Originally from GetRickSlowly.
I’ve recently hired my second employee, a newly-graduated technical writer who aspires to one day run his own business. He’s proactive, punctual, hardworking and very capable. The mentor in me wants to make sure he has a great career ahead of him. So imagine my alarm when I heard him say, “Yeah, I’m thinking about going for an MBA in a few years.” As the holder of not one but two MBAs (it’s a long story), I have a somewhat negative view of the degree. An MBA often costs a lot of money and provides very little return. However, as I began to consider how to tell my new employee that his plan was flawed, I also began to reevaluate my view of the MBA.
Note: MBA stands for Masters of Business Administration. It’s a two year graduate degree that is held up as the “must have” for any executive or mid-level manager hoping to one day become an executive. The top business schools tout their MBA programs as a must-have for any career-oriented person, promising fast-track promotions, higher salaries, better networks, and a whole host of other benefits. Oddly enough, very few of these schools actually talk about the quality of their curriculum — but that’s a whole other story.