
M.B.A. Applications Decline at Harvard, Wharton, Other Elite Schools - tysone
https://www.wsj.com/articles/m-b-a-applications-keep-falling-in-u-s-this-year-hitting-even-elite-schools-1538366461
======
bennyfreshness
Just an anecdote of my personal experience, since there's generally a sense of
uselessness for MBAs in tech and I held the same view until recently getting
an MBA.

I was moving from engineering to product management and thought it would help
my resume to get an MBA, but I was pleasantly surprised how useful in many
other regards the process and learnings were.

For sure learning on your own, doing things, building product, is better than
structured curriculum. But there's something to be said for being exposed to a
broad set of business information. When heads down writing code and building
businesses, it's hard to step out and learn this disparate knowledge unless
you're forced to by wanting to graduate. Maybe you're more disciplined than I,
but in my free time I wouldn't dabble in accounting for instance, just wasn't
interested. The forcing function is surprisingly helpful.

I'm not claiming it's for everyone, but I got a ton out of my MBA and would
recommend. My situation was moving from engineering to product, had full time
PM job, trying to start a side business, which now has had significant growth
that I attribute a lot to my learnings from the MBA.

~~~
cosmie
During my undergraduate program, I was a Teaching Assistant for a statistics
department housed within a business school. The department was going through a
re-branding from statistics and operations to "business analytics", and I got
a lot of exposure to the inner workings of graduate education at the time.

Some students in our department were there for an MS in Statistics, others for
a dual MS and MBA program. The single greatest indicator of whether or not an
MBA was useless was whether the person was actively or passively choosing to
get an MBA. About 70% of students were passively choosing to get a graduate
degree. Either they had no idea what to do after their bachelors, they
realized really quickly after their bachelors that what they thought was
"adulthood" in college was not real and decided to run back to it, or they
were following the trope of "bachelors -> 2-3 years in industry -> MBA -> ???
-> profit" with no idea of what "???" was except that they'd put in their 2-3
years already. For all of these students, they were passively choosing to get
an MBA either to fill a checkbox or to avoid the alternative.

Then there were about 30% of students that actively chose to pursue an MBA.
These students almost all had actual, real-world experience and actively chose
to get an MBA because of specific needs or circumstances they had. In some
cases it was to make a strategic career shift, in some cases it was to better
orient themselves _after_ making a career shift, in some cases it was to get
over a ceiling in their industry where it was required to keep growing. But in
all cases, if you asked them why they got an MBA, they could tell you without
hesitation explicitly what prompted that decision, and the value they expected
to derive from completing their MBA program (and why the MBA program was the
right avenue for getting that value).

MBAs aren't useless. But a very sizable percentage of people graduate with
them are useless[1], and would be equally as useless with or without the MBA.
And the same holds true for most advanced degrees, from what I've seen.

[1] From the perspective of "hire a bunch of MBAs to solve problems". An
incompetent worker without credentials is just as incompetent with
credentials. And success in receiving an MBA from an academic environment does
not denote success potential in applying the MBA in a business environment.

~~~
zerkten
> Then there were about 30% of students that actively chose to pursue an MBA.
> These students almost all had actual, real-world experience and actively
> chose to get an MBA because of specific needs or circumstances they had.

Coming from the UK my assumption was that MBA degrees were only open to those
with some type of actual experience. That is based on my own research around
2002 where I found that Master's in Finance, Management, etc. were the only
options for someone with limited real-world experience.

Is this a case where the entry requirements have shifted, or is this a
regional thing? I went down the Master's path, but found an opportunity to
come to the US on an H1B so I dropped out. I found what I've learned to be
incredibly useful, but given how far I made it through I can't justify an MBA
for reasons other than the credential or networking.

~~~
chrisweekly
"can't justify an MBA for reasons other than the credential or networking"

I suspect those two reasons constitute a sizable portion -- maybe even a
majority -- of a typical MBA's value proposition. At the elite schools, the
networking component alone might justify the costs.

~~~
mathattack
At the top 6-8 schools in the US, networking plus the placement office
justified the bill. But if you’re an @$$hole then the networking won’t help.

------
duxup
I can't read the article, but I wonder if it is just diluted perception of an
MBA.

I worked at a company that regularly hired recent MBA graduates, and maybe it
was just the school, but I saw little value added to these kids. They got
manager type tasks, but showed no skills related to management. Their life
experience was so limited that I had to explain it to them that you have to
schedule people far ahead of time in order to give them time to schedule their
lives, and that you had to schedule them like humans because ... they can't
work for 24 straight hours because it would take 5 minutes more to look at the
spreadsheet and figure out a more optimal schedule.

Beyond internal stuff, even communicating with customer's took hand holding
and teaching basic life lessons.

I often questioned how the candidates I worked with ever got into an MBA
program (I'm guessing it was just open). I wouldn't trust some of them to work
at a menial job without a great deal of supervision, let alone make decisions
for a business / other people.

IMO an MBA just doesn't make sense without significant / proven business life
experience for most people.

It really was the FedEx commercial IRL
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcoDV0dhWPA)

Obviously there are people with MBAs with FAR more skills, but with other
folks like I experienced I wonder if it has watered down the market for MBAs.

~~~
diminoten
> Their life experience was so limited

At what point in their careers did they go get an MBA? My fiancée went to
Kellogg and it was a rarity to see anyone there who didn't already have 5+
years of work experience. It was sort of an unspoken (but kind of spoken,
since the M7 all highly suggest it) rule.

~~~
da02
What was her # of years of experience and industry before getting the MBA?
(developer? engineer?)

~~~
diminoten
Non-profit policy work in DC and the standard 5 years. She moved into retail
with her MBA.

~~~
da02
Managing retail companies? Any reason why the move to non-profit? (Mis-
management horror stories in the non-profit industry?)

~~~
diminoten
It's way faster to make changes to how, say, cotton is grown when you're the
US's largest retailer and can set new rules for who you'll buy from, than if
you're trying to convince congress to pass a law.

~~~
da02
That's smart. I hope more people think and act like her.

------
noMBAplease
I went to a Wharton School MBA program introduction the other day. Or maybe it
was Berkeley Haas, I can't remember.

The lady leading the session to sell me a $150,000+ degree which requires me
to leave my (extremely successful and promising career) for two years (and
screw up my family life while doing it), started talking about how if people
in the room got a bad grade in a certain area for their undergraduate degree -
they might have to go back and fix it before they apply.

Did I mention I have to pay the costs of this program 100% myself since most
employers (and mine) won't cover it anymore?

Once I heard that, I was done. Not only do I have to take three months to
study for a stupid GMAT or GRE or whatever, I am also being held accountable
for a grade I got over 12 years ago.

In that 12 years, I quit my business career ,taught myself software
engineering, built multiple applications used by millions of people every
month before resuming my career as a manager of technical evangelist teams.

The idea that I need to go get an MBA, take a GMAT, submit to covering for a
bad grade 15 years ago after achieving a very high degree of proficiency in
Objective-C and doing the things I have done since was so laughable it ended
the desire for me to ever get an MBA.

Maybe if they paid me I might consider it. I just dont get it. It is something
I might do if I got rich in cryptocurrency and needed a hobby to pass the
time, thats about it.

Dont get me wrong, people (some) with MBAs I have met are often quite smart.
But it seemed like an awful lot of time, stress and money and administrative
nonsense for what the result is.

~~~
httpz
The lady is just doing her job recruiting. She doesn't know your full
background. MBA is not for you. You wasted an hour of your life. No need to be
mad about MBA in general.

~~~
notyourday
The lady is a sales droid. Her job is to convince you to part with the money.

------
Dowwie
I wrote this as a comment in another post a few days ago but I'll cross-post
it here as it is relevant.

One of my defining decisions was taking leave and eventually dropping out of a
top executive mba program a third of the way in, before I had to take a six
figure loan to pay the rest. If I am to be brutally honest with myself, the
decision not to finish wasn't entirely my own, but I could have finished.

The shit really hit the fan in my life and this forced me to take stock. Had I
not been forced, I probably would have continued down the mba path and career
change. Losing my father after two very sick years, being laid off by a
business in collapse, having a six figure student loan application on my desk,
and other crucial "etc" pushed me to reevaluate my life decisions.

Here are some important lessons learned:

An MBA from a reputable program was leading me into debt servitude and
constraints that would shape my career. Debt constraints are major life
constraints.

Changing careers to do something that was more meaningful can lead to many new
opportunities. I left prime brokerage in financial services and was planning
to transition into healthcare, hospital cfo type of work. Helping create novel
solutions to rising costs of healthcare was a mission I could align myself
with. Helping protect investment bank lending to hedge funds through margin
financing paid well but served no higher purpose. Healthcare doesn't have a
monopoly on purpose, though, and many who work in healthcare do so just to
collect a paycheck. I realized I could achieve my goal elsewhere and with
fewer bureaucratic constraints, but at a cost-- as an entrepreneur!

Entrepreneurship has been everything I expected it to be. I had to become the
technical expert I needed as a partner. It's been a long, grueling experience.
I am so fortunate to have taken it.

~~~
jackgolding
This resonates with what I consider when making big life choices - choose
flexibility over long term commitments (at least outside family.)

------
lordnacho
So I did a fair bit of an MBA as part of a joint course with Engineering at a
well known UK institution. It wasn't literally an MBA, but the MBA there was
just one year whereas there was an equivalent amount of time spent at the
business school if you chose the right electives.

A couple of my classmates went on and got full 2-year MBAs from very
prestigious US institutions.

The verdict, both from those who went on to do something technical, and those
who went on to other things, is that Engineering is harder. It may not pay as
well, and it's harder, but it's probably more fun if you find the right job.
My friend who is a PE partner wondered what he missed out on, since a girl he
knew from Engineering went and joined SpaceX very early on. There were a few
stories about people who got into F1 as well.

The other part is that you don't actually learn a great deal about business in
business school. You won't learn how to make decisions in a strategy class.
You won't learn how to invest in a finance class. You might learn some things
about the history of thought in the field, eg Taylorism. But generally it is
not what it says on the tin.

By contrast I built a working radio in my first term as well as a bridge that
an adult could stand on.

A really big issue, which to their credit they pointed out at business school,
is that it might be better for managers to have domain knowledge in what they
manage, rather than just be general management "specialists". I happen to fall
into this more Teutonic camp.

Also, note that very few people that I know report taking an MBA to learn
anything. They generally are as cynical as they ought to be about it (!) and
did it in order to have better job prospects. It's worked out very nicely for
them.

------
mlthoughts2018
The content of an MBA program is probably useful. The problem is that it
became associated with an easy path to a high-earning credential, so it self-
selected for people who expect to earn a high wage, who want graduate
education to be as easy as possible, and who want credential and status to be
the main ways of getting money (instead of, say, working hard to have a
skill).

The light got shined on this type of program, these credential-seeking roaches
scattered, and now they’ll go ruin some other perfectly reasonable academic
discipline, most probably data science.

I don’t blame the roaches. I guess I blame idiots who buy knowledge products
based on credential, and thus either employ these credential roaches at high
wages, or else generate the demand that makes it profitable for other
consulting / white-shoe sorts of businesses to employ the roaches.

~~~
x220
You are basically criticizing people for wanting money and not wanting to do
unnecessary work for it.

You might as well criticize human nature.

99% of people pick the best path they can see towards an easier life that
gives them the most suitable work/money trade-off they are able to tolerate.
If MBA grads aren't good at what they do, that's the fault of MBA programs.
MBA grads just want to get credentials and training and make money, just like
almost every person in the world. I tend to shy away from personal statements,
but your use of "roaches" makes me think that some of what you say bleeds from
personal wounds.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Criticizing human nature is a good way to improve our behavioral defaults. For
example using science instead of burning witches.

You seem surprised someone would criticize a bad manifestation of human
nature. That puzzles me, given that it’s so historically effective.

~~~
x220
I'm surprised you're criticizing MBA grads instead of the MBA programs, since
the MBA programs aren't teaching effectively while the MBA grads are merely
trying to get a better life.

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I explicitly said I didn’t blame the grads in my original comment, at least
not nearly as much as businesses that keep facilitating economic demand for
those credentials.

~~~
x220
You call them roaches. At the very least, I think you resent them immensely. I
don't mean this to undermine you, but rather to provoke thought: are you sure
you don't blame them?

~~~
mlthoughts2018
Your comment took an interpretation of mine that doesn’t seem compatible with
what I actually wrote, particularly that I explicitly said I did not blame
people for credential rent seeking (even if it makes me justifiably angry),
but rather I blame organizations that fuel the demand which makes this
credential rent seeking profitable in the first place.

Somehow you feel that because I used an analogy of roaches scattering to
describe when rent-seeking people looking to secure rents with credential are
forced to flee one source (MBA programs) for some other that this makes your
interpretation compatible with what I wrote, but I don’t see why. You
questioning “why I blame [MBA grads]” seems just as incompatible with what I
wrote as before.

------
amb23
MBA programs should adjust to the market by developing more concentrated
1-year degrees in specific disciplines: Finance, Operations, Marketing,
Product, etc.

The first year of most MBAs are just core courses in various business
disciplines: you'll learn accounting if you know you want to be a brand
manager for a CPG company, or you'll learn org design if you're aiming for a
job at a hedge fund. While I see the value in interdisciplinary education--and
while I strongly endorse interdisciplinary core courses for undergrad--these
courses simply aren't necessary for a professional degree and the extra year
of school costs are prohibitively expensive.

I'd love to see more concentrated MBAs that really focus on specific
disciplines. Basically, cut out the first year of an MBA and just focus on a
core set of discipline-specific courses. Most MBA program already have these
designed as "concentrations" so I'd imagine the actual implementation of such
a program wouldn't be too complex. And if they're only one year long, the
price would be halved.

I've personally considered, and considered against, an MBA degree due to the
prohibitive costs to even apply, but a program like this would make it much
easier to swallow that pill.

~~~
otoburb
INSEAD is a highly respected MBA program (outside of the US) that offers a 10
month MBA[1]. This sounds more like what you are referring to, geared towards
those with around 6 years of work experience.

[1] [https://www.insead.edu/master-
programmes/mba](https://www.insead.edu/master-programmes/mba)

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/aiqFB](http://archive.is/aiqFB)

~~~
JacobJans
Is it obvious to anyone else that this is blatant copyright infringement? Does
anyone care?

~~~
abenedic
Of course it is obvious, it is just that almost no one online believes that
the information contained within is worth enough to subscribe, and there is
not a frictionless way to compensate the other the $0.03 cents worth of value
I potentially got from the article.

~~~
organsnyder
Then don't read it. If it's valuable enough to pirate, it's valuable enough to
pay for.

~~~
mehrdada
_Piracy_ is "the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea."

Looking at that page does not attack or rob anyone. The use of that word is
simply perpetuation of Hollywood propaganda.

~~~
mc32
Maybe it's more akin to Boycotting.

It's not robbing someone but it is removing some potential revenue. And, so I
don't come across as hypocrite, I also circumvent the vast majority of
subscriptions, but I realize I am denying some miniscule revenue and over
time, all added up, could be something.

So the problem is _both_ friction and circumvention in the least, as well as
overcharging. Would I pay for Cable? No. Would I pay for Netflix? Why not.
They offer a good product at a very reasonable price with little friction and
I would not try circumvention, because there is no reason.

~~~
mehrdada
> but it is removing some potential revenue

Dozens of studies about music have proven this theory false. In fact music
“piracy” likely has increased their revenue because they spread music.
Intuitively you can see why labels have gave in to free as supported YouTube
models as opposed to locking them down; they wouldn’t have done this had CD
sale revenue was higher, but in aggregate having people’s attention is worth
more. Similarly, I can for sure let you know that I would not pay for WSJ if I
couldn’t read their articles under any capacity. For me not to be able to read
it just decreases their network and thus their value in other ways. And now
that I’m more familiar with them I _might_ pay one day.

~~~
mc32
YT, unless you subscribe, shows ads. News sites which let you browse unimpeded
show ads --but have those ads blocked by many. So, when they try to make a
quid pro quo bargain (ads for content) people often don't like complying with
their end of the bargain.

Music has evolved into paid services or ad supported services. News content so
far has failed with the ad supported model and unless they create some cartel
(a spotify for news, let's say) they have little alternative beside the direct
subscription model.

------
jkw
I wish this article would touch upon economic trends' impact on MBA
applications.

MBA applications go down as the economy performs. The opportunity cost is
higher when there are well paying jobs readily available and promotions to be
had without needing to go back school.

During a recession, MBA applications should go up as work is not as readily
available. People also want to retrain their skills to make themselves more
marketable to employers, as anyone else would do by going to vocational
schools during hard times.

------
fermienrico
In engineering circles (coworkers), there is a general theme I notice of
looking down on people with MBAs. I dismiss it as “us vs. them” or “technical
vs managerial” fight. But, could someone who has a MBA shed some light with an
objective view of MBA? Why shouldn’t I get one? Why should I get one?

~~~
canadapups
I have an undergrad finance degree + finance career. I also run a website I
built my self as a side project (see profile if curious).

For a while after learning to code, I thought my business degree was useless.
My coding skills felt so empowering compared to my finance/business skills. I
can create with coding... learn and do. A car mechanics certificate felt more
useful than a business degree.

Over this period of introspection, I started paying attention to whenever my
business/finance knowledge was actually useful. I very quickly realized that
very smart people often have very little knowledge of finance and business.
Business knowledge that I assumed as common sense (due to being surrounded by
other finance people) is completely enlightening to others. With a business
degree you learn how the world works, which is very important to anyone who
wants to be entrepreneurial.

~~~
sp527
The insinuation that the valuable aspects of a business education can't be
picked up by a reasonably smart and motivated person is pure hoohah.

For instance, I'm willing to bet the information in a combination of 'Lean
Analytics' and 'High Output Management' would exceed the value of an entire
MBA curriculum (which is anyway mostly focused on dealing with big company
problems).

The network is harder to replicate, but again not impossible. Someone who
feels motivated to figure it out can do so.

~~~
jacques_chester
I don't think there's any insinuation.

> _For instance, I 'm willing to bet the information in a combination of 'Lean
> Analytics' and 'High Output Management' would exceed the value of an entire
> MBA curriculum (which is anyway mostly focused on dealing with big company
> problems)._

That's a common cliché, but it's only partly true. There are problems that
only occur at large scale (complex mergers, fancy legal structures,
sophisticated financing). But the fundamental problems are all the same at
every size. You need to manage cashflow, you need customers to become aware of
the product or service and buy it, you need to be able to do things at a lower
cost than your selling price, you need to keep proper records, pay wages, pay
taxes, pay debts, manage inventory.

These are universal problems of business.

A whale has problems that a dolphin does not. But they both breathe, both pump
blood, both eat and digest and move of their own volition.

I feel there's often value in humbling yourself before another profession and
seeing what you can learn.

~~~
sp527
> You need to manage cashflow, you need customers to become aware of the
> product or service and buy it, you need to be able to do things at a lower
> cost than your selling price, you need to keep proper records, pay wages,
> pay taxes, pay debts, manage inventory.

Half these things take under a few days to learn sufficiently for any business
with ARR under ~$1M. And you can anyway hire people to fill in the gaps in
your own knowledge for basically peanuts.

And there's no MBA program that will teach you strategies that are especially
useful in reaching customers - if there was a professor who really could teach
that, (s)he'd be monetizing that skillset instead.

All this depends on your goals. I want to make that very clear. There is
almost no value to an MBA for someone intending to build something from the
ground up. There is potentially tremendous value for someone looking to have a
career in business at larger companies.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Half these things take under a few days to learn sufficiently for any
> business with ARR under ~$1M._

And publishers used to sell "TEACH YOURSELF C++ IN 21 DAYS". Doesn't make it
so.

> _And there 's no MBA program that will teach you strategies that are
> especially useful in reaching customers_

There are courses about exactly and entirely this.

> _if there was a professor who really could teach that, (s)he 'd be
> monetizing that skillset instead._

A lot of business professors are independently wealthy from side businesses.
Karl Ulrich springs to mind as a serial entrepreneur, teaching at Wharton.

> _There is potentially tremendous value for someone looking to have a career
> in business at larger companies._

This is true for some MBAs or, rather, some course designs. But there's no law
that professors at business schools can't study, themselves experience and
teach entrepreneurship. Because they do. The faculty at Wharton or Stanford
have honest-to-goodness entrepreneurs because they want to be there.

It's one thing to say that teaching is an imperfect substitute for doing. It's
another thing to say that there's some mystical essence that business schools
are somehow magically blind to and stoically opposed to learning about,
studying, experimenting with and teaching.

------
sjg007
Real estate 101: location, location, location. MBA 101: network, network,
network.

~~~
ccozan
Finally someone who gets it.

Is about the network. I tried to pursue an EMBA, they advertised everywhere
that the alumni are in every big company and because of the closed group
communication, was really really easy to reach any CXO because of the school.

Otherwise, yes, I declined because of the huge time invest - money wasn't an
issue, like being for a month in HK or in Buenos Aires with my class.
Interesting, but not really helping.

------
ghaff
The reasons given in the article make a lot of sense to me. In a generally
strong job market (among those likely to attend business school), taking 1 to
2 years off is a tougher sell, Also noted is that students already have more
debt on average making taking on more tougher. There are new specialized
degrees of various kinds.

I also sense, though I don't have specific data, that a lot of jobs that
traditionally required an MBA because reasons, no longer do so. It may still
be valued but perhaps not to the point of being effectively required.

------
Rafuino
If you read the article, a lot of the decline is from international
applicants. Reading other articles, the drop is primarily about visa concerns
for post-MBA employment in the US, and who can blame them? My international
classmates had a hell of a time getting work authorization even before our
current political situation. This is WSJ clickbait, more or less, and you see
why they do this because this topic always rouses the attention of the HN
crowd :)

------
srbl
Haven't seen any business school professors chime in yet, so as one I'll do
so: Increasingly, what "elite" undergraduate schools offer at the graduate
level is less valuable than what research universities offer. The best
professors are sequestered in individual labs or in large research
universities, not in schools valued for ratings that are focused on
undergraduates. The best educations are provided by people who understand
learning and make themselves available to assist in the process - nothing
about Harvard, Wharton, Tuck, etc. is better suited than University of
California, University of Texas, NYU, many other state universities to perform
those tasks. Furthermore, and it might deserve an entirely separate post, but
many of the best professors in business are being bought up by Asian business
schools. I think the net result is the American business school experience is
both more valuable in terms of the topics covered and less valuable in terms
of the educational experience than it once was.

~~~
sonnyblarney
"The best professors are sequestered in individual labs or in large research
universities"

I don't think this applies to most MBA subjects, as least as much as it does
the others. It's a highly applied and contemporary discipline, perhaps one of
the least theoretical.

My best Finance prof, for example, who taught us Private Equity / VC, had
personal relationships with so many of the best funds. He spends a lot of time
in the field, staying in tune with trends in the industry. He was able to
bring in really bright minds from the field, and it always made for the most
engaging material.

Even advanced corporate finance with all the cases like Volkswagen and their
amazing currency trading activities ... it's all very much the real world
material.

------
analog31
One thing I've observed is that the MBA degree is valued by people with MBA
degrees. This leads to "clusters" of MBA's in the corporate hierarchy. If the
path above you contains MBA's, then you might need one yourself in order to
advance. On the other hand, if they believe that you have prospects, they
might offer to pay for it.

------
tabtab
I started on an MBA a while back, and it bored the daylights out of me. There
was very little logic or empiricism to the material, barring a few studies
that one can find out about in common business publications. The material was
mostly fluff. I can see why many MBA'ers have a PHB (Dilbert's boss)
reputation, to be frank.

It could be argued the real value is learning how to speak to and think like
other MBA'ers (whether logical or not). And group projects are good for
developing social skills for those who lack them. Hobnobbing has value in the
real world.

In short, it's more of a club than a discipline. But, it wasn't for me. Your
mileage may vary; and I'll admit I bailed before taking some of the courses.

------
vinayms
Are there any well regarded studies that show that hiring an MBA graduate as a
manager benefits the company compared to having an "old school" manager who's
only qualification is being clever and shrewd? Or studies that show the
opposite?

------
resters
I strongly advocate a policy of "No MBAs" in a startup. The last thing a
startup needs is someone who has little to no business experience, has a big
attitude, has spent the last few years on professional networking and
partying, and who expects due to the MBA to be able to boss others around.

There are exceptions of course, but in my experience the MBAs want to network
to bring in others from their school/program to form a management cabal. It's
really bad news. We should also remember that if startups weren't a high
status thing to work on these days, all those MBAs would be working for big
companies and would have no interest in startups.

~~~
wutangson1
Hmm, sounds like you have some war stories (sorry for the knee jerk pun) from
hbs.

------
martin1975
Somewhat tangential to the topic,
[https://personalmba.com/](https://personalmba.com/) teaches you more or less
all the book knowledge of a fairly decent MBA program, for an infinitesimal
price relative to what you'll pay at an Ivy league or even a state school.

What you don't get w/the Personal MBA is the support of your professors, other
students, and most importantly the network and recognition ...

MBA is really something one should do if they're passionate about people,
relationships - e.g. what any solid business is made of.... more so than about
just the knowledge or what school they go to.

~~~
jacques_chester
I can't say I agree with your assessment of that book. It read as though the
author was utterly enraptured by _The Lean Startup_ (itself a frustrating
exercise in padding out a handful of insightful blog posts) and was determined
to hang every. single. thing. on that one lamp post.

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Vaslo
I got an MBA from a top 10ish business school and it was probably the best
career choice I have ever made. Very technical MBAs (think Carnegie Mellon,
MIT, etc) teach way more than business these days and it makes the value
skyrocket.

~~~
aliston
How so? Have you remained technical after graduating?

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tardo99
The same exact thing happened in 1999 and 2000. It's because of the bubble.
When it pops, these schools will be extra-competitive for a few years while
going through the heaps of applications from failed startups.

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refurb
This isn’t all that surprising. MBA applications went up during the last
recession.

If you’re working and getting good opportunities and comp, why not keep going?
It’s not like you can’t go get an MBA later.

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bitxbit
MBA is simply not worth it outside of maybe top four or five programs here in
the US. I rather see people focus on mastery learning within or outside of
traditional graduate settings.

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ThomPete
Applications to expensive universities, in general, will probably decline over
time as the primary reason for attending these schools were the value of the
network more than the actual education (it was still great but it's been more
and more commoditized) and it seems like a strong network can be created in so
many other ways now.

Still there are going to be people who will send their kids to expensive
schools but the value is going to diminish over time I think.

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jotjotzzz
Perhaps, in this economy and the rising student debt crises, it's hard to
suspend work to go get an education to get a loan and graduate to find a job
that may or may not pay enough. I know others are doing part-time MBA's but I
cannot see anyone getting into debt to get an MBA if you are in the middle
class. I think this is probably due to deteriorating middle class more so than
the degree losing luster.

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JDWolf
Perhaps increased costs of living and undergrad are taking opportunity away
from more people that would be interested.

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Synroc
While having considered it, for me, unless you are planning to move to
Business org, it seems an MS in something technical is more valuable, even in
engineering management, or Product Management, just looking at the degrees
people at my company have in those positions.

Is it the same at other places?

~~~
MrEfficiency
I didnt get my Masters in a specifically technical field. Engineering
Management was 60% Industrial Engineering and 40% business.

I found 2 classes useful-

>Lean Principles- changed my life, I started using Industrial Engineering at
home and sharing my findings with the internet. It has been very popular.

>Marketing class- 2 lessons, if you are going to put years into a project, do
a marketing plan. Also, learned how incredibly important marketing is.

Everything else was basically useless. Had a few crazies as professors in my
business classes. Engineering classes were not bad, but not helpful.

So 2/10 classes were useful? But incredibly useful.

~~~
spyhi
> Marketing class- 2 lessons, if you are going to put years into a project, do
> a marketing plan. Also, learned how incredibly important marketing is.

This was exactly why I chose to do a BBA alongside my CS degree. If I was
gonna make something, I wanted to make sure it would have some impact on the
real world. I tell people: CS is a tool for solving problems, but business is
a tool for finding them.

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TuringNYC
We're 10 years into a bull market. Suppose you apply now, that means you start
September 2019 and graduate May 2021. No one knows how the economy will be,
but i'd be pretty worried about graduating deep in the trough of a recession.

~~~
otoburb
This reasoning is sound. If one felt an MBA was worth it, probably better to
try for a part-time MBA while keeping their current job. The only disadvantage
is that many have said the networking and career opportunities are slightly
better for full-time MBAs if students wish to shift their careers completely
into different sectors.

I would say that knowing exactly what one wants from an MBA program, financial
situation and risk tolerance, will usually tip the scales in favour of a part-
time MBA.

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shay_ker
A lot of the course material from MIT Sloan is online, for free:

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-
management/](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/)

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AtlasBarfed
IIRC accounting is still one of the basics of MBAs. Because what company runs
without accounting?

Here's a question, what business runs without information systems? Do modern
MBAs require understanding of computing basics as they do accounting?

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WisNorCan
Clickbait headline and buried lede. This paragraph summarizes what the primary
driver is:

> World-wide, the number of M.B.A. applications was flat from 2017, partly
> because of an increase in students looking to pursue their degrees in Europe
> and Asia, according to the GMAC survey. Applications surged 8% to schools in
> Canada and 9% to schools in East and South Asia.

Canada surging by 8% is not because schools in Canada are suddenly better than
US counterparts. It is because of US policy and rhetoric under Trump.

The relative loss of talent wanting to work here will hurt us. Consider that
the CEOs of Google and Microsoft are all foreign born holders of MBAs.

Edit: removed Elon Musk from MBA list. He studied business as part of his
undergrad from Wharton.

~~~
flexie
Musk doesnt have an MBA.

But yes, Google and Microsoft hired MBAs as CEOs when they ceased to innovate
at the same rate as before and started to be just ordinary companies defending
a monopoly.

~~~
x220
Musk isn't a trend, he's a celebrity-cultural-icon data point.

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chad_strategic
TLDR: I needed an MBA to transition out of career path & then 2008 happened.

My interesting journey after getting an MBA:

-Received my MBA 2007, just a year before the full blown financial crisis. I needed an MBA to transition out adverting/marketing.

-2009-2011 Couldn't find a job. My MBA was in Finance. Taught myself to program financial algorithms. (php/MySql)

-2012 Became a coder, programmer, software developer. Made good money programming other people's dumb ideas. No risk, no suits and ties and very few meetings.

-2018 Not going to become the CTO at Google or Facebook. Being a Code Monkey is "meh", but I have to work on my own projects at night to be intellectually challenged. Now looking for a job where I can implement programming knowledge while at the same time work more with the business side. There always seems to be a certain lack of communication between the software side and the business side.

See my profile if you want to discuss.

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amrx431
Quite opposite to what is happening in India. India's premier business schools
like IIMs are seeing a steep increase in candidature.

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booleandilemma
So what are the type of people who went for MBAs now going for?

~~~
diminoten
According to the article, still MBAs but in Canada and Asia.

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known
You don't need MBA if you're rich and connected :)

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epa
As prices rise, does demand decrease? :-)

