ABSTRACT
The US is the leader of business education in the Western world and the UK is a significant exporter of management teaching. The experience of several large US management consultancy firms, traditionally major hirers of business graduates, is particularly edifying. Although such firms have always also recruited non-business professionals such as lawyers, doctors and philosophers, the proportion of non-MBAs they've been hiring has increased in recent years. Criticism of American business instruction, which now turns out more than 100 000 MBAs per year, has been around for almost as long as business schools started. In the UK, where US-style business teaching and specifically the MBA were introduced in Britain in 1965 amid concern over the economy's apparent inability to keep pace with America, criticism has been equally vocal but less high-ranking. Business schools' record at turning out top-flight managers for UK companies has not been good. Nor has British management's record been particularly helpful in producing top-flight companies.
