Baconwfu
Well-known member
Any opinions on getting an MBA from the Pit business experts? Here is my situation. I have 12 or so years of highly linear progression in financial services but am absolutely desperate to find a more challenging/intellectually stimulating job. A very high percentage of the jobs that I would consider are heavily biased toward candidates with an MBA. I’m not super enthusiastic about doing it for a few reasons:
1) I think MBAs have started to be viewed as less valuable and for a variety of reasons think that trend will continue to accelerate.
2) Have a few friends who just graduated from Fuqua and they enjoyed the experience but the classes seemed pretty easy. Not sure how much they really took away from the classes other than exceptional mastery of the B school buzzword vocabulary.
3) These programs are staggeringly expensive and I would be in the position of absorbing the cost myself.
4) Related to 3, most of the jobs I see posted would likely involve a significant pay cut. I’m comfortable with taking maybe $50-75k less in total comp for the right job but can’t really justify doing that AND paying >$100k for the degree.
Thoughts?
I did a MBA through Western Carolina (night classes at UNCA), that, in total might have cost a little more than $20K if I remember correctly (I started in the fall of 2008)
Of course, in the finance world, I'm sure no one is impressed by a degree from directional state university, but it "checked a box" that you seem to want to check.
In my experience, it was pretty much a no-brainer as I was told if I graduated my company would (almost completely) reimburse tuition and give me a significant raise...but I had to do night classes and keep working
But if you need to check a box, then think about doing a part time program as they seem to be (for whatever reason) cheaper than others. Maybe that's not the case anymore or maybe Western was just a really good deal. My brother did one through the University of Florida (he lived in Florida at the time) which he claimed was also cheaper than the full time program.
Granted I did all this while I was single and had no other time commitments, so leaving the house at 7am and getting home a 10pm 3 nights/week + homework for a few years wasn't a problem...these days, with a wife and 2 samll kids, I don't know if that would fly for me (although I know people in my program who had a wife and kids at the time)