Standard MBA test proposed; backers say it can aid businesses in hiring

Following the medical boards for doctors or the bar for lawyers, a testing company plans to offer an exam it hopes will serve as a measuring stick for business-school students, giving people from second-tier schools a chance to compete with MBA candidates in elite programs.

By Steve Giegerich
The Associated Press
The Seattle Times

Universities and corporations are reacting cautiously.

"I’m a free-market person, and if they want to enter the market to see how it will work and what the reception will be, I’ll be interested to see that," said Jerry Trapnell, a dean at Clemson University and president of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. "But I’m not making any predictions."

The International Certification Institute, based in Mocksville, N.C., is undeterred. It is going ahead with a plan to offer the exam next April at sites across the country for a $450 fee, though it hasn’t started taking applications yet. Unlike tests given lawyers, doctors and accountants, the exam will not be state-regulated.

The test was developed by W. Michael Mebane, a business instructor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and his mentor Bernard Beatty, a business-school administrator at Wake Forest University.

They have tried to produce a test that calculates an MBA candidate’s understanding of financial reporting, analysis and markets, human behavior in organizations and other universal courses taught during the first year of MBA programs. Second-year business-school students concentrate on specialized areas of study.

Mebane said the purpose of the test is to level the playing field for MBA graduates from programs that rank below the top-tier schools, while providing corporations and businesses with a gauge to evaluate job candidates.

Some academicians fear widespread acceptance of a standardized test would result in the International Certification Institute setting the agenda for MBA programs.

"If places start to teach the test, that means the people in the testing center have become the most trusted judges of what constitutes an excellent education," said Ann McGill, deputy dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

At a time when the relevancy of MBA programs is coming under question, the exam could kill the diversity of graduate curriculums, said Albert Niemi Jr., dean of the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.

"Some people may argue that MBAs are too narrowly focused already," he said. "The last thing we want to do is put on parameters that will force everybody into the same cookie cutter."

Jonathan Lipsky, a first-year student at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business in New York City, said the cost of the test, coupled with its optional nature, will probably discourage candidates from second- and third-tier MBA programs from signing up.

Conversely, students at the nation’s highest-rated business schools will have no incentive to participate, he said.

"If the people in the top business schools, like Harvard and Yale and Columbia, aren’t taking it, then there aren’t any benchmarks," he said.

Mebane said he was partly inspired to develop the test when, as a textile executive, he hired a graduate of a "top-five" MBA program whose education proved of little value. "His spreadsheets were beautiful, but his assumptions didn’t make sense," he said.

Barry Honig, president of Riskon, a New Jersey-based executive-search firm, said similar experiences may convince other corporations of the exam’s worth.

"There are a lot of people who go to the nonbrand-name schools that do more than some of the ‘A’ schools in terms of practical business preparation," Honig said.

But Robert Steir, chief executive officer of MBA GlobalNet, a New York recruiting service, predicts the exam will be a washout.

"Employers won’t look at this at all," he said. "And I can’t see students paying for this unless they’re very insecure in their job search."

Mebane said critics are reading too much into the exam’s impact.

"It’s a tiebreaker, another tool, something for the recruiter to put into consideration," he said. "It’s certainly not the pre-eminent decision maker. No one is preposterous enough, except for deans, to believe we are thinking that."

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