Is PowerPoint a required skill for business?

Just when you thought applying to college, university, grad school couldn’t get any worse:

Now talk about stereotypes. So are they now encouraging geeks to try business out? But I doubt if PowerPoint would be the geek’s primary weapon of choice. Perhaps a bit of Flash presentations should be in order. However, it is quite encouraging that business academe has started to acknowledge technology as a real driver in today’s business. Source: School Requires PowerPoint Presentations for Applications

Yeah, a business school is requiring part of the application to include a PowerPoint deck.  Yikes.  What is this supposed to show?  Are we forcing people to learn bad habits early or …

Is it cooler and more subtle.  What if the goal is to see if applicants can convey their thoughts clearly and simply.  Do they go for flash and glam, hoping that people won’t notice they have nothing to say?  Or will the presentation be elegant, simple, but powerful.  I would have a problem with this approach because my slides tend to be Spartan … I actually give talks as in my slides are just a guide, I’m doing the talking not reading from slides.

Now if the applicants could record their talk that goes with the slides … well that would be cool.  However I have had situations where someone wanted a slide deck that wasn’t going to have a talk associated with it.  I hate those, but I’ve done them.  Again, it’s a challenge to ensure that you can convey your message without confusion.  That people “get it”.

Maybe this isn’t a bad requirement after all.