Another alternative is developing your own curriculum, one course at a time, courses that give you information for your career or that would simply be intellectually challenging and fun. Do universities offer this alternative these days, or must one be working toward a degree to be admitted to a class? One thing that would be missing in this solo approach is the fellowship and learning from fellow students all working for the same degree.
I think that through things like Open Courses from universities ( https://ocw.mit.edu/ ) and a huge amount of educational material free on youtube, there is no barrier at all to the information. I think the education is mostly secondary in the experience, and most of the value comes from the fellowship and network of students
To me the whole thing always reeked. One of my cousins from India paid $4000 to a consultant in the US to write the SOP on his behalf. The essence of his SOP was that he is doing the MBA to help poor farmers like his father make better money for their produce. He got in Maryland I think and has been working for Amazon ever since graduation. Never even returned to India. Now imagine 200 more such guys. That's been my idea of an MBA class. Very intelligent folks but soulless at best and frauds at worst.
Today I am aware of more people who have attained classic MBA jobs without MBAs. The youngest director at our private equity firm had no MBA (though he had a Harvard undergraduate degree, and he no doubt learned the MBA "ropes" by being an analyst at said PE firm). Another successful McK consultant I know had a BSE in chem engineering, no MBA and no masters. But in both of these cases the people were able to acquire the relevant skills on the job via starting as analysts and working their way up. I wasn't aware of anyone who had that work-your-way-up-from-analyst profile in the old days.
When I went to HBS the total cash out was about 10K per year, say 20K for the two years, and people made 3-5X times the total cash investment in their first year out. Today you say 2 years costs 200K? I assume that is cash out also. If so, then the payback ratio is much different. I am thinking people would earn 1-1.5X in first year.
Furthermore, in both cases I cited the people would face major opportunity costs. Maybe they were both doing so well that they had no choice but to forego the MBA.
Oh wow, yes I think the ROI has changed (although I don't think it is (necessarily) a bad financial investment, especially Harvard and Stanford). I just think there are lots of other cheaper options and the culture of it has become somewhat ridiculous
Another alternative is developing your own curriculum, one course at a time, courses that give you information for your career or that would simply be intellectually challenging and fun. Do universities offer this alternative these days, or must one be working toward a degree to be admitted to a class? One thing that would be missing in this solo approach is the fellowship and learning from fellow students all working for the same degree.
I think that through things like Open Courses from universities ( https://ocw.mit.edu/ ) and a huge amount of educational material free on youtube, there is no barrier at all to the information. I think the education is mostly secondary in the experience, and most of the value comes from the fellowship and network of students
To me the whole thing always reeked. One of my cousins from India paid $4000 to a consultant in the US to write the SOP on his behalf. The essence of his SOP was that he is doing the MBA to help poor farmers like his father make better money for their produce. He got in Maryland I think and has been working for Amazon ever since graduation. Never even returned to India. Now imagine 200 more such guys. That's been my idea of an MBA class. Very intelligent folks but soulless at best and frauds at worst.
That's a tough story....Amazon. Hopefully amazon at least starts delivering to said farmers
Haha they do actually. Good old capitalism.
One could also do a finance PhD and live a breakeven grad student life (teaching stipends) and then go to Wall Street or consulting.
That seems much more intellectually challenging and would take longer but may be more interesting!
How do you view the value of business school now vs when you went?
Today I am aware of more people who have attained classic MBA jobs without MBAs. The youngest director at our private equity firm had no MBA (though he had a Harvard undergraduate degree, and he no doubt learned the MBA "ropes" by being an analyst at said PE firm). Another successful McK consultant I know had a BSE in chem engineering, no MBA and no masters. But in both of these cases the people were able to acquire the relevant skills on the job via starting as analysts and working their way up. I wasn't aware of anyone who had that work-your-way-up-from-analyst profile in the old days.
When I went to HBS the total cash out was about 10K per year, say 20K for the two years, and people made 3-5X times the total cash investment in their first year out. Today you say 2 years costs 200K? I assume that is cash out also. If so, then the payback ratio is much different. I am thinking people would earn 1-1.5X in first year.
Furthermore, in both cases I cited the people would face major opportunity costs. Maybe they were both doing so well that they had no choice but to forego the MBA.
Oh wow, yes I think the ROI has changed (although I don't think it is (necessarily) a bad financial investment, especially Harvard and Stanford). I just think there are lots of other cheaper options and the culture of it has become somewhat ridiculous