The Best of “The MBA Show”

Ever since Miro Kazakoff and Tom Rose got together to create “The MBA Show” last August, it has been a work in progress. Through 14 separate episodes of the online video show, they’ve gotten better and better. Production values have improved, but so has the energetic chemistry between these second-year MBA students at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. The result: The MBA Show is steadily building a cult following around the world. It’s Facebook fans hail from Pakistan, India, France, and the Ukraine.

Here’s a selection of our favorite shows so far:

1. If You Want to be an Entrepreneur, Be Indian

This episode features a hilarious interview with Yankee Group founder and venture capitalist Howard Anderson who also teaches at the Sloan School, along with their take on the new BusinessWeek MBA ranking.

Tom Rose starts the hijinks off by saying, “Howard you’re a pretty odl guy. Is it true you got the first MBA ever issued?”

Retorts Anderson: “If I did, it was overpriced, just like yours,” retorted Anderson. It goes on from there. When they ask him whether he thinks the evolution of management education has created better MBAs, Anderson takes a dim and comical view. “That’s the scary part,” he says. “I don’t know if anything has improved. If you’re a doctor, you’re doing better procedures. If you’re a scientist, you push the state of the art. But with all the MBAs—and now there are more MBAs than traffic policemen in the United States—why aren’t we managing anything better. You guys are screwing up.

“Here’s the problem: you guys are too bright. When I went to school, the really smart students went to medical school. The next smartest students became professors. Those of us who got Cs got MBAs. You guys are much smarter. You invent scientific financial instruments that only you can understand and you just brought down the entire capitalist system. You guys are essentially bomb throwing radicals. You’ve ruined the system.” His solution: “Tell the admissions people to let less smart people and keep you turkeys out.”

2. Whipped Cream Bonanza

This episode pokes fun at The Wall Street Journal’s new ranking of EMBA programs that finds the most expensive MBA in the world–Wharton’s $150,000 EMBA program–to be the best.

“The only regret I have is that I just don’t feel I’m paying enough money for my MBA,” quips Tom Rose in the segment. “When I go to business school, I want to get that penniless, wallet-draining, soul-emptying sense of debt.” Advised Kazakoff, without missing a beat, “If you have a job right now and you’re thinking you want to spend cash as fast as you can and spend no time at all with your family, the Executive MBA is for you and all it’s going to cost you is $150,000.”

3. Wharton Gives Free Classes For Life

This episode takes aim at the recent announcement of The Wharton School’s upheaval of its MBA program.

After noting that the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School will be inviting MBA graduates back to campus for free executive education training every seven years, Miro Kazakoff jokes, “You know that (fundraising) development is going to be all over you every week at these events. That’s how you make this positive.” Adds Tom Rose, “Development is going to be on you like (Bernie) Madoff on a pension.”

You can subscribe to the show via iTunes or simply come back to Poets&Quants which will now feature new episodes of The MBA Show on our homepage. You also can stay in touch with Miro and Tom by reading The MBA Show blog.