From evangelism to the breaking of educational idols
The poor diversity and originality of the business school I entered to finish my academic track left me with a bitter aftertaste of what dystopian capitalism could resemble at its finest.
Misfit in a broken system
After the tedious path to enter this Grande Ecole, I forever buried the principle of meritocracy to fully enter the social reproduction of a dominant class. A class mainly known for its long list of relatives in the top schools, companies and political parties. A class transforming school societies into clubs you enter most probably based on your already formed network and socio-economic pedigree - do not count on the French 1901 law ensuring free access to any association. I actually thought I was in a privileged situation until I entered this new world.
Considering the methodology of the national exams to enter the school, together with this inner caste reproduction, I mainly expected conformity, uniformity. Little did I know that was only it. I never felt so wrong about belonging to this frightening herd willing to take advantage of a system that granted them the graal of a Master in management; giving them potentially three years to presumptuously rely on past intellectual acquisitions to fully embrace inebriation and networking cocktails. Luckily, the covid crisis and remote studies helped my critical thinking escape from this graveyard where false smiles and corpses of tasteless beer bottles proliferate.
Students’ objectification
The sanitary crisis also revealed what felt like the most disrespectful and abrupt words I have heard so far. After - obvious - cheating during remote midterms, a set of students asked to reschedule the exams. The Head of studies sent a lovely written note stating we were not entitled to ask for any new exam considering this unacceptable and unworthy behavior - instead of questioning the students’ selection process or curriculum and pedagogy quality. But above all, this person wrote we were « not clients, but future products of this school, that we did not deserve so far ». It explained why the student office service was so inefficient - except when collecting the school fees, amounting to approximately 16k € a year for a French student, but those are technicalities.
Not only did I learn that France’s oldest business school lacked management skills, but it also was so inconsiderate of people that the administration imagined we were walking goodies preaching for their brand. Which is mainly the case, even though the vast majority of students identified the clear inefficiencies the institution embeds. Why? Because teaching capitalism means contradicting the sustainability and humanist values announced on paper. Because our careers rely on our school’s ranking, and speaking ill of this old patriarch is taboo. Because such educational idols stand as enablers of this comfortable system’s perpetuation.
Room for improvement - not ceremonies
Today is my graduation ceremony, the day I was supposed to celebrate the end of my student life, what I thought would have been a joyous happening. But I couldn’t face these misaligned values, such dissonance between reputation and reality of curriculum. I could not see myself in a ludicrous uniform, throwing a hat supposed to suddenly make me forget how approximate my overall experience was there.
I feel almost obliged to justify this small pamphlet by saying I exceeded my master’s requirements by 12 ECTs. I feel almost obliged to nuance my words by saying I met - by chance - very few professors who enriched my marketing and strategic skills. But for anything else, there is immeasurable room for improvement.
Reverse evangelism
Until then, do not expect me to be an evangelist for your school brand - a concept I actually learnt from your teachers, and supposed to be based on trust and meaningful exchanges between a customer and a company. Expect rather an idol breaker worrying about the blatant paradoxes between your values and actual actions.
