Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary cautioned top business school graduates that spending more than two years in management consulting could make them ‘tainted meat’ and ‘unemployable for life.’

The multimillionaire investor criticized the traditional post-MBA consulting path, often regarded as a prime opportunity for graduates of Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, suggesting it could be a professional dead-end.

The Canadian entrepreneur, who now lectures at Harvard Business School, mentioned he is striving to divert his students from what he described as a financially rewarding yet soul-destroying trap.

‘Look, if you want to drift into hell on Earth, stay 24 months in a consulting firm and you are tainted meat for the rest of your life,’ O’Leary said to Fortune. 

‘No one’s going to hire you to make a decision because you never have made one.’

The remarks have sparked debate in elite academic and corporate circles, as O’Leary doubled down on his view that students choosing six-figure consulting jobs are dooming themselves to mediocrity, irrelevance – and ultimately, a lifetime working for someone else.

O’Leary’s remarks were made in his capacity as an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School and come at a time when two-thirds of his MBA students reportedly raise their hands when asked if they’re headed into consulting. 

The executive and former software magnate said he has made it his mission to intervene.

‘What I try and do is disrupt a few of them in every class,’ he said. ‘If I can get four of you to abandon your drift into mediocrity, then I’ve done a great job here.’

O’Leary, who built his fortune through the $4.2 billion sale of SoftKey Software Products, now teaches a course titled The Founder Mindset. 

But instead of nurturing a generation of risk-takers, he says he’s watching a generation settle for safe salaries and predictable promotions.

‘They haven’t done anything,’ O’Leary said of junior consultants. ‘They just wrote reports. Didn’t matter.

‘I always take those résumés of consultants that want to get into the real world, and throw them in the garbage,’ he said bluntly.

O’Leary does not deny that top consulting jobs offer enviable perks: $250,000 to $350,000 starting salaries, first-class travel, and prestige among peers. But he says there can be a permanent cost to taking such a job.

‘If you’re there for more than 24 months, you get the virus,’ he warned. ‘Your résumé says you were someone of no consequence.

‘Why would anybody burn all those hours while someone else makes money, and you do nothing of consequence?’ he asked. ‘I respect all the consulting firms that are out there, but I’m going to do my best to keep people from going into that,’ O’Leary said.

‘You can go to the soccer games, go to picnics. You can do whatever, and it’s a great life,’ he said. ‘You can provide for a family. But you’ll never be free. You’ll never be financially free.’

O’Leary says freedom doesn’t come from a paycheck but from ownership and risk. 

At Harvard Consulting has long been viewed as the fast track to executive leadership.

Harvard MBAs have gone on to lead corporations, run hedge funds, and shape economic policy, but O’Leary says many are still wasting their potential and he is having to battle decades of tradition.

He also warns that the entrepreneurial path is not the easy one with long 100-hour weeks, but he insists the pain is worth the prize.

‘Entrepreneurship may mean no vacations, sharing an apartment with five roommates, and grinding for years, but once you make it, you can call your own shots’ he said.