The Eroding Power of the MBA
Comments
-
Yes. That's theDoog_de_Jour said:
Even better, they’ll have their company pay for it.BennyBeaver said:REAL MBA students work full-time whilst getting the degree. Hence therefore ergo proctor ad hoc, not being "taken out of the real world" for 2 years.
scamplan. -
I deal almost daily with 2 MBAs.
One is fucking brilliant - Columbia MBA. Like almost too brilliant as his emotional IQ is way out of whack. But analytical skills are unreal.
The other is quite possibly the dumbest man in N. America. He has to have either good blow or gives good handies - there is no way he should be in the position he is in without whynotboth.gif.
One of my kids is halfway through her MBA on the company's dime at a top 10 school. She still calls mommy 3 times per day for street-smart level advice.
It all comes down to the individual on whether it has value. The Throbber has different letters behind his name but will go toe to toe with any MBA out there.
-
MBA helps open doors but you still need to walk through them. It’ll help you reach potential, but won’t make you more than you are.
It’s not a technical degree that gives you some certification (JD or MD etc).
There’s also a correlation vs causation effect right now that too many people are getting MBAs thinking they’ll be a millionaire because of it. Many are lazy people and they suck.
I have quadrupled my income since getting my MBA but I don’t think there’s any one thing from my degree that made that happen, however I wouldn’t have my title without the degree. -
MBAs are for networking. Who gives a shit about the curriculum?
-
Learned more from working hard than I ever did in college. College taught me that there are a lot of idiots with useless degrees and lots of debt. When one professor said "read this and write a 30 page essay (which would have added zero value to my life) or do service learning and write 10 pages" the choice was easy for me. Got a job out of it, then a career, and now career growth and set up well for my prime career years.
-
After graduating UW I immediately took the GMAT to try to get a decent score while I still had test taking skillz with the view that I would eventually want an MBA. The GMAT was only valid for 5 years, so 5 years later I was like ahh shit, guess I better get going with that MBA. I did not want to lose the 2 years of career progression nor could we afford no income for those 2 years, so I went the part-time route. Company paid for 1/2 and I got the rest. And so I went, very very slowly, towards the degree. It took me 5 years to complete.
-Went to GW since it was less than Georgetown, not tied to religion, had a satellite location close to home, more internationally focused and they gave me a small scholarship
-Classmates were fairly diverse. DC, with an international focus. That was good.
-Plenty of people in there right out of college with no work experience looking for more degrees. That was bad.
-I got to do a team research project abroad which was some awesome additional real world experience outside of my domain
-A good chunk of the programs was stuff I "knew" already but was able to formalize and have the credit to prove I knew it
-I gained general business knowledge in many areas, like finance, accounting, HR/legal, corporate strategy, company culture and leadership, which I probably would not have done as directly otherwise
For me it was worth it since I was (and still am) able to go way in depth in my areas of expertise, but the MBA allowed me to apply that in depth knowledge to the important things that other areas of the business have to do to support my primary stuff, and they knew they couldn't bullshit me. The global focus from GW helped as well which I targeted due to working at a global company in a global industry. However, I agree there is an issue with the brand of an MBA since you can get one from so many places and the people who come out of those are in many cases morons. They cheapen the value of "an MBA" compared to people who actually pursued advanced business knowledge through a real program. -
Morons that go to non top-10 schools, mba is edumacation is worthless without networkSources said:MBAs are for networking. Who gives a shit about the curriculum?
-
JD/MBA
The JD really did prepare me to practice law. The MBA didn’t prepare me for a lot more than my BA in business had. Honestly, it just felt like any business employer was going to train you how to do things its way anyhow. In retrospect, if I had it to do over, I’d just have gone into practice a year earlier.
I recognize that some things may well have changed in 30+ years, but that was my experience and feeling upon graduating. -
Good post @Tequilla ... tend to agree with all of that. One point I'd amplify a little is the comment about not wanting to promote you out of a job you're doing well. To that I'd point to another comment you made about company culture. Your warning is a good one ... spot that situation early and move on if you're not where you want to be. But other companies have people dev. hardwired into their DNA. My company is like that. If you're good, you'll be spotted and promoted. The other thing we do really well is spot talent and put them in positions that are outside their area of expertise for a more well-rounded development. We have a former Tax person who is leading our migration to a new enterprise financial software platform. Kind of a big deal project.
As to your TCU experience, I find that private institutions tend to focus on that part things ... placement, networking, etc. and do it better than the publics. I have story after story of colleagues who went to Marshall comparing that part of it to what happens at Anderson. Nobody is going to argue that a USC MBA is better than a UCLA MBA, but I believe entirely that the SC experience is better from the "club" angle of what the degree does for you. On the one hand, when Goldman is recruiting, they're going to go to Anderson over Marshall more often than not because Goldman is a savy consumer and they know that the Anderson kids cleared a tougher admissions hurdle. On the other, the SC network will be a benefit to you forever. So there's that. I'm obviously speaking in broad generalities. It wouldn't then surprise me if TCU had a more active career services office than Foster. Another program that emphasizes connections, etc. and places people in a way that outperforms its ranking is SMU. I also believe Fordham and Lehigh have that same advantage: an enthusiastic alumni base that strives to take care of their own.
I thought the article was oversimplified. I think the more interesting question is how the MBA will compete with the multitude of specialty MS degrees ... the people coming in with comp. sci and data sci and quant skills who are going Fin. Tech., or technical MS in Finance, etc. etc. In my salad days, those degrees weren't around, and it was undergrad biz, concentrating in one of the disciplines, or MBA, which is a round robin education in all the biz disciplines. -
This was a good explanation. Especially the part about people being morons. No way to paper that over but for those who aren't who have goals like you had in mind, go for it and good luckwhlinder said:After graduating UW I immediately took the GMAT to try to get a decent score while I still had test taking skillz with the view that I would eventually want an MBA. The GMAT was only valid for 5 years, so 5 years later I was like ahh shit, guess I better get going with that MBA. I did not want to lose the 2 years of career progression nor could we afford no income for those 2 years, so I went the part-time route. Company paid for 1/2 and I got the rest. And so I went, very very slowly, towards the degree. It took me 5 years to complete.
-Went to GW since it was less than Georgetown, not tied to religion, had a satellite location close to home, more internationally focused and they gave me a small scholarship
-Classmates were fairly diverse. DC, with an international focus. That was good.
-Plenty of people in there right out of college with no work experience looking for more degrees. That was bad.
-I got to do a team research project abroad which was some awesome additional real world experience outside of my domain
-A good chunk of the programs was stuff I "knew" already but was able to formalize and have the credit to prove I knew it
-I gained general business knowledge in many areas, like finance, accounting, HR/legal, corporate strategy, company culture and leadership, which I probably would not have done as directly otherwise
For me it was worth it since I was (and still am) able to go way in depth in my areas of expertise, but the MBA allowed me to apply that in depth knowledge to the important things that other areas of the business have to do to support my primary stuff, and they knew they couldn't bullshit me. The global focus from GW helped as well which I targeted due to working at a global company in a global industry. However, I agree there is an issue with the brand of an MBA since you can get one from so many places and the people who come out of those are in many cases morons. They cheapen the value of "an MBA" compared to people who actually pursued advanced business knowledge through a real program.
