Title Inflation Begins at Business School

Observing the rancor of pre-constitutional America, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10 that liberty is to faction what air is to fire. One might look at the hustle and bustle of Soldiers Field’s grounds and conclude something similar on a bit of an embarrassing tangent. Grant enough Harvard Business School students the right of assembly, and you will quickly discover a trait inherent to our nature: the urge to bestow titles amongst ourselves.

This inflation of image relative to responsibility, of pretend hierarchy, is rife across near every student-run organization at Harvard Business School. Often, a club that runs two events per semester with eight regular attendees will have three Co-Presidents (toss in a CFO title alongside Co-President for a $2000 budget - no Treasurer needed). Like America’s investment banks, we bestow the honorary title of Vice President upon anyone who’s willing to work. Or take the Student Association. Every student body should, understandably, have its President(s), armed with lieutenants to guarantee that the galas and the merch drops run in good order. But year in and year out, malcontent with the mere titles of Director or Representative or (shudder) Coordinator that our undergraduate selves might have settled for, we appoint a grande assemblée of twenty Chiefs: Chief Wellness Officers, Chief Design Officers, Chief Community Officers, Chief Athletics Officers, Chiefs of Staff, Chief International Officers, Chief Events Officers, and so on and so forth. Next to serve: Chief Printer Officer.

We at the Harbus are not exempt from this absurd bureaucracy. It used to be that “Editor of the Harbus” sufficed in letting everyone know you spent too much time in the Gallatin basement ensuring people wrote about their passions and that newspapers came out on time. At some point after we legally shed the HBS administration’s reins thirty years ago to become a nonprofit, my wise predecessors decided to invent and distribute titles galore to keep with the times: tacking on “in-Chief” to Editor (yours truly, with an email signature to boot), COO, CMO, CDO (for our [paid] contractors), Chair of the Charitable Deeds Committee (and various other Committees), a 12-person Board of Directors, et al. The on-a-nonprofit-board jokes write themselves. And it’s not just the Harbus. ChiBus, our lone surviving sister paper at Chicago Booth, had five Co-Editors-in-Chief last year. Five! for a publication that runs some 10 articles a semester? The business schools, like the nation’s central banks, may need to appoint a Titular Reserve Chair and Board of Governors to tamp down their rampant title inflation.

Perhaps this is the result of apathy. Or good politics. Or fear - for fear of alienating any of our coworkers over a meaningless contest of whodunit, we add a harmless “Co-” to every title, too, something I might plan on doing next year for our precious RCs. In any case, none of these student roles are compensated. Running any function of a student organization - whether Student Association or the Harbus - will divert at least three hours a week to lower-stakes work that could have been used for the higher-stakes work of the modern b-school: traveling, partying, and networking, with academics carved out for wannabe Baker Scholars.

So goes the argument for those who toil. We must pad our resumes, our LinkedIns, our egos with rank and title for the glory of volunteerism. Does any employer really care about this modern peerage? Probably not. Do our friends? Maybe? All this know-nothing knows is that the section, created by administration seers to nurture camaraderie in groups of peers, remains the sole student organization whose titles have not gone up the wazoo.

Alex Qi (MBA '27) is from Irvine, California. He studied philosophy, politics, and physics at New York University. Prior to HBS, he worked in corporate strategy and M&A at Northrop Grumman in Virginia.