Here are a few of the most important things the critics of this MBA infatuation have pointed out:

MBA programs train students in business, not management or leadership. Among those with the harshest words for MBA programs is McGill University professor Henry Mintzberg, one of the most celebrated thinkers and writers on business today. His perspective: "It is time to recognize conventional MBA programs for what they are - or else to close them down. They are specialized training in the functions of business, not general education in the practice of managing."

Most programs are structured around the functions of business, such as finance, marketing, strategy, human resource management and general management. And the courses emphasize technical understanding of these functional areas. However, an understanding of the general architecture of a business is not sufficient preparation to lead the people who inhabit it.

MBA programs overemphasize analytical skills. Many of the criticisms of the MBA are not new. Writing in the Harvard Business Review in 1971, J. Sterling Livingston, a Harvard Business School professor, offered this observation: "Formal management education programs typically emphasize the development of problem solving and decision making skills, for instance, but give little attention to the development of skills required to find the problems that need to be solved, to plan for the attainment of desired results or to carry out operating plans once they are made."

MBA programs don't prepare students for the human element of management. In overemphasizing analytical skills, they give short shrift to the softer skills that are more critical to the practice of management.