The professor with a data-free argument: On Professor Marquis’s call to shut down business schools
Oct, 20, 2026
Categories: Advice | Cambridge Judge
The first thing I noticed about Cambridge Judge’s Professor Chris Marquis’s “I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down” is that it was data-free. In general, I am against making any decisions about opening or shutting any organization without data. MBA programs are surely quite clear on that point. Not that you need a business degree or a degree of any kind or even literacy to count.
One of his central arguments, which I think is “severely unproven” aka bullshit is that MBA programs undermine the worthy future plans of many of its students:
“I have taught in business schools for over 20 years, at Harvard, Cornell and Cambridge. While some students appear to care only about their future compensation, I have met many with nobler goals: engineers who want to commercialize clean energy, physicians determined to fix the health care system, nonprofit leaders who have watched good missions fail for want of good management.
These students enroll hoping to learn what business schools say they teach: how to manage people, how to allocate capital and resources and how to make the world a better place through leadership. But I’ve come to see how the institution can reshape the worldviews of those who enter it, often undermining the very ambitions that brought them there.”
Exactly how well does he understand the motivation of his students? He provides zero data and not even good anecdotes on this initial core argument. Where is the survey data or anything at all to make this case? What actual experience does he have systematically discussing career objectives with students or otherwise being party to them? First of all, I don’t know to what extent Professor Marquis is involved in Judge’s admissions process, but at least as I understand how Judge admits students, he is not a key player and makes no claims to be one. I know he was not involved in such decisions at Johnson because professors are not part of the admissions process there and he was not a full professor when he taught at Harvard. According to his Cambridge Judge bio (https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/people/christopher-marquis/), he is not personally involved in the admissions or career services office, so it would be great to know how he has obtained such deep insight into the actual motivations of students. Maybe through the secondary selection of Judge students who are selected for Jesus College once admitted to the MBA program. Maybe over tea at Jesus College? Given his academic focus on sustainability and social entrepreneurship, surely the students he interacts the most with are those who are interested in working in such careers. And, yes, there are a very limited number of people who become social entrepreneurs (or any other kind of entrepreneur) immediately post-MBA. Many MBAs do go eventually become entrepreneurs, but the data at schools like Stanford GSB (https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/newsroom/school-news/quantifying-stanford-gsbs-founder-effect) and INSEAD(https://knowledge.insead.edu/entrepreneurship/why-founders-benefit-going-school) suggests that most will not do that immediately post-MBA, but 3+ years later.
Furthermore Professor Marquis does not seem to be acquainted with the employment data at this own school. The notion that business schools systematically redirect idealistic students toward consulting and finance deserves to be tested against the employment outcomes of Cambridge Judge Business School, where he teaches.
According to Judge’s latest published MBA employment report (https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/masters-degrees/mba/careers/employment-report/), 55% of graduates entered industry, including technology, healthcare, energy and e-commerce, while 23% entered finance and 19% consulting. Hence, roughly 60% of graduates entering sectors other than consulting and finance.
Moreover, Judge identifies Google, Model ML, PwC and TikTok among its leading MBA recruiters, rather than the McKinsey and Goldman Sachs combination that Marquis uses to illustrate his criticism. Maybe his speaking of being a professor at Cornell Johnson? Hard to tell, when there is zero data.
Judge’s outcomes hardly suggest an institution that predominantly channels its graduates into two professions.
More fundamentally, Professor Marquis mistakes career choice for moral orientation and assumes he understands the inner motivations of students. I don’t presume to know what lurks in the heart of others without extensive focused discussion on the matter, but perhaps Professor Marquis has such access to the souls of his students. How can he presume to know whether a graduate pursuing any particular career path has abandoned an aspiration to benefit society? The knowledge required to allocate capital, improve organizations and manage resources can be used for socially constructive or destructive purposes. And if someone wants to become an impact investor, for example, a standard post-MBA role is to work in investment banking or investing if someone lacks that kind of experience. Also consulting careers at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG as well as other firms are not limited to the private sector. Positive impact on public policy is even possible at McKinsey, the very firm that Professor Marquis sets up as some sort of center of evil.
Cambridge Judge’s employment results cannot demonstrate that MBA education preserves students’ idealism. They do, however, show that the professional destinations of its graduates are considerably more diverse than Marquis’s characterization suggests. A sweeping proposal to abolish business schools should rest on stronger evidence than personal anecdotes and an overly reductive portrayal of MBA careers.
Marquis will have observed students becoming preoccupied with prestige and compensation and give the current MBA job market, many will be particularly concerned about just getting a job. Observations of this kind cannot establish that business schools systematically transform altruistic students into narrowly self-interested professionals. Such a claim would require evidence of students’ motivations before enrollment, how those motivations evolved and what caused the changes. That is to say, scholarship. To be blunt, show me the data that proves the hypothesis because otherwise this is just bullshit written on the authority of someone’s prestigious job title.
Finally, if Professor Marquis is so against the institutions he is working for, I suggest he man up and go build something else. When he does build that alternative institution, we should take him seriously. He studies social entrepreneurship, I suggest he become one. Otherwise this is the complaint of a successful academic who can say whatever the fuck he wants.