Business management used to be one of those courses that engineers and finance whizzes signed up for as a surefire ticket to a six-figure starting pay in consulting, a financial firm on Wall Street or one of those global consumer goods multinationals.

Once the rites of passage were successfully completed at a good-name school and you were admitted into that magical fraternity of the MBA, the future was pretty much sorted. As long as you didn't mess up badly, and were prepared to do the hard slog for the next quarter-century, the rewards were pretty much assured.