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Firm seeks to create test for MBAs
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by Derek Montgomery
Thursday, September 26, 2002
Students planning on graduating with a Masters in Business Administration may soon have the opportunity to take a test that could level the playing field for graduates of any MBA program, from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse to Princeton.
The International Certification Institute is going ahead with a plan to offer the exam next April at a cost of $450.
Michael Mebane, a professor of business at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and Bernard Beatty, an administrator at Wake Forest University’s Babcock School of Management, developed the test.
The test’s creators hope it will soon be a national benchmark for MBA candidates. They recently sent flyers to business schools across the country.
The test was designed to calculate an MBA graduate’s comprehension of financial reporting, human behavior in organizations, analysis and markets and other MBA study areas. Mebane hopes the test will be an equalizer for graduates from all colleges. This way, graduates from division-three colleges can measure their worth against graduates from division-one colleges. “It’s an intriguing idea, but it’s something that really needs to be explored, because I wouldn’t say you would want to rush into this without thinking about it,” said Henry Boyd, a senior lecturer of marketing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “You have to think of the logistics, and at the national level to set this up would be no small undertaking, even at the state level.”
Boyd said there are a lot of questions that need to be answered before business schools decide to implement a standardized MBA test.
“What would be the benefit for someone who just gotten their MBA to say, ‘Now I have to go on and get this additional piece of paper’?” Boyd said. “Can they command this much power? I mean, what’s the greater benefit for society?”
Some academia fear the test would set the agenda for what business schools teach. Others liken it to the lawyers’ bar exam and believe it would limit the creativity of business itself.
Gordon Scott, a UW junior in the school of business, said a standardized test wouldn’t work.
“I don’t think it’s necessary, because they already have different ones,” Scott said. “The have the CPA exam for accountants and the CFA exam for advisors.”
Boyd said the doctors and lawyers should have exams, as they are directly responsible for the lives of people. With business, one can expect failure, he added.
“In business, there is the issue of creativity, and business is a multi-faceted major,” Boyd said. “When you say law, and especially medicine, it is very specialized. There is a certain language you have to learn.”
Mason Carpenter, an associate professor of management and human resources at UW, said the test could be useful in some ways but is still limited.
“It may be useful for businesses to have some base-line knowledge, like a skill inventory for managers,” Carpenter said. “Beyond that, I’m not sure it would add much value.”
Mebane told CNN the decision to go forth with marketing the test came mainly from graduate students and that many are overreacting to what they believe the test will do to the industry.
“It’s a tiebreaker, another tool, something for the recruiter to put into consideration,” Mebane said. “It’s certainly not the pre-eminent decision-maker. No one is preposterous enough, except for deans, to believe we are thinking that.”
