A USC Marshall MBA Pushes Back: ‘The Opportunities Are All There’

USC Marshall has taken a beating in recent weeks.

First came a faculty revolt over the direction of the school under Dean Geoffrey Garrett. Then came a current MBA student’s sharp critique of the full-time program, describing a culture in decline, fading community-building, weak communication, and a student body that felt ignored.

Jasmine Kaur, a JD-MBA student graduating today (May 15) from USC Marshall’s full-time MBA program, says that version of Marshall does not match the school she experienced.

“I have qualms with USC. I promise you I do,” Kaur tells Poets&Quants. “But the opportunities are all there.”

A DIFFERENT VIEW FROM INSIDE MARSHALL

Kaur reached out to P&Q after reading the April 27 story in which a current MBA student echoed faculty concerns and argued that students were not being heard. She says she does not dispute that some students are frustrated, especially around career outcomes in a difficult job market. But she strongly rejects the idea that Marshall has stopped trying to build community or respond to student feedback.

“There were so many happy hours,” she says. “There were so many in our first year. I was kind of shocked to see them say that.”

Kaur, who will join EY as a senior consultant after taking the California bar exam, says the MBA experience was especially meaningful because she came to it from law school, where she says students are trained to think directly and independently but not necessarily to collaborate.

“The MBA has been the most rewarding experience for me in terms of social and emotional learning,” she says. “It taught me how to navigate working in groups because that’s the real world. Law school doesn’t teach you how to work in groups.”

‘THE TROJAN NETWORK IS INSANELY STRONG’

Kaur points to a steady stream of alumni events, practice-area sessions, and career-focused gatherings as evidence that Marshall’s network remains highly active.

In one recent example, she says, Marshall brought in the global director of marketing from Medtronic, a USC alum, for a campus event that drew only about 20 students.

“The opportunities are all there,” she says. “Are you attending those events? Have you been active? Have you followed up with those alumni?”

Kaur says the Trojan network directly helped her own career search. While preparing for her EY interview, she emailed a part-time Marshall MBA alum at the firm whom she had never met. He responded immediately, walked her through practice questions, and continued sending feedback late into the night.

“That’s the Trojan Network,” Kaur says. “USC believes strongly in passing the torch down.”

CAREER FRUSTRATION IS REAL – BUT NOT UNIQUE

Kaur does not argue that career frustrations are invented. Marshall’s career center has seen turnover, she says, including the departure of a well-regarded finance adviser. Students have been vocal about that instability.

But she says the school has responded by hiring new leadership, adding smaller practice-group sessions, bringing more alumni back to campus, and pushing career clubs to work more closely with career services.

She also credits career adviser Natalie Wang with going far beyond what was required when Kaur was negotiating her EY offer.

“This woman, she was up at 8 a.m., 7 a.m., calling me on her drives,” Kaur says. “She did not have to do that. That’s not in her job description.”

Kaur says about 60% of the Class of 2026 had reported full-time jobs as of the latest update she had seen – a figure that still reflects a tough market, but one she believes should be understood in the context of broader MBA hiring pressure.

‘THEY’RE SO ACCESSIBLE’

The most pointed part of Kaur’s response concerns the claim that Marshall students have no meaningful channels for feedback.

She says MBA leaders have held a town hall every semester, while academic director Scott Abrams and MBA vice dean Kyle Mayer regularly host lunches and smaller-group sessions with students.

“They’re so accessible,” Kaur says.

At one recent lunch, she says, an international student suggested adding instruction on coffee chats and networking etiquette for students unfamiliar with U.S. recruiting culture. Mayer immediately agreed to incorporate the idea into orientation programming, she says.

Kaur says the program office has also revamped portions of the first-year curriculum based on student feedback and recently launched a case competition collaboration with a university in China after students requested more international opportunities.

But attendance at some feedback sessions can be sparse. At one town hall, Kaur says, only five or six students showed up.

“If you’re not showing up to have these conversations, then you can’t go and s— on the school,” she says. “That’s my opinion.”

A QUALM WITH THE DEAN

Where Kaur’s account overlaps most clearly with faculty concerns is on Garrett’s visibility.

“Reading the faculty letter, I wasn’t surprised,” she says. “We haven’t seen Dean Garrett since orientation or even heard from him.”

Kaur says Garrett spoke at MBA orientation, where he gave remarks about Tesla and Elon Musk that some students found puzzling. After that, she says, he largely disappeared from the MBA experience.

Still, Kaur distinguishes between Garrett and the administrators running the MBA program day to day.

“Thankfully, Vice Dean Kyle Mayer and the rest of the program office have been really great at being proactive and present for our class,” she says. “It’s him and admins like him who make the USC MBA experience great.”

WHAT MARSHALL STILL NEEDS TO FIX

Kaur says some professors are stronger than others, and that students need to use course evaluations if they want the school to act on weak teaching. She also says budget cuts have had visible effects, including restrictions on alcohol spending for events.

Still, she says the student culture has remained active. She points to culture nights, alumni programming, and a Santa Barbara retreat that brought together roughly three-quarters of the first-year class with second-year club leaders.

Kaur says part of why she pushed back on the earlier criticism is because she spent much of her MBA experience trying to strengthen the very community that other students described as eroding.

As president of Graduate Women in Business, she organized women-focused panels in consulting, finance, and supply chain, built what she says was the club’s first alumni mentor database in years, and helped launch new inclusion-focused initiatives across the school. She also helped establish free menstrual products within Marshall facilities.

“I’m just one of the people who’s done so much to keep the community together and support people as much as I can,” Kaur says.

Still, she says one lingering frustration is that some forms of student leadership receive more institutional attention than others.

“There does sometimes seem to be a bias toward certain clubs or certain career paths,” she says. “A lot of students are doing meaningful work behind the scenes to build community, and sometimes that effort goes unseen.”

For Kaur, the point is not that Marshall is flawless. It is that the school she experienced is more responsive, more active, and more supportive than the recent criticism suggests.

“This has been a phenomenal experience for me,” she says.

DON’T MISS USC MARSHALL DEAN UNDER FIRE; FACULTY REVOLT OVER ‘DOWNWARD TRAJECTORY’ and USC MARSHALL STUDENT ECHOES FACULTY REVOLT: ‘WE TALK BUT YOU DON’T LISTEN’

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