Mar 13th 2012, 12:34 by J.L.H.D | ATLANTA

Thomas Hout, a Harvard Business Review blogger and lecturer at Tufts University in Boston, recently argued that MBAs, like would-be lawyers and doctors, need a wide-ranging competency test after finishing their coursework. He bases this on a conviction that the MBA programme, at least in the United States, is becoming shorter, less demanding, and less competently taught:

Even at top-tier schools, first-year students spend fewer hours in class than in the past, as field trips, student consulting projects, international excursions, CEO visits, club events, and more crowd the calendar. It's great to see students get their shoes dusty with real-world forays, but I fear they are losing the ability to read a balance sheet...

The MBA degree has slipped in quality. Many professors point out they cannot give the same exams they did 20 years ago because the students could not pass them. Adding to the problem is the perverse, mutually reinforcing dynamic of students seeking high grades and professors wanting better teaching evaluations. Too many students are distracted and disengaged.

And teachers, Mr Hout adds, should be required (by accrediting bodies) to have a certain number of years of work experience: no more entrusting paying MBAs to a naive PhD student whose management knowledge is limited to a few simulations.

He has, in short, put forth two intriguing criticisms that don’t seem to go together. A standardised competency test implies a certain uniformity of knowledge. Law exams work well enough since there is generally one body of law, with different variations by state; medical exams make sense because a femur is a femur. Do the standard theories of organisational behaviour, say, or marketing apply so easily across different situations? And if they do, why would teachers’ individual work experience then be so valuable?

The second question becomes: who would administer this test? Anyone who has followed the twists and turns of American educational reform, at least at the primary-school level, has heard of the dangers of “teaching to the test”. A standard certification exam would seem likely to make MBA education more static, with the test designers’ priorities reshaping the curriculum.

Furthermore, why should the students benefit more from time in the classroom reading balance sheets if their professors teach better after more time in the “messy, fast-moving world” outside academia? If these MBA students are disengaged when studying and excited when networking, perhaps the answer is not a longer or more standardised curriculum. Perhaps it is for those students to get back to work already.

For all that, Mr Hout may have a point. But the question is not whether the MBA students themselves find their courses too easy or too boring, but whether they are able to perform well on the job. And so: what would a post-graduation competency test look like if it were to select the truly competent?