The MD/MBA Bubble

 There are presently 141 accredited MD-granting institutions and 31 accredited DO-granting institutions in the United States. Here is a list of the programs that offer MD/MBAs. The list seems to be growing each year.

Just over 60% of medical schools now offer dual MD-MBA programs, more than twice the number two decades ago, a recent study shows. And researchers estimate the number of dual-degree graduates has nearly tripled. Still, it’s difficult to know exactly how many physicians now have business degrees. While the medical school students who simultaneously earned both a medical and business degree represent almost 1% of the roughly 28,000 medical school students who graduate each year, that doesn’t include physicians, like Gundersen, who later go back to school to pursue an executive MBA.

Like management MBAs and law degrees, the degrees have become commoditized and lack any real differentiation. Some argue the same holds true for medical degrees.

There are pros and cons to going to graduate school. The root cause of poor quality and high costs is our belief in credentials instead of competencies.

Applications to some of America’s most elite business schools fell at a steeper rate this year, as universities struggled to attract international students amid changes to immigration policies and political tensions between the U.S. and China.

Though Kellogg is one of the highest-ranked M.B.A. programs in the U.S., applications to its traditional two-year offering were down about 15% in 2019. Fewer young professionals are applying to elite business schools. Costs are rising, overseas applicants are down and, in today’s hot job market, fewer see the value in leaving budding careers for two years of study.

 The Wall Street Journal reports fall 2021 applications were down 20% for Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and down 6% for Columbia Business School. Although some programs saw greater interest this year, admissions experts say the booming finance and technology sectors kept many prospective candidates in the workforce.

There are other problems as well.

1. We don't know how much value the graduates contribute to the sick care system.

2. The programs are usually not domain specific. Some think that's a good thing, encouraging exposure to how other industries have solved generic problems Others feel sick care is so unique, that the lessons are not applicable.

3. Medical students are already up their waists in debt, most of which is taxpayer subsidized. Should additional debt be added to their student loans ?

4. Few of the programs address the needs of physician entrepreneurs.

5 There are many substitutes for physician entrepreneurs around the world and US schools are no longer the mecca.

6. Content has become generic and offered for free on the Internet.

7. Connections are easily to make using social media.

8. The MBA is losing credibility, given the large number of places that offer them, particularly those below the first tier schools.

9. Employers can see through the credentials

10. Costs continue to escalate and the programs do not accomodate the specific needs of busy clinician students.

11.The curriculums and teaching techniques of global business schools are being driven by big data and artificial intelligence but people who run business schools admit they are not ready for these technologies themselves, according to survey of 358 business schools.

12. They don't deliver the expected ROI.

Rather, if the purpose of graduate business and management education is to educate and train medical students to create value in the sick care system, we should be thinking differently by:

1. Offering MBEs not MBAs
2. Create entrepreneurial medical schools
3. Track and monitor MD/MBA outcomes
4. Rethink providing student loans to cover graduate business education
5. Require more work experience from medical graduates before admission.
6. Stop using the programs as cash cows for business schools who are feeding the needs of doctors who want to get off the clinical track rat race for an administrative job and be a "sick care influencer"
7. Do a better job of integrating STEM schools with business schools with arts and sciences during undergraduate and graduate education
8. Define medical practice entrepreneurship competencies as part of ACGME accreditation of residency training programs
9. Rewarding faculty with promotion and tenure credit for the scholarship of innovation
10. Stop deceiving ourselves that innovative medical schools are entrepreneurial medical schools
11. Business schools are already racing to revamp their programs to add technology and data-science skills that employers want. Demand for postgraduate and lifelong learning options is expected to grow in the coming years.

The MD/MBA bubble has burst and the degree no longer has legitimacy. They provide expensive connections, credentials, credibility and content, in that order of perceived worth. We need to redefine our learning objectives and create educational programs with a structure, content and price that meets market needs. We need to kill the MD/MBA cash cow recognizing that vested interests won't sit idly by while we do it.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Twitter@SoPEOfficial and Co-editor of Digital Health Entreprenership