Comments on: Yahoo column: Are MBAs becoming obsolete?

By: To MBA or Not MBA « Nichardin’s Weblog

To MBA or Not MBA « Nichardin’s Weblog — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:35:44 +0000

[...] found this article and I thought she was spot on regarding MBAs. (My disclaimer: I find Penelope wildly off the mark [...]

By: Randy

Randy — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:58:49 +0000

Let me clarify that it is Beth Terry's comments with which I agree! I read the wrong attribution.

By: Randy

Randy — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:57:16 +0000

Many great responses have been posted to this point. I whole heartedly agree with anonymous coward's response. There's a lot more to the process of obtaining an MBA. I know that is true for me. I don't have the money or time to go to a top tier business school, so for my MBA, I'm attending a local, private university in the evenings. I won't have any debt burden as a result of getting an MBA this way and its really more the process of getting it that I appreciate (and hope will be appreciated by potential employers later). It's also a confidence builder for me since my undergrad degree is in Communications.

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 04:43:19 +0000

To echo jhearty's comments:

Less than 10% of Americans have a graduate degree and less than 1% hold an MBA.

By: Penelope Trunk: The Brazen Careerist

Penelope Trunk: The Brazen Careerist — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:05:56 +0000

[...] Yahoo column: Are MBAs becoming obsolete? [...]

By: jhearty

jhearty — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:15:40 +0000

An MBA is a sign that you can follow a dedicate yourself to a process. It's a sign that you have a desire to improve yourself and be successful. It's a confidence builder and a chance to learn about business. Any degree is just another way to open doors that may have been closed before. Once you're hired, you still have to prove yourself.

The market is not flooded with MBA's. Only about 24% of the workforce has a bachelor's degree. A much lower percentage gets advanced degrees.

By: Just Jobs

Just Jobs — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:42:18 +0000

This post makes alot of sense. It seems like the market is flush with way too many MBAs, and when there is an oversupply of anything in any economic model, prices go down. If this holds true with MBAs, salaries for MBAs will go down as well, complicating the job hunt for the average MBA. However, I do think it makes a difference what concentration an MBA chooses, as it is well known that most MBAs who concentrated in finance while they studied usually stand to make much higher salaries than MBAs in other concentrations.

By: Scott Sanders

Scott Sanders — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 19:25:06 +0000

Made the same comment on another article of yours — Harvard Business School has never had a work experience requirement! … at least not in my recent memory.

Take a look at this page:
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/admissioncriteria.html

"Please note that there is no minimum work experience requirement for the MBA Program. Successful candidates are able to demonstrate strength in the criteria outlined above, regardless of their number of years of work experience. They include college seniors with significant leadership experience, as well as individuals with as little as one to two years of full-time work experience."

Granted — HBS's admissions stats seem to bear out the fact that they favor candidates with work experience, but their policy hasn't suddenly changed by any means. They're one of the only top schools (maybe *the* only) that doesn't have a work experience requirement.

By: www.bestfinancialadvisor.info » Yahoo column: Are MBAs becoming obsolete?

www.bestfinancialadvisor.info » Yahoo column: Are MBAs becoming obsolete? — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 19:14:29 +0000

[...] Penelope Trunk wrote a fantastic post today on "Yahoo column: Are MBAs becoming obsolete?"Here's ONLY a quick extractNow that trend is filtering into the finance industry. Pausing one’s career to get an MBA used to be non-negotiable for investment bankers. But today, the top candidates in finance are choosing to forgo business school. … [...]

By: Beth Terry

Beth Terry — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:00:20 +0000

I think the real question is, "Have MBA's EVER been the ticket they are hyped to be?" I remember in the 90's Fortune or Forbes wrote about the disappointment on Wall Street over the quality of new MBA's. They claimed that the majority of the firms surveyed would prefer a graduate from one of the lesser schools who had a Midwestern upbringing over MBA's coming out of ivy league schools. They felt the Midwestern work ethic was worth far more than any letters after a name.

This seems to be a recurring theme. The truth always is, we don't hire people for what they learned in college. We hire them for how they learned to think and solve problems. Having an MBA or PhD says that you had the stamina to follow rules, take the required courses, figure out how to pass the tests, second guess your professors, and turn in required work.

Yes – you also learned a lot along the way. But the first thing that happens in a job is the lesson that a lot of what you were taught in school is theory and doesn't pan out in the day to day business world.

In the 90's I was the national manager of an $800 million company with a presence in 18 states. We regularly hired MBA's for Partner track. Part of my assignment from the CEO was to take the newly minted MBA's that we'd hired and teach them some soft skills — in the CEO's words: "how to be a human being, how to motivate, how to hire and train without intimidating, how to think like your front line and treat them with the respect they deserve"… at that time NONE of those skills were taught in MBA courses.

From one who has hired many MBA's i can tell you this: an MBA DOESN'T say that you are a good, ethical, creative, hard-working contributor to the bottom line. THAT you have to prove along the way. If you can show — with or without an MBA — that you add value to the organization through your creativity, resilience, dedication to the job at hand, and that you can play well with others… you've got a future. Bottom line, corporations hire people with their lights on.

Is it obsolete? No. Learning never is. We all need to keep learning, and an MBA of any stripe is a good way to do that. But to think it is a ticket or a guarantee is self-defeating. You may have more open doors, but they are still hiring YOU. Work on your Y O U as well as your M B A, and you'll do fine!

Good luck! We need all the healthy up and comers we can find!