Thoughts on Graduate Education

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We should not stereotype, it's like saying is the BS in a hotel school a dinosaur too or you know... I don't think it's necessarily true. I think that there is a core curriculum that has to be provided; it has to be provided for young people in certain areas of knowledge that they have to have. I think the MBA that turns out somebody that works in the accounting department of Ford and is prevented from even exerting their intelligence other than factual detailed stuff that comes to their desk, you're certainly going to waste an MBA to do that. I don't think... you know, it's fine to have the education but you're not going to use it, but the individual who comes out of any decent MBA program, who has a foundation of knowledge then understands... has also desire and ability to make impact, I don't think the MBA necessarily hurts. I think people who write books about this stuff, ten to one package it in a way that describes anything... but everything is the same. It's really not. What you have in this room is a group of 25 of 30 people, all of whom are very different, all of whom have different personalities and different skill sets. What you're doing is providing them a foundation of education, a way of looking at the world through an education vision. However, they then have to go and look at the world through the eyes they see when they get out and I think it's really up to them and the environments that they're in. Certain MBAs from schools that the peer group is not as exciting or as interesting as some other MBAs will probably have no use for that MBA but the ones that are and want it, I think can get it. So I would take an opposite... I would take an opposite view for that. My own view of education is you get as much as you can when you can because it's going to be a gap period in your life where when you're working, you can't get it and that ... I'm a perfect example of that. I mean I stopped really doing anything outside the hotel business for maybe 30 years because 30 years every minute of my mind was focused on learning my business and learning everything that was in the business. So if somebody says something I knew about it, I could talk about it, I could relate to it. I wanted to know it. It was my... that was my PhD essentially, and then as soon as I sold my business seven years ago, or eight years ago, I started to take courses again and so now I'm learning from a whole different perspective. So I think that that's going to happen to the young people here too. They're going to get blocked in their ability within their organizations. But I think that the education they're getting here or an MBAs later on ... you know they're still going to have the opportunity. So I don't ... it's a good question but I don't really agree with it.