What is Digg?62 Comments
- Error601, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20That doesn't say much because the number of highly successful financial people in their 20s is tiny. Some people just have a talent for it and don't need the formal education to learn it.
- vroom101, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14Article on one page: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/16mba.html?ei=5124&en=1a0296d2271dbac0&ex=1347595200&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=all
- blitzer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Like almost everything, it comes down to person circumstances.
If you are a boy genius earning a million dollars a year.. then.. no.. you do not need an MBA.
If you are stuck in a dead end job and are looking for a way to push through middle management.. then give it a shot. - jerryparid, on 10/10/2007, -1/+11America is turning out too many graduate students, with MBA from "non-existent" universities. An MBA from Wharton or Harvard will always be worth its weight in gold.
- vemerge, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12The piece of paper it's printed on can't weigh more than a couple of ounces... so, $1200 sound about right?
- No1nose, on 10/10/2007, -0/+9Hopefully not at University of Phoenix Online, or something similar :o)
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+13A grad degree seems to mean very little these days. 90% of master degrees just say "yeah, I sat through a couple more years of school." Top tier MBAs are still required for the really lucrative jobs though. But I'm sure employers have noticed that employees with most masters perform no better than employees who simply have their bachelor's. At the end of the day though, an MBA is an easy way to get a raise no matter where it's from and if you perform well enough once getting it, you'll do fine in your company. But Goldman or any other respectable firm won't hire you as an i-banker unless you have that piece of paper from Wharton/HBS/etc..
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -4/+11I really don't see the point of getting an MBA if it's not from a top 30. Sounds like a lot of wasted money and time to me.
- KOSmurfy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8"the resources available at college are often no better than those available to you online or through the library system"
Are you joking? The material may be readily available, but being around professors who know the material inside and out can help immensely for the 99% of the population that doesn't just "get" everything after reading it online.
College might not be as much of a necessity as it used to be, but it has it's purpose. To just say it's antiquated and that the only reason people still go is because they're slow and haven't caught on yet is just ***** stupid. - AWBoy666, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8I'm working on my MBA now.......dammit!
- Jrr6415sun, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I worked at as an intern at a bank there over the summer, and most of the people I worked with didn't have an MBA, if they did, they got it while they were working there and it was paid for by the company.
- knde, on 10/10/2007, -3/+10A bit off topic but I think that international students are greatly inflating the numbers for MBA's in American colleges.Both my sister and I got our MBA's at American colleges and a ridiculously large number of the student body was made up of international students.
An MBA will certainly guarantee you a very good start in developing countries. Almost all multinationals (e.g. Coca Cola, Shell, Cadbury) in countries like Nigeria, will only hire you if you have an MBA. It also works out that if you have an MBA you can negotiate for a higher salary. - Sogui, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7A few basic rules:
1) MBAs, and Graduate degrees some no-name Universities are a waste of money.
2) Self-starters and extremely intelligent people will always be successful regardless of what institution they bypass. Bill Gates drops out of college, this guy skips his MBA, and they do extremely well. However this is a tiny minority of the population and most people would benefit from finishing their education. "Dropping out and starting your own highly successful company" will only work for so many...
3) In contrast to #1, getting an MBA from an elite school is almost always worth it unless your one of those rare prodigies mentioned in #2. - pennvneff, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6A MBA is only as good as the school you got it from. Most people I know are going for a CFA than MBA now anyways.
- No1nose, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7Yep, any non-accredited school is worthless.
- sirlancelot88, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Not all fields work like CS. Being a good programmer comes largely from talent, practice, and having your mind wired to "seeing" algorithmic solutions. You don't really need class to teach you those things. But try to learn the equivalent of a PhD in Chemistry from online resources and books; it simply isn't possible given the abstractness of the material, plus the non-public availability of some higher research.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5Large chunk = 3 people you can name? The vast majority of world business leaders have advanced degrees, don't make stuff up just to get your point across.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4There are two types of MBAs you can get:
1) The "Big Player" MBA: 3.9 GPA in college -> Wharton -> Goldman -> Banker making $250k/year starting
2) The "Please Promote Me" MBA: ? GPA in college -> Anywhere that will take you -> Whatever company you work for -> management making +25k/year to your old salary
If you think you can make it to #1 without a flawless academic record and a stellar MBA, you're dreaming.
If you think you can make it to #2 without a MBA at all, you're absolutely correct. - Lewie, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4@boot20,
I don't think Soqui was saying MBAs from no-name schools aren't' smart. It's the brand name that gets people jobs. An MBA from Harvard will benefit the employee, not the employer. - ouorama, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4Why do I feel like a moron for my career choice after reading this? :(. And we have to wonder why so many people are not choosing careers in science and engineering when they can drive hedge funds?
- farkdog, on 05/20/2008, -0/+3Here is the meat of the article:
"So he, too, decided to forgo an M.B.A.. Instead, he raised $5 million and started his own hedge fund, Alerian Capital Management, in 2004."
Look, if you have the connections to "raise FIVE MILLION DOLLARS" clearly you don't need college of any kind - you are already set for life.
How many people do you know can say, "Gee, I think I'll pass on college and just go RAISE 5 ***** MILLION DOLLARS" instead. - rmxz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3An MBA on your resume around here (silicon valley) typically means "couldn't find a job in the downturn after the .com crash".
Seems most MBAs these days get it because it looks more socially acceptable than "unemployment" during the periods they can't keep jobs. - Aroundtheworls, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3Not sure how long ago you went to business school but the crackdown after 9/11 on student visas has made life difficult for business schools that depended on a regular supply of foreign students.
- chembro84, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I go to San Francisco State University now and I've heard that international enrollment is down due to visa crackdowns, but I couldn't imagine there being more international students. I am in the business department and from what I can tell ~50% of students are international (90% of which are from China)
- Aroundtheworls, on 10/10/2007, -0/+3I think the topic of the article and what a lot of folks are talking about here (that MBAs don't matter) is a bit different.
The situation as described is one where some people are making fast money in hedge funds and private equity. If one is making the money they mentioned in the article then the opportunity cost of taking off 2 years for a business degree could be $750k+. Given that these guys are focused on a specific financial niche there's not much that an MBA would do for these guys in terms of knowledge, so no need to go for one. Best to push ahead and make as much money as they can, as the article said.
Doesn't mean that an MBA, like any other graduate degree, has no value. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Addendum: A financial firm that has millions and millions of dollars for you to play with on a daily basis is not looking for someone who screwed around in school regardless of their intellect and analytical ability. If there is even the slightest chance that you could make a mistake or get lazy, they won't give you a chance. This is why top tier schools are so competitive. There are tons are brilliant people who did poorly in school and would likely also do poorly at a job that demands strict attention for 80 hours every week no matter how easy the "material" is.
- Grym11, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Don't feel too bad. Hedge funds are evil.
Look up Fortress and how that hedge fund is making so much money. (Hint: Foreclosing on Hurricane Katrina victims makes one HELLUVA profit.)
These hedge fund "companies," (which I put in quotes because, in reality, they provide no real product or service beyond making a profit--like the mob) have their hands in every modern financial scandal from the Asian money market crisis, to the recent sub-prime lending bubble. - etnu, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3When are people going to realize that an MBA is nothing more than a master's degree -- and not a particularly grueling one at that? Most MBA students have relatively meaningless undergraduate degrees (liberal arts majors, please line up here). It's not a doctoral degree in economics, and it does not make you an expert on every subject under the sun. MBAs should not be making technical or design decisions. MBAs should not be running research and development groups.
I'm not saying that MBAs are worthless or anything, but it shouldn't really have any more weight than any other master's degree. In most professions, a master's degree is treated as being worth roughly 1-4 years of work experience (depending on the profession). There are a few industries where the master's (or a PhD) is required, but that's fairly uncommon.
Most of the best business leaders out there don't have business degrees of any sort, much less MBAs. Hell, a large chunk of them (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison off the top of my head) didn't even complete their undergraduate studies. There seems to be very little real world evidence to support the importance given to the degree. - jmpeagle, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4the people who can not bother with MBAs to lead wall street firms are already very intelligent self-motivated people that do not need to be instructed in order to learn. This is like pointing out that college is unnecessry due to all the college drop out billionaires. No one really needs any formal education as long as you are a good self-learner but most people aren't like that. MBAs do help people who otherwise would not have educated themselves. Universities are a service industry that do provide a valuable service if you need them.
- The_Dude, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Don't feel bad, the article also mentioned highly qualified people who took hedge fund jobs and got terminated in 6 months because they couldn't hack it. You're talking about immense amounts of stress to do a job like this. One's appetite for risk and personal energy level have to be off the charts. I'm talking about the traders here, not the analysts. The traders are the ones who make the most anyway. Probably makes being a surgeon look like a quiet desk job in comparison.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Newsflash: Engineers can write in addition to doing useful work and having abilities and knowledge that strengthen MBAs.
- Satanael, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Currently trying to go for my undergraduate in MIS, hoping for my MBA later. This article is so true that it scares me.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2That's a valid point. My focus was way too narrow in that response. Pure sciences and medicine clearly require resources not available to the general public.
- skilzygw, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2I agree 100%. For the people in this article it doesnt make sense to take off of work to get your MBA. But for the rest of the workers trying to get that promotion or raise the MBA is still very valuable. And no it does not need to be from a top 30 school.
I graduated from a state college and passed my CPA. Now I am getting the MBA. Do I have a future making these ungodly sums of money, no probably not. But I can have a nice career as a CFO for a smaller company. Hard to get to that position without an MBA.
Besides there are plenty of schools that have weekend or part time MBAs. No need to quit your job to get one. I think most MBA programs realize that the ones going for the MBA are working in the field. A lot of programs wont even accept you without having some work experience. - manicallday, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2And the bubble begins.....
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I need to disagree with 1. I've dealt with morons from brand name universities and some of the best talent I've found has been from no-name schools (typically state schools). Just because they don't have a silver spoon, doesn't mean they aren't smart.
I'm the rock star at every job I've ever worked out, but I went to a state school...I run circles around 95% of name brand grads. Hell, I'm finishing up my PhD at a state school and at conferences my research is light years beyond most of what the guys are doing at name brand schools.
I've no idea about MBAs, but I can tell you all about Computer Science. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1I've yet to meet a liberal arts grad that was any more educated than a high school grad. Hell, I had a lib arts grad come in and he had horns...wtf? Ya, I'm gonna put you in a forward facing position...
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1You have to find the right school. If you go to a school with a high ratio of students to professors, you'll never get into their office.
I'm going to a small school that Sandia and LANL love to death because our research is excellent as well as being WAY ahead of the power curve. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I'll be honest, I never even went to class in undergrad (CS at UVA) and I am definitely a top performer at my company. I tend to agree that being taught by professors is extremely helpful to some, but I feel like I spent several tens of thousands of dollars and four years just getting a piece of paper so I could be hired and paid a great salary without a problem; I didn't learn a darn thing I wouldn't have outside of school.
- swimmer88, on 10/10/2007, -1/+2I work in the for a large broker and MBA's definitely have some high paying positions and a lot of prestige too. People generally use extreme examples to downplay an MBA, such as Bill Gates dropped out of college and blah blah blah...how many Bill Gates are there in the world, one! The majority of people with MBA's get higher paying jobs and promotions.
I think this article is crap by the way. If you want to be a hedge fund manager, or any type of stock trader, learn to trade stocks. no MBA needed. - Aggaman, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3Not really. MBAs are largely joke degrees. You are better off getting training in a real job, where being up to date in thought is required and not optional. I'd employ someone with a good degree in Classics from a good college over an MBA any day, as it is a much harder subject and requires a high degree of application to do well in. You can pretty much guarantee you are getting a smart, independent thinker, not the cannon fodder that tends to comprise those with MBAs.
- craighoxton, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1MBAs are just a big con - you are not automatically guaranteed a salary hike just because you have one. It's just a high-level networking opportunity, so you pick your business school based on what field you want to go into rather than the prestige of the school. I used to know someone who was doing an MBA in London and she said so many of the people on her course lacked basic common sense and were just there to follow the herd.
- craighoxton, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1Some funds are "vulture funds" that prey on financial advantages or invest in a company to "bust it out" by gaining shareholder control. But like them or not, they are part of the financial establishment now and everyone with a sci/maths doctorate is beating a path to hedge fund land because of the stratospheric salaries.
- lOvOl, on 10/10/2007, -6/+7The question about whether to get an MBA or any degree should be "What will I be learning, that I can't learn on my own". Yah people talk about networking and relationships and having a piece of paper that will help start your corporate career somewhere higher than the mail room, but much of that is born in myth.
The simple fact of the matter is, for the self-motivated types, few college degrees offered nowadays are worth the time and money spent on earning them, especially since the information revolution means you can learn about things for free that used to require having access to a university library and its faculty. That is not so true anymore and one could argue that higher education today is largely obsolete.
The common proof for college being worth the investment is a correlation between those who attend college, especially elites colleges, and their salary over time. Unfortunately, this could simply be because smarter and more motivated people tend to go to college because they are told from a very young age that this is the life script they must follow for them to be successful. I would wager that these people would find a way to be just as successful or even more successful in a society where "going to college" was not seen as important as "being educated".
Of course, a lot of young adults need to be babied into advanced learning through the negative reinforcement of grades and GPA, but for those who are motivated on their own through positive reinforcement to be intelligent for the sake of being intelligent, college will actually slow you down in your pursuit of knowledge because the resources available at college are often no better than those available to you online or through the library system.
College is an antiquated institution of higher learning, just culturally the mass majority of people have not figured it out yet. - Aggaman, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1What's meaningless about a liberal arts degree? A hell of a lot of jobs in modern society need you to be able to communicate clearly and briefly in written or oral form about complex ideas. Those are the sort of jobs that liberal arts graduates tend to end up with (despite the McDonalds jokes, which are funny). Sure, they don't pay millions, but we need educated people to do them nonetheless. A high school education is just not going to cut it for these jobs.
- lOvOl, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I don't know about you, but at the school I attended, few classes had available professors.
When covering the material, you often had a teaching assistant who was impossible to communicate with because they spoke broken English. This was not true of all classes, but it is kind of hard for professors to be able to adequately spend time with their students when they have to spend much of their time on research projects and the time available for talking with professors is shared between three or four classes of 100-200 students.
Of course this was undergraduate education, but the point still remains that few degrees or programs really give students the bang for their buck when compared to the alternatives. - MonumentMan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2b
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o - vfrex, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1What do you do for a living jmpeagle?
- jasoncz1, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2A MBA education is mostly for two types of people. 1. An employee whose promotion depends on it. 2. A person who needs a change in career. Anyone who is ready to go through the experience should already know what they want to do post-MBA. However, many will still change their career goals during the program. In the last 5 years, many top tier schools have restructured their programs to be more globalized, handling government regulations, and teaching entrepreneurship thinking. MBA programs are trying to break out of traditional role of making corporate men. Still, two sectors hire over 70% of the MBAs from top tier schools: financial services and consulting. Thus, if you are doing good in financial service firm, why get an MBA when you know most people getting MBAs will want to be in the position you are in now.
- Lorwik, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1i'm eating potato chips
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