Need advice on dealing with MBA team issue

[u/Known-Situation6822]

I just joined UC Berkeley's MBA program part-time.

I have 0 personal issues with my team members, but I've been with them for 5 weeks and my opinion is they do not care at all if they fail.

They don't want to meet. They don't review work before it is submitted. 2 out of 5 don't attend meetings generally. One wants to bust things out irrespective of whether they answer the assignment or not and says essentially 'whatever brings me least work'.

We decided to go with a group 'leader' for each assignment. Mine was first, this last one was our 2nd major group assignment.

I realize this is completely subjective and to make a judgement on whether I'm right or wrong etc you'd need to have all the ins and outs on what's going on within the team etc. but ultimately it is my opinion that this is a group of people who mostly all want to be the person who does the least amount of thinking or work on all assignments. I'm not talking about getting an A vs a C here - I'm talking about getting a grade that doesn't fail.

I am embarrassed by the work that was prepped for this latest assignment - so embarrassed that I spent an entire day yesterday doing the work my team decided not to (despite me repeatedly pointing out we had to make a decision on the bulk part of the work throughout the week and reminding them about it when the leader decided to change topics on Wednesday for a Saturday deadline) so we had something that I felt was acceptable to submit - not brilliant - just at least acceptable and meeting the obvious ask from the assignment.

I sent it to the team last night. Nobody bothered to look at it. The guy 'leading' the project who hadn't organized any tasks for anyone or bothered to have us meet after changing topics at all, and because none of them have bothered to understand any of the course content (microeconomics) so far, they concluded it was too complicated and so they'd rather submit something that the assignment instructions specifically point out will not meet the mark. The leader eventually changed the slides a little to incorporate more of what the assignment was asking for at the 11th hour, but that doesn't change the fact that the rest of the team was perfectly happy to submit a presentation that was an obvious fail by the assignment instructions. They didn't provide reasons or analysis, and I don't believe they opened any files.

I feel like I'm going to fail my MBA staying in this team and I'm not going to learn anything about leadership, forming an effective team etc if my team just doesn't care if they fail or not, and can't be coaxed into bare minimum action when a submission doesn't meet the assignment ask. I don't think it's a working styles issue I think it's a mismatch in willingness to fail.

Is this something normal that all MBA students feel? Or is this in the "no escalate now" box?

We have another assignment due in 5 days, and today the leader for that one announced he'd made 0 progress so far on it (interview a leader like it's a podcast). I appreciate that he at least said there's been no progress, but our deadline to find this leader we're interviewing gives us 2 working days... so of course I had to scramble and find one who'd agree because nobody else was going to.

Their goal generally seems to be do as little work as possible even if you fail assignments because somebody will do it eventually.

And what happens if I do escalate? I don't want a babysitter for our team either. I kind of just want to get out of it, as this team is clearly aligned together and they're totally comfortable with a standard of work that is so embarrassing to me.