Wharton Knowledge or Lack Thereof

Kim Bhasin writes:

Wharton isn't satisfied with how its brand is perceived, because it thinks that all the top 20 business schools are far too similar, reports Melissa Korn at the Wall Street Journal. So, it's making some changes to focus its brand around a single word. 

Knowledge. 

Wharton's blog, for instance, is already called Knowledge@Wharton

My suggestion to Wharton would be to focus more on getting the teaching part,when it comes to passing knowledge on to students, rather than focusing on branding. Some years back I had a  lunch meeting with a bank analyst (Note I write BANK analyst).  He had an undergraduate in economics from Stanford and an MBA from Wharton.

At some point during the lunch I said, "The Fed is really printing a lot of money right now." He leaned over the table and in a hushed tone said to me, "Can the Fed really print money, just like that? How do they do that?"

I then had to  him a quick lesson in money creation.

BTW, This guy was in the same Wharton graduating class as current CFTC chairman Gary Gensler. Gensler, he told me, was the smartest guy in his class. When Goldman Sachs came to campus to recruit, according to this guy, Gensler was the only student they wanted to talk to, all the others were disappointed. When Gensler graduated, he ended up at Goldman. The elite do have bird dogs scouring the fields and they usually get who they want.

I continue to suspect that Obama, early on, was identified as an up and comer by the father of Treasury Secretary Geithner.