Why Can’t MBA Students Write?

Thursday, 03 March 2011 | by Pat's Picks

Business school graduates are good at lots of things, but writing isn’t one of them says the Wall Street Journal. Bad writing is a perennial criticism from employers, and many school are doubling or tripling their writing requirements to try to rectify the problem. Experts note that while writing proficiency is hard to measure, there are signs that American students are struggling: writing scores on the GMAT fell to 4.4 out of 6 last year from 4.7 in 2007.

Some experts say the falling test scores are indicative of a larger problem around the country: writing programs at the high school and undergraduate level have been seriously scaled back. The most common problems for MBA students are things that many young writers struggle with—choosing a difficult word where a simple would suffice, writing long-winded proposals and burying the lede.

Apparently, there’s so much bad business writing out there, contests are held to crown the best of the worst. There are some GEMS submitted in the comments on the language-centric blog, Say What? My favorite has to be this one, submitted by some called writermike: This from a junior writer at a high-tech company. He managed to mangle two pieces of jargon, claiming that our company was “on the bleeding edge of the foreskin of technology.”
Ouch, babe.