What makes some students dislike CBS?
I’ll give CBS a 3/5. Not because my experience there has been a 3/5, it’s closer to a 1.7/5, but because I believe that on a global scale, that’s the rating the institution deserves.
What makes CBS good, what makes it bad?
While I haven’t attended universities worldwide, I have a lot of people in my network who do. Most educational institutions are outdated, but they still serve a purpose for the majority. CBS, however, suffers from glaring incompetencies that make it hard to justify its reputation as a leading business school.
When I started at CBS, I chose both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in a field I was genuinely interested in and actively working in. During my time there, I built and exited a startup. Luckily for me, I’ve been able to rely on my own abilities, and most of my skill development came from outside CBS.
I’m not a very theory-oriented person, but it would have been nice if I felt CBS had something valuable to teach me. Instead, their class structures are outdated, disconnected from modern business environments, and have little practical application in the workforce.
As a startup founder, I also attended CSE (Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship). While CSE might be great for people with no clue what they’re doing and no idea how to learn, it’s completely useless for student-founders who actually want to succeed. In fact, not involving your startup with CSE might be the smarter move.
This same criticism applies to CBS as an educational institution. For a school that brands itself as a leader in business education, it’s shocking how negligible the baseline knowledge for most courses is. If you’re genuinely interested in business and committed to succeeding, attending CBS is the biggest waste of time. Give someone four hours on any decent online resource, and they’ll come out 1.3x more qualified than a CBS student after an entire semester.
And let’s talk about the “progressive” image CBS tries to portray. They claim to want students to apply their own knowledge. In theory, this sounds fantastic. In practice, only a few professors reward creative application. Most prefer that students apply “their knowledge.” Their knowledge. What an absolute joke. For the most part, the teachers wouldn't be able to apply the theories they teach in a practical context.
I congratulate the teachers that are knowledgeable about modern business practices, and have real-world experience that they can relay to their students.
So, what’s my point? CBS currently serves two purposes.
The first is teaching, which it does well—but only for novices. It’s focused on students who, at the end of the day, are unlikely to play significant roles in business.
The second is certification. If you’re active in business networks and environments, you’ll quickly realize that the degree itself is CBS’s only real value. It’s a stamp of approval that businesses apparently still want to see.
There’s also a significant disparity between programs. While my field was supposedly one of the more important ones, in reality, CBS only cares about two areas: Finance and International Business. If you want to learn about any other business model, you’re on your own. Still, you might as well take the degree—it’s free, and businesses still give it some weight.
That said, the landscape is changing. Globally, hiring is increasingly based on experience and proficiency rather than degrees. This shift is already noticeable, and I believe it will accelerate once the generation born between 1995 and 2005 begins filling managerial and executive roles. If CBS doesn’t adapt its educational style, it will be left behind, stuck in the same two roles it plays today.
As Denmark’s leading business school, CBS has a unique position to drive meaningful change. With its large alumni network and strong connections to partner businesses, it should focus on creating practical uses for its courses.
Most companies want to innovate and explore new business models but lack the resources or competencies to do so. CBS could leverage its network to connect students with real-world projects as part of their coursework. Instead of writing “10-page nonsense papers” that nobody but the grader will ever read, students could work on projects that add real value. This would give students practical experience and make the education worthwhile.
Anyway, thanks for listening to my rant. I genuinely hope CBS makes significant changes so that, in the future, I can be somewhat proud to hold a degree from this institution.
7 gennaio 2025
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