Do you agree with this article: "Why an MBA is a Waste of Time and Money"?

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MBA applications always go up during a bad economy. That is because business school generally attracts people who are lost, and more people who feel more lost when the bad job market is lousy.



But let鈥檚 be clear: This is not the type of recession where there are no jobs for young people. This is a recession where there are no GOOD jobs. McDonald鈥檚 is hiring in management. There is a bank teller shortage and a shortage of actuaries. There is a shortage of insurance agents. It鈥檚 just that people don鈥檛 grow up dreaming of these jobs. So they don鈥檛 take them. Instead, people who are early in their career - in that time when an MBA sounds like it might work - those people are determined to have only a good job. And if they can鈥檛 have that, they get an MBA.



The problem is that an MBA makes it worse.



Here are seven reasons why you should take a bad job instead of getting an MBA.



1. Business school won鈥檛 help you be a good entrepreneur.



There is no correlation between being a good entrepreneur and going to business school. In fact, according to Saras Sarasvathy, professor at University of Virginia鈥檚 Darden Business School, the most important skill for an entrepreneur is that you know your weakness and you can find people to fill in your gaps. So you pay a bundle to go to school to learn what you don鈥檛 and how to find people who can do stuff you can鈥檛? Sorry, that doesn鈥檛 add up. The ultimate irony: entrepreneur programs are booming at business schools.



2. You likely don鈥檛 need an MBA for what you want to do.



There are some jobs, very few, where you cannot land if you don鈥檛 have an MBA. These are mostly high-level officer-type positions in the Fortune 500. Even then, though, you probably don鈥檛 need an MBA. In fact, Forbes reports that CEOs without MBAs bring more value to investors than CEOs who went to business school.



3. MBAs who are not from a top 10 school don鈥檛 increase their earning power.



So if you鈥檙e not one of the elite, the degree won鈥檛 help you earn more. According to the recruiting firm Challenger %26amp; Gray, the degree simply does not separate you from other people in any significant way; it鈥檚 too easy to get an MBA from a second-tier school. The cost of the degree is so much more than the combined cost of taking two years off of work and paying for the degree that you are better off taking a job you don鈥檛 particularly like and getting a night-school MBA after work hours.



4. It鈥檚 pointless after a certain age.



Let鈥檚 say you do get into a top-ten school. Don鈥檛 go if you are older than 28. You are too far along in your career to leverage the degree enough to increase your earning power enough to make up for the sticker cost of the degree. In fact, it is so important to get the degree early in your career that Wharton and Harvard have started accepting women earlier than men because the biological clock truncates a woman鈥檚 ability to leverage the MBA early enough in their career to make it worth the money.



5. An MBA is too limiting.



You can鈥檛 take an entry-level job after you get an MBA, so you had better know what you like to do. And can鈥檛 take a job in a low-paying industry because you have to pay back the loans. So not only is an MBA useless for most jobs, but it also makes you unqualified for more jobs that it qualifies you for



6. An MBA makes you look desperate



Top ten business schools will not accept you unless you have a clear plan for what you will do with the degree after you graduate. You need to have shown that you have a propensity for some sort of business and that you need the degree to get where you want in that business. Unfortunately, most other schools will take you if you don鈥檛 have a plan even though it鈥檚 been shown that people who go to business school with no plan for their career graduate with no plan for their career. And then you look not just lost, but desperate.



7. Business school puts off the inevitable.



Look, it鈥檚 really hard to be an adult. You go to school for twenty years being told what to learn and what to think and when to show up, and then you get tossed into adult life and there is no one telling you what鈥檚 right for you. You have to figure it out, but you didn鈥檛 go to school for that. In fact, school is the opposite of that. So it looks fine to be lost in your 20s. This is when everyone is taking time to figure things out. It does not look fine to spend $150,000 to go back to school just to put off the hard knocks of figuring out where you belong in the workforce. Face reality. Join the workforce.Do you agree with this article: "Why an MBA is a Waste of Time and Money"?
It's not really news. These points have been known for a long time, and have been rigorously demonstrated through research.



Only the top tier MBA schools pay off for full-time study.



Part-time MBA study may pay off moderately if the employer covers tuition and if the school is AACSB-accredited.



There are too many mediocre MBA schools attracting mediocre students.



MBAs no longer result in large increases in lifetime earnings.



Many people who take MBAs should have taken other degrees. Engineers in particular should normally take Master's in Engineering Management or Master's in Technology Management.



ADDED

Below, the "Professor" (aka "SergeM") neglects to mention "OfficialMBAGuide" is his own commercial website. There is nothing official about "OfficialMBAGuide". It is a mechanism for harvesting e-mail addresses to provide contacts for dubious MBA schools that buy subscriptions.Do you agree with this article: "Why an MBA is a Waste of Time and Money"?
Almost every point in the article is wrong and can be countered with facts. It would take too long to argue each one, but briefly, there are hundreds of excellent MBA programs that add value to their graduates who go on into good jobs and get a high return on their education investment. The top tier schools graduate a very small percentage of MBAs, simply because they can't accept every qualified candidate, and the qualified students who go elsewhere make good managers, entrepreneurs, and professionals no matter where they go to school. There are good reasons why the MBA is the most popular graduate degree and why more and more schools are offering it. If the demand for qualified MBA graduates were not there, the degree would soon die out. The fact is, the demand is still high, although it does fluctuate with the economic cycles, and we happen to be in a very low cycle now. There is no doubt that many students who go for the degree are not qualified and don't get far, but that is true in any field.Do you agree with this article: "Why an MBA is a Waste of Time and Money"?
Up to an extend it may be true. But a Masters can also help you get a more intimate knowledge of a subject area, and for those who enter mainly for the education and knowledge rather than hoping to get a high level position the Masters program will be worth it.

In addition, someone who has a masters but can't make it to the business sector could go for a Phd and become a Professor involved in research; research that can potentially improve the field of a specific subject and earn one prestige and notoriety.