Posted on 08/19/2011 6:39:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
MBA grads are shouldering record levels of debt as tuition rates head skyward, making the degree a risky investment that's not often approached with caution or restraint.
In 2008, Brian Jenkins moved to Malibu, Calif., to start his MBA at Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management. He had big ambitions for B-school, expecting the degree to help him land a six-figure-salary job in human resources at a top company.
Pepperdine seemed poised to deliver. When he was a mere applicant, the admissions director gave him a personal tour of the business school, which commands a stunning perch overlooking the Pacific. His student experience was "amazing," he says, handing top marks to his professors and classmates. The weather – "perfect every day" – was an added perk.
To pay for it all, Jenkins took out $120,000 in loans. But his six-figure-salary job never materialized. "The career services staff basically said, 'We'll help you edit your resume, good luck out there,'" he recalls. "A lot of [my classmates] found jobs paying $55,000 to $65,000 per year, and they were very excited that they had a job."
In fact, Jenkins' class earned a mean base salary of $69,167, according to Pepperdine's official stats. They also owed an average $66,242. When the economy was doing well, and there was upward mobility, MBAs made sense, Jenkins says. "People were able to manage their debt load."
(Excerpt) Read more at management.fortune.cnn.com ...
Why stop at B schools? All universities, these days, are debtor’s prisons, and the PhDs are the tapeworms.
MBAs have been an extended version of the boom in engineering schools in the mid to late 70s; it results in a glut of MBAs. The down side of the problem, at least most engineering graduates had some useful knowledge and skills. MBAs, not so much when you look at their track records in handling most large businesses, banks and the economy. American business needs to get back to more of the hardworking, practical individuals who know how to get their hands dirty, how the operation works and how to lead rather than manage people. Managers manage things, leaders lead people; there is a big difference.
Sounds like he expected the school to get him a $100k+ job.
Unfortunately, I don’t think his expectation is unusual these days.
Kids are pretty naieve.
You are right. Many advanced degrees are simply cash cows for universities. Even worse, many undergrad degrees are simply cash cows. You come out of an undergrad education or with a graduate degree with a mountain of debt and no job. And you realize how much better undergrad and grad programs could be if they focused more on what business want and need.
There really does need to be a Congressional investigation of college collusion on pricing and admissions. And the incentives for price inflation need to be taken away. The whole university system is a racket.
Call it “Education Inflation”. Today an undergraduate degree is the equivalent of a high school diploma 30 years ago, and a Masters degree is the equivalent of a undergraduate degree 30 years ago.
In terms of degree value, I think MBA’s are the new lawyers—Can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.
The problem with most MBA’s, in my experience, is that they’ve never held a real job or worked for any appreciable time in the real world—They’re long on theory and platitudes and short on practical experience.
Student loans at their most basic is simply a wealth redistribution scheme from the middle class to the elite.
When you have third party paying there is no incentive to keep cost under control.
I personally would forbid student loans. If that is not possible I have it so the college themselves must provide the loan and that these loans could be discharged under normal bankruptcy laws.
If the schools were the ones that would lose out if the graduate could not repay the loan they would show a lot more care in who gets a loan.
MBA Grads? What about BA and BS grads? None of them can get a job! If they do it’s for minimum wage!
My girlfriends son graduated in May with a BA, moved to Rhode Island and delivering pizza’s. The irony of it all, is that he’s a big lib and Obummer supporter. Hehehe...
I sense the problem right there.
From my experience, other than the VP of HR, people making that
kind of money were either mobbed up sleazes, or working
headhunter scams to cheat the company.
And from my part time b-school experience, I can only a recall one
person claiming to work in HR, and the reason was that she
was a minority expecting affirmative action to be an important
part of her corporation.
(That company is now a shell of its former self, mostly due to the
failure to keep up with new products introductions and
technologies that were obsoleting their core businesses.)
They picked Pepperdine as an example? I understand the article but this reporter is citing one of the most expensive universities I know of as his first example. On top of that, the housing costs in Malibu will eat you alive before you even get to the campus.
The MBA program always has been rich on jargon and short on substance. It always has been overrated.
The MBA program always has been rich on jargon and short on substance. It always has been overrated.
Most of my fellow students were liberal arts grads who needed marketable skills to find a job.
Looking back on it, it was an really good decision that has paid off handsomely in my engineering career.
Going to business school for a 6-figure salary is a fool's errand. Makes for a great movie, but reality bites!
The employment/salary picture is not in-line with the ROI for an MBA. It’s a complete waste of time and money for most people.
Apparently, most of the people who flunked/dropped out of Tech’s engineering program, including my father's insurance agent, switched to majoring in business. I suppose a fair number of them also went on to seek MBAs &mdash -- I never needed to find out for myself.
Keep us updated, please. I'd be interested to see how he votes next year, after 15 months in the real world.
Depends what field you go into. I have a young relative who is getting a PhD in biological research at a well-known university. Free tuition and a $25k plus stipend, which is essentially pay for work he does in the lab but it is in the field he is going into. So they are paying him to learn more about his field.
End result? Free PhD in a hot field. Value? Almost a quarter million bucks over five years. Obligation to the university? None. They just expect their grads will do great things, which maintains or improves the school’s academic reputation.
He applied to several other schools and all were offering him the same deal.
There are few areas of study in which work experience is not preferred, PRIOR to pursing advanced degrees.
Get your undergrad, get a job, and then get the company to pay for the Masters.
There’s nothing more galling than having some MBA walk into a company, and start telling folks who’ve been there 20 years, what they’re doing wrong.
They have some sacred attraction to the bottom line at the expense of getting the job done, maintaining quality, and customer satisfaction.
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