I read this recently and am inclined to agree with it...

If you are coming to a PhD straight from undergraduate studies, you will not find many changes in the way you are treated by academic or other staff. However, if you have any prior working experience at all, you will find life as a PhD student a great shock. You may have commanded empires, thousands may have quaked at your words, but this will count for absolutely nothing in a university. You will be treated as if you were a blank piece of paper, to be inscribed on by the faculty, and only rarely will you find anyone interested in what you may have done before enrolling in the PhD. I think part of the reason for this is that most academics -- having no experience of the world beyond their walls -- think that only their problems contain intellectual challenges, and look down on those in business and Government. How little they know!

It is an interesting article, that describes the PhD as the last feudal relationship in the modern world. Does this need to be reformed? Can it be reformed or it is fine the way it is currently organized?

When you come to a game, you must play by the rules. When faculty do consulting, they play by the rules of the companies for whom they consult. When businesspeople come into academia, they have to play by the rules of academia. When in Rome, you play by Roman rules (paraphrasing).

I'm not even sure if CEOs or CFOs would want to be treated like executives in a rigorous Masters or PhD program. If they want to be coddled, there is a program for them - it's called the Executive MBA or some variant of this title. There, they are handled with kid gloves, their work experience can actually be counted as credits and truthfully, the methodological rigor is lacking in many programs. These are set up as a quid pro quo between schools hungry for cash and executives hungry for a few letters after their names. Much of what goes on in these programs can hardly be passed off as education - another grimy little secret of the higher education "industry".