Controversy awaits MBA certification exam
Tue Aug 27, 8:43 AM ET
Del Jones USA TODAY 

A certification exam for MBAs will be launched in April in an attempt to figure out who among the 112,000 graduates each year has learned the core subjects of a master's degree in business administration. 

The CMBA -- certified MBA -- will be announced Sept. 3 by the International Certification Institute (ICI) and Thomson, a company with $7.2 billion in 2001 revenue and a giant in the growing industry of certification exams and testing administered by computer.

It's certain to stir controversy because it's a potential threat to the nation's top-tier business schools, whose graduates have long been able to demand fatter salaries than those from other schools. Test-takers will know where they rank against all test-takers, as the CMBA will provide an instrument to compare students from the 900 universities offering an MBA.

The $450 exam is being compared to a bar exam for law students. The five-hour exam will have 300 questions covering finance and accounting, economics, operations and marketing and management. Unlike the bar, no regulatory body will require the CMBA, which means the exam's success will rely on employers expecting it of applicants or students deciding it will give them an edge in a job hunt.

Companies spend $8.5 billion a year in salaries for new MBA hires and often ''get burned,'' says Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California at Irvine.

Navarro has seen companies pass over the top Cal-Irvine MBA graduate to take last-place students from Stanford. ''The top 20 schools won't want this, because they have a brand-name monopoly,'' Navarro says.

''There is no debate that there are incompetent MBAs,'' says Louis Lataif, dean of Boston University's highly ranked management school. But top schools can cherry-pick applicants already headed for success. Companies recruit at those schools because ''the sorting has been done for them by the admissions committee,'' he says.

The exam comes at a time when the MBA degree is under attack. Management scholar Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford combed through 40 years of research and concluded that those who get an MBA make no more money nor do they advance faster in their careers than executives who don't get the degree.

Pfeffer calls the CMBA an interesting idea if the scores wind up predicting success. But U.S. companies have never cared much about tests and grades, he says.

The market is huge. There are 2.5 million people with MBAs, and MBAs account for 25% of all graduate degrees.

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