Its nice to have your beliefs confirmed.
Several times I have considered going to get my MBA. Each time I decided not too. It hasn’t hurt me so far, and from this recent The New York Times article, I was right.
Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford’s business school, published a study in 2002 based on decades of data to determine what the M.B.A. degree actually did for students. Internal studies by leading consulting firms and investment banks of their M.B.A. and non-M.B.A. employees showed that the degree had no impact beyond helping them get the job.Professor Pfeffer concluded: ”There is little evidence that mastery of the knowledge acquired in business schools enhances people’s careers, or that even attaining the M.B.A. credential itself has much effect on graduates’ salaries or career attainment.”
and there was this gem..
Roger L. Martin spent 13 years at Monitor, a top consulting company based in Cambridge, Mass., where he was responsible for recruiting. He tended to recruit almost entirely from the Harvard Business School (of which he is a graduate). Harvard, he says, ”is a magnificent vehicle for extracting out of the global economy those people who are destined to be great business leaders and motivated and smart.” But beyond that, he believes, Harvard adds nothing.”If you gave me a choice of recruiting with the admissions list or the graduating list, it would take me a second to decide — I’d go with the admissions list,” says Mr. Martin, now dean of the business school at the University of Toronto.
”If people were smart,” he says, ”they would apply to Harvard, get in, and then send their admissions letters out and use that to get jobs.”
Unlike most other professional schools, you don’t need an MBA to do well at business. Its not like law or medicine. In fact, if you look at who the movers and shakers are in business, the vast majority do NOT have an MBA because they were too busy starting their company. Its only use is for corporate ladder climbing.