoping for better access,

• Craving legitimacy,

• Trying to delay adulthood,

• Or just waiting on immigration paperwork.

All of which are valid. But if you're about to write the application essay, you better know which one of these buckets you're in before the school figures it out first.

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SO WHY WOULDN’T YOU DO IT?

When I signed up for my Harvard MBA, there were a million reasons why it made sense. I came, initially, for immigration reasons—I needed a way to legally stay in the U.S. while waiting on my green card to process for a job at NASA’s JPL. I stayed for the access, the network, and the proximity to the global elite.

But that was then.

This is now.

And the first question anyone asks themselves in 2025—before they even register for the GMAT or draft their “Why I Want to Use Capitalism to Make The World A Better Place” essay is far simpler:

Can I actually afford this?

And it’s a fair question. Because elite two‑year MBA programs have officially crossed the line from “luxury goods” to “ultra‑luxury experiences.” Tuition alone now runs around $170K per year. Add Boston or Bay Area rent ($30K+), food and transport ($20K), health insurance and assorted fees ($10K), and you're looking at $220K per year just to exist as a student.

That’s $440K for the full two‑year experience, and that’s just the sticker price. It doesn't include the opportunity cost of walking away from two years of full-time income.

So how do people actually pay for this?

Well, if you're one of the blessed few, you don't.

• Management consultants at McKinsey, BCG, or Bain often get a full ride in exchange for a few years of post-MBA indentured service. Leave early? You owe it all back, with interest.

• Military officers and diplomats can tap the GI Bill or public service fellowships in return for several more years of structured, government-backed employment.

• Trust-fund heirs? They swipe their AMEX, or better yet, have no idea tuition is even being billed. I once mentioned my loan repayments after graduation and was met with blank stares. Turns out I was the only idiot paying for anything.

And then there’s… the rest of us.

I fall squarely into that category. I borrowed $300K from the Harvard Credit Union at an 8% APR international-student rate. That translated into $3,640 monthly payments for ten years… about $43K a year gone before I ever saw my first post-MBA paycheck(!).

Now factor in the $150K–$200K in forgone salary over the two years I was in school, and you’re staring down a half-million-dollar crater just to earn the right to wear a Patagonia vest to interviews.

Here’s the truth: if your MBA is being paid for by your firm, your country, or your great-grandfather’s mining fortune, you’ll never feel it. You’ll spend those two years sipping overpriced lattes between weekend getaways in Tulum, occasionally glancing at your WhatsApp or GroupMe to accept the next invitation to a networking dinner with someone whose last name appears on university buildings.

But if you're financing it yourself (especially at a high international interest rate!) it stops feeling like an investment and starts feeling like a decade-long subscription to anxiety. A rolling contract with your future self, where every month you send a four‑figure thank-you note to the idea that you might one day be rich enough to stop noticing.

So why wouldn’t you do an MBA?

Because in 2025, the burden of doing it yourself financially, psychologically, and logistically is enormous.

And for most people, the real question isn't “Can I get in?”

It's “Can I get out without drowning?”

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BUT HERE’S WHY MBAs ARE REALLY FUCKED (I)

So here’s the other thing about MBAs: they were built for a global order that is collapsing in real time.

The traditional MBA curriculum is rooted in a very specific- and now rapidly fading- assumption about how the world works.

It’s the late‑20th‑century fantasy of stable globalization, where capital flows freely, supply chains stretch efficiently across continents, and business strategy is mostly a question of market expansion, regulatory arbitrage, and shareholder optimization. It was a world where the Harvard Case Method made sense, because it reflected a coherent, rules-based system where rational actors operated within relatively predictable institutions.

But that world no longer exists.

We’re living through the fragmentation of that post-Cold War consensus. The past decade has seen the re-emergence of geoeconomic blocs, the weaponization of trade, the breakdown of global institutions, and the normalization of industrial policy and strategic protectionism. The U.S.–China relationship, once the sacred engine of MBA growth stories, is now a long, slow decoupling.

The eurozone is stagnant, the Global South is asserting new agency, and the cheap labor arbitrage that once underpinned every HBS expansion case is increasingly off the table.

Even the definition of “business leadership” is shifting, much to horror of Professors who staked lifelong fame and fortune on their leadership frameworks.

It’s no longer about efficient scale or perfect optimization; it’s about resilience under pressure, navigating polycrisis environments, and understanding power as much as profit. The leaders being rewarded today aren’t necessarily the best strategists; they’re the ones who can survive black swans, manage uncertainty, and hedge entire political systems, not just currencies.

Meanwhile, technology has outpaced the MBA classroom.

Generative AI is already reshaping white-collar work faster than business schools can update their syllabi. Data literacy, platform dynamics, geopolitical fluency: these are the currencies of the modern economy. And they’re far more likely to be learned in a founder’s Slack channel, a sovereign wealth fund’s strategy deck, or a high-stakes Zoom with a defense startup than in a case study from 2015 about Zara’s supply chain.

The MBA still teaches you how to lead in a world of structure. But the structure itself is melting.

So the question isn’t just: “Is it worth the money?”

It’s: “What world is this preparing me for?”

If the answer is 2012, and you're trying to lead in 2025—you’re holding a beautifully embossed map of an empire that no longer exists.

And yet, somehow, the applications keep rolling in. The tuition keeps rising. The yield stays strong. The dream persists.

Which raises a different question altogether: What exactly is this system running on?

Because when the world it was built for disappears, and the jobs it promised stop materializing, and the only people who still believe in the value are the ones about to pay for it…

That starts to feel less like education, and more like a Ponzi scheme with more expensive fonts.

And that brings us to the next chapter in the MBA fantasy arc: the dreaded job search.

BUT HERE’S WHY MBAs ARE REALLY FUCKED (II)

Now that the world is different- the economics, the geopolitics, the tech stack- the jobs are different too.

Gone are the days when you could graduate, dust off your résumé, and waltz into a $220K+ offer from McKinsey, Blackstone, or Google.

Because even if you’ve somehow rationalized the cost- your $300K loan, the $240K in lost salary, the daily emotional erosion of hearing the word “framework” 900 times a week- you still need one thing to make it all worth it:

A job that pays you a fuck ton of money.

Not "decent" money. Not “covers your rent in Williamsburg and your Klarna bills” money. I mean life-altering, post-debt, I-can-breathe-again money.

And here’s the problem: that job? The one that made this whole thing pencil out?

It doesn’t exist anymore. Or at least, not the way it used to.

The Golden Goose Is Gone

I’ll just say it plainly: the hiring landscape that once made MBAs a guaranteed ROI play is on fire, and not in a good way. The old playbook went like this:

• Get into HBS or Wharton

• Pick a lane: consulting, finance, or Big Tech

• Graduate with three offers, $200K+ starting comp, and a future

But that machine is sputtering. Badly. Because:

The Death of Easy Money

(via Interest Rates and the end of fantasy economics)

For over a decade, MBAs thrived in an economy floating on artificially cheap money. Near-zero interest rates were the oxygen that inflated every sector they loved: venture capital, private equity, high-growth tech, and yes- consulting. This was the golden age of the MBA as allocation machine: money was abundant, and your job was to decide where to point it.

Found a SaaS platform with a decent retention curve and a pulse? Fund it.

Want to roll up 43 dental clinics? Do it.

Need a six-figure job advising someone on how to launch in Brazil? Bain will bill it.

But that era is… over.

We are not returning to zero. Inflation is sticky. Fiscal policy is chaotic. And central banks are now less worried about growth than they are about systemic discipline. The risk-free rate is back with a vengeance. That single shift- interest rates going from 0% to 5%+ - has torched the logic that supported the MBA pipeline.

Venture Capital: Starved and Selective

The early-stage party is over. LP investors are pulling back. Seed valuations are down. Series A is no longer a “graduation”; it’s a Capital-M Massacre. Startups with weak fundamentals (i.e., most of them!?) are shutting down quietly or “exiting” for $1. Even good founders are being ghosted by VCs who don’t want to lead a round, can’t justify their previous paper gains, and no longer believe in 100x exits.

This matters because MBAs used to land soft jobs at these portfolio companies- strategy at pre-revenue fintechs, bizdev at crypto Layer-2s, “growth lead” at vaguely AI-enabled marketplaces. That’s gone.

Even if you're a founder now, the capital you need is no longer cheap, dumb, or patient.

Private Equity: The LBO Doesn’t Work at 7%

In PE, the logic was simple: borrow cheap, buy stable, lever up, extract value, exit rich.

Now? That model is laughable.

Debt is expensive, exits are stalled, and you're holding companies that can't refinance. MBAs who used to enter PE post-MBA (or consult to it) are seeing the deal pipeline dry up. Fewer exits = fewer new investments = fewer advisory roles = fewer jobs.

And yes, PE will survive- but it will be smaller, slower, and meaner. That doesn’t scale well with mass MBA graduation rates. (There are nearly 1,000 Harvard MBA grads a year alone!)

Consulting: No Clients, No Problem (Except That There Is One)

MBAs flooded into consulting firms like Bain, BCG, and McKinsey because they were reliable, high-paying landing pads. But consulting is a derivative industry. It doesn’t create value (lol please don’t hate me, consulting friends), it helps people with money figure out what to do.

When that money stops moving- when SoftBank isn’t investing, when Carlyle isn’t buying, when Meta isn’t spending- consulting is just overhead.

Yes, Bain still has clients. But the nature of the work has changed:

• Fewer M&A strategy decks.

• More cost-cutting, efficiency, and layoffs.

• Fewer “market entry” ideas.

• More “how do we stop bleeding cash?”
  

It’s a shrinking pie. And the firms know it. That’s why you’re seeing delayed start dates, rescinded offers, internal hiring freezes, and partner-level anxiety.

So what happens when the three legs of the MBA employment stool (VC, PE, consulting) are all wobbling at once?

You get a graduating class full of top-tier candidates trying to make a “pivot” into industries that are either contracting or don’t exist anymore. And unlike in 2015, there’s no crypto boom or FAANG hypergrowth to absorb the overflow.

Which brings us to the real question: if there's no longer a well-lit path from MBA to power… what, exactly, are you paying for?

AI Is Coming for the MBAs (and Their PowerPoints)

Let’s be honest: a significant portion of MBA job output isn’t deep innovation. It’s synthesizing existing information, repackaging it for stakeholders, and performing competence in PowerPoint. You take a bunch of market data, add a competitive landscape, throw in a 2x2 matrix, and call it strategic insight.

But now?

Generative AI can do all of that—instantly, cleanly, and often better.

What AI Already Does (Alarmingly Well):

• Market sizing estimates (e.g., “Build me a TAM for electric scooters in Southeast Asia”)

• Competitor landscape grids with cited sources

• Org design frameworks for scaling from 20 to 200 employees

• SWOT analysis pulled from real-time news + filings

• Investment memos that mirror Sequoia or Andreessen’s tone

• Slide decks (yes, GPT‑4o can now auto‑generate full decks via third-party plugins)

Why pay a freshly minted MBA $220K plus benefits when GPT-4.5+ with enterprise access can do 80% of their outputs faster, cheaper, and branded in your company’s typeface?

And in case you don’t believe me, here’s some worrying evidence…

1. BCG's Internal Pilot with GPT-4

Boston Consulting Group ran a large internal study where 750 consultants were split into two groups: AI-assisted vs. traditional.

• The AI group outperformed on speed and creativity

• 25% of traditionally trained consultants produced factually inaccurate work

• The AI group was 40% faster on average for drafting client memos and slide outlines

2. IBM estimated 40% of business tasks are "automatable" by AI

In a 2024 report, IBM noted that tasks most exposed to AI displacement included strategy synthesis, report generation, and data interpretation- i.e., core MBA outputs.

3. McKinsey: Generative AI Will Automate 30% of Consultant-Level Tasks by 2030

That is, according to McKinsey Global Institute. This includes:

• First-draft proposals

• Industry benchmarking

• Financial model sensitivity analyses

• Competitive positioning decks
  

The implication of all of this? That the value of performing intelligence is collapsing.

The MBA used to teach you how to “structure ambiguity” in a boardroom. Now? A well-trained LLM can do that (and faster!) than you can log into Google Slides.

If your job is to look smart, sort insights, and make nice decks, you are now competing with a tool that doesn’t take weekends off to fly to Mallorca, doesn’t have an ego that mixes badly with the rest of the team, and costs $20/month.

And don’t think employers haven’t noticed.

So if you were planning to pay $300K to learn how to synthesize case studies, the market’s response is increasingly: Cool story. But… ChatGPT already did it.

Oh, And In Case You’re Wondering… Big Tech Isn’t Hiring You Either

Remember the golden era of MBA-to-tech migration? That smooth, prestige-soaked pipeline into Meta, Google, Stripe, Amazon? It used to be a whole vibe: “I’m going into tech, but not as a founder. As a Product Manager.” Which, let’s be honest, was the perfect role for MBAs (vague, well-compensated, and full of words like “alignment” and “roadmap.”)

Well… it’s fucked too.

Meta has already shed more than 20,000 jobs. Not in warehouses. In strategy, product, and operations. Yes, the very roles MBAs used to target.

Google, meanwhile, is in extended hiring freeze limbo across large swathes of its non-technical orgs. Entire teams are being quietly dissolved.

Amazon? It’s been cutting its internal strategy functions, flattening layers, and consolidating operations into leaner, AI-enhanced teams.

And startups? The darlings of MBA recruiting from 2014–2021? They’re not hiring “business leads” anymore. They’re laying off product managers, deferring launch cycles, and cutting burn at all costs. Founders who used to beg MBAs to come help them “scale” now just want them to stop emailing.

Those softly defined roles, PowerPoint-heavy, six-figure “businessy” jobs in tech were tailor-made for MBAs. You got to be important without being technical. Strategic without being accountable. You helped “shape the vision.” And now they’re disappearing fast and… guess what. They’re not coming back.

Not unless Zuck greenlights a nuclear-powered metaverse and suddenly needs a hundred ex-consultants to conduct scenario planning for virtual real estate zoning.

Which, let’s be honest, still won’t happen. Because he’ll just build an LLM to do it.

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Ok So What Jobs Can MBAs Do Now, Then?

That’s the uncomfortable question no one wants to answer. Because when VC has gone quiet, PE is nursing a hangover, Big Tech has shut the door, and consulting is quietly laying people off behind the scenes—what, exactly, is left?

You start hearing about “great roles in corporate strategy” at mid-tier firms you’ve never heard of, in places you’ve never wanted to live. Or government fellowships where your compensation is paid in “impact” and your job title comes with a seven-paragraph mission statement. Or the startup that swore it was pre-raise, pre-product, pre-revenue, but totally real, now asking if you can build the pitch deck. For free. Maybe for equity. Maybe.

These are not the jobs you borrowed half a million dollars to land!

And yet? Next year’s class is still applying. Next year’s class is still paying. And the year after that? Probably will too.

Which is when the whole thing starts to look a little… Ponzi-coded.

Because if the returns aren’t real anymore—and the only thing sustaining the system is new buyers chasing old outcomes—then what exactly are we doing here?

At some point, it’s not a degree. It’s a belief system.

And here’s the data to back that bleak little intuition: In 2024, 23% of Harvard Business School graduates were still unemployed three months after graduation.

Let that sink in. HBS, the gold standard. Nearly a quarter of the class. Still jobless. Just two years ago, that number was around 10%. And it’s not just Harvard. Wharton, Kellogg, MIT- they’re all seeing unemployment numbers spike, delayed start dates and offers rescinded.

So yes, MBAs are still “employed”... eventually. But not always where they expected to be, and not always in the city or sector or salary band they imagined when they paid the deposit.

And for the ones who took on debt? Let’s revisit the math:

Let’s say you’re me, and you took out $300K at 8% interest to fund your MBA. If you repay that loan over 15 years, your monthly payments come out to $2,867, which adds up to $34,400 per year in debt service. That’s over half a million dollars—$516K total—just to pay back what you borrowed.

Now let’s layer in the opportunity cost. Say you walked away from a job paying $120K/year. That’s $240K in forgone salary over the two years you were busy raising your hand in case discussions and pretending you cared about valuation multiples.

Add it all up (debt plus missed income) and you’re looking at a total financial cost of around $750K just to do an MBA the old-fashioned way.

So what kind of job do you need after graduating to break even over a ten-year window?

Well, to recover $750K in ten years, you’d need to earn at least $250K per year after tax.

Which, if you’re living in New York City, translates to a pre-tax salary of roughly $455K per year.

That’s not a typo. That’s what it takes just to get back to zero. Not wealthy or thriving. Literally just… solvent.

And here’s the kicker: for a while, I thought about relocating to Europe after my MBA. But then I looked at the numbers and changed my mind (remember that Greencard? Yeah, I was lucky enough to be able to stay! Most international students today, under Trump, are absolutely not and have no choice in this!)

So in London, even the top jobs like hedge funds, PE firms, elite strategy teams, pay about a third of what you'd make in the U.S. And you’ll quickly realize that instead of that $455K salary you need to survive the debt, you’re looking at maybe £200K if you're very lucky… while still paying off a U.S. loan with U.S. interest rates and a U.S. cost basis.

Translation: even if you land a dream job at a top hedge fund in Mayfair, your Harvard degree is leaving you completely financially annihilated.

PLUS, plus, plus, plus… that $455K+ job you now need?

Well… d’uh. It doesn’t even exist anymore! Because remember:

• AI is replacing everything from investment memos to org charts,

• The frozen tech sector that stopped hiring MBAs the second the Fed raised rates,

• Collapsing VC pipelines where Series A is where startups go to die,

• And the slow, quiet death spiral of global private equity.
  

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Oh No! Are Business Schools “Over”?

No. Not yet. Let’s not be dramatic!

Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, etc: they’re not going bankrupt. They’re not closing their doors and handing back the endowment. In fact, as Alex and I discussed a few weeks ago Harvard Business School now operates more like a diversified conglomerate and a hedge fund than a school.

The full-time MBA program, the thing everyone fixates on, is just a sliver of the revenue model.

As of the most recent numbers:

• The MBA program accounts for only ~14% of HBS’s revenue.

• Executive Education brings in 22%, serving up short, high-margin programs to corporate VPs looking to justify a week in Cambridge.

• Harvard Business Publishing (the home of the HBR, online courses, and case studies) rakes in over $300M annually, nearly 28% of total revenue.
  

So no, business schools are not over, don’t be ridiculous. They’re doing just fine, thank you very much.

But here’s the catch: the MBA is the brand.

It’s the polished tip of the iceberg. The prestige engine. The signal that legitimizes everything else they sell. Without it, the rest of the machine starts to look like just another edtech hustle. The Executive Education programs only matter because the full-time MBA sets the gold standard. Without that gold standard and without the “I went to HBS” line echoing through boardrooms and private equity pitch decks, the rest begins to corrode. Pretty damn quickly.

And that’s the thing about Ponzi structures:

They don’t collapse all at once, they fray at the edges first.

They survive just long enough for the next cohort to buy in, believing the last one got what they came for.

Eventually, if the MBA loses cultural relevance, Executive Ed becomes a very expensive version of LinkedIn Learning, and Harvard Business Publishing starts to look like Coursera with better fonts.

So no, business schools aren’t over. But the product they’re anchored to is… wobbling (I’m being very generous here!).

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TL;DR: The World Has Changed. MBAs Haven’t.

The MBA was built for a global order that no longer exists: an era of cheap money, stable geopolitics, infinite scale, and safe career ladders into consulting, finance, or Big Tech. But that world is gone.

Interest rates are high, venture capital is frozen, private equity is shrinking, and consulting firms are quietly bleeding. Tech isn’t hiring. Startups aren’t scaling. And AI now does half the things MBAs were once paid handsomely to fake.

Meanwhile, the debt burden has exploded. A full-time MBA today costs upwards of $750K when you include loans and lost income. To break even in ten years, you need to earn $250K after tax (or $455K pre-tax) in New York City. Spoiler: that job doesn't exist anymore.

International students face visa limbo. Domestic grads face employment deserts. And even those who do get hired often land far below their expectations—in roles that don’t justify the cost, the stress, or the sunk prestige.

So, are business schools over?

No, not yet. HBS, Wharton, Stanford, etc- of course, they’ll survive just fine. They’ve diversified. The MBA is no longer their profit engine, it's just the halo product. A prestige wrapper for exec ed and publishing divisions that really pay the bills.

But here's the catch: once the MBA stops meaning something, the rest unravels.

No gold standard? No glow. No glow? No hedge fund partner dropping $15K to be told how to lead in a crisis over a 3-day executive education seminar on campus.

This absolutely underlines that the world has changed, and unless the MBA changes with it, its relevance is next.

Because here’s the quiet truth: The MBA isn’t just a degree. It’s the story that props up the entire ecosystem.

And the second that story loses credibility, the whole thing starts to look less like education… and more like a beautifully branded Ponzi scheme.

So let’s circle back to Elon Musk.

Maybe it’s not: “Fuck MBAs.”

Maybe it’s just: “MBAs are fucked.”

And at this point, I’m not sure what, if anything, can un-fuck them.

Except, of course, another cohort willing to believe.