This fall, many of my friends will begin graduate school for an MBA. I decided a few years ago that I would not bother with any grad school programs. My reasons remain the same:
- Much lower ROI within the tech industry versus other fields
- Insanely high cost to attend
- 2 years of work experience is an expensive opportunity cost to give up
- Not an exclusive source for the information taught
- I probably don’t want most of the jobs that require an MBA
This is not to say that the material taught in an MBA program is useless - I expect most of it worth learning. I assume some people need the formalized structure to motivate them through the rigor required and avoid the traps of Netflix and social distractions. For those that have made that decision, I am cheering for them to learn and end up with a positive ROI.
In my case, I feel strongly that I can pursue relative studies on my own time and attain similar knowledge in a far more efficient manner. I’ll write separate posts as I plan this, but right now I am thinking about setting up a curriculum to assign myself. The MBA tag will include all related posts here.
Also - one critical aspect of MBA programs that’s not to be overlooked is the networking. I have deliberately omitted thoughts on that in this post - more to come soon.