A recent Time article tried to make a case for companies essentially firing all their MBAs because MBA graduates in the workforce had taken the collective eyes of business in the West off risk, innovation, operations, and creativity. That may be a valid point. The bigger concern for and  threat to a thriving and sustainable economy may be the apparent willingness of U.S. society to accept second place, or lower, and to condone degrees and certificates and diplomas that may increasingly be irrelevant, if not meaningless.

Over the past few generations, people in the United States have grown lazy and self centered. We look for the easy path. We check the box and see if we can stretch the lower bounds of the minimal require,nets and expectations in our academic and non-academic pursuits. As a consequence, degrees and diplomas are more uncertain in their meaning.  Prospective employers and academic admissions officers find themselves in positions where they must either do a more thorough job of vetting candidates or risk accepting lower quality, less qualified, perhaps minimally prepared candidates.

It is not the MBAs who are the problem with American business and it not strictly our elected leaders. Rather, it is the lazy attitude of barely
acceptable that is so endemic that drags us down.  The educational system in the United States simply reflects what society and culture establishes as norms and values. If we want something different for ourselves as a destiny, or a future, we need to adjust our current norms and values so that our path is also different.

We need to value education and create  a business economic climate that makes education valuable.  Why stay in high school if I cannot get a job or enter post-secondary education afterwards? Why go beyond minimal expectations when exceeding expectations adds no perceived value to my future? If actually learning something during an MBA, or other degree, program gets me no farther than taking the path of least effort and resistance, why bother?

Our humaneness motivates U. S. society to meet certain basic needs of our citizens or residents. We provide an opportunity for basic education and, to an extent and upmto a certain level, that education is not optional. We provide some measure of healthcare and financial support so that the sustenance and shelter needs, but not necessarily the wants, of most have some sense of floor or foundation from which people can live, but not necessarily thrive. The challenge for policymakers, educators, and society is how to avoid disincentives to exceed minimally acceptable while somehow ratcheting up our collective expectations, norms, and values.