This article says absolutely nothing about the value of a formal business education.
It says something vaguely negative about the value of business textbooks, the crapiness of which is pretty well established and acknowledged by professors and students alike. See here for a classic example: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm This refers to highschool textbooks but applies equally well, if not more so, to college business texts.
It's all about the professors. Business is one of those academic fields, like Paul Graham notes, where the best practitioners are not the educators. While this is very true as a generalization, there are exceptions -- mainly: non-practicing educators who happen to be excellent at imparting practical knowledge, and ex-practioners who were once tops in their field. You will find these professors concentrated in top schools, and you will not find them teaching from these textbooks. So there is actually quite a lot of value in a business education from a top school. The well-worn cliche about the value of networking at these institutions applies as well -- and it's not just networking in the abstract, it's learning how to network with people who can get things done, and getting things done for people who expect big things out of you. Just like I'm sure it is in computer science, the value of the education is what you extract from it.
It says something vaguely negative about the value of business textbooks, the crapiness of which is pretty well established and acknowledged by professors and students alike. See here for a classic example: http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm This refers to highschool textbooks but applies equally well, if not more so, to college business texts.
It's all about the professors. Business is one of those academic fields, like Paul Graham notes, where the best practitioners are not the educators. While this is very true as a generalization, there are exceptions -- mainly: non-practicing educators who happen to be excellent at imparting practical knowledge, and ex-practioners who were once tops in their field. You will find these professors concentrated in top schools, and you will not find them teaching from these textbooks. So there is actually quite a lot of value in a business education from a top school. The well-worn cliche about the value of networking at these institutions applies as well -- and it's not just networking in the abstract, it's learning how to network with people who can get things done, and getting things done for people who expect big things out of you. Just like I'm sure it is in computer science, the value of the education is what you extract from it.