I read a great article on this topic titled, "The Value of an MBA in the Economic Crisis of 2009" found at http://managerqanda.blogspot.com/2009/03/value-of...

It really highlights the value of the skills required for an MBA.

http://mitsloan.mit.edu/fellows/index.php

Dharmesh Shah may kindly confirm.

1) It was worth it. Sure, it is not a guarantee of future earnings. But you do end up with a great network (especially at Dartmouth) that has proved itself again and again through the years. I am using it now to start yet another business. Not to mention great friends and the value of an interesting experience.

2) You challenge your mind by taking courses on subjects you might know nothing about and that are not your comfort zone. I have had a varied career in everything from corporate marketing to entrepreneurship. I am glad that I had a place to think before facing the challenges I have faced.

3) An MBA is not 2 years off unless you have a business or job to return to. It can be super stressful if you are looking for a job while doing the work that the degree of a top school requires. I looked for a creative field to enter after b-school (not consulting or Ibanking) so it was hard to do that amount of interviewing and legwork while keeping up. Maybe not an issue if you don’t have loans – for me it was stressful. Fun at times but definitely stressful.

I recommend the experience if you have the experience, grades and scores to get into a top school. If not, go at night or forgo it.

Another thing that many people oversee when they discuss education is a simple statistics. Have you thought how many Bill Gates and Steve Jobs we have in let’s say Fortune 500 companies list? And I’m not talking about only CEO level but all the way down to a clerk in accounts payable department. Look around you and count how many people with no decent education at all achieved something you don’t. Do you see any statistical correlation? What side?

I’m 35 years old. I have a family and two children. I have BS and MS in engineering and computer science and I’m going after MBA this year. And you know why – because I read all these books and all these articles anyway. I enjoy management, critical thinking, planning, and the most importantly – I hate inventing bicycle all the time. I had my own business and only then I realized how many things I don’t know. So I have decided to get a 360 view of the business processes since I’m doing it anyway and get a diploma along the way.

Dear Evolving Entrepreneurs, In a previous post I reveled that I plan to begin my MBA (evening program) at the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College here in Central Florida. Ranked highly, might I ad, on the Forbes

Many of the stuff being taught in B schools still seem to be early to mid-20th century Ford/General Electric/General Motors/Alfred Sloan developments that were suitable for mid-20th century technology, industry and state of globalization.

They missed completely, the quality revolutions that American geniuses like Edward Deming/Dr Joseph Juran and Armand Feigenbaum preached. Their exhortations helped the Japanese adopt, adapt and improve on their management approaches and still helps companies like Toyota dominate the industries they are in. Half hearted adopters like General Motors and Ford still cannot match Toyota and falling farther behind even as we speak. If you think they are losers now, wait to see who sells the hundreds of millions of cars in India and China in the next 25 years, especially when Gas is $5 a gallon! Toyota announced today that their entire line will have hybrid versions. In highly gax taxed environments like India and China, small cars with high fuel economy will be blockbusters and once Toyota is done with skimming the premium market in the developed world, they will sell them in India and China in mind boggling large numbers! Talk about completely missing the boat with respect to foresight and being able to see where the world is going!

B Schools also completely missed the impact of global networking infrastructure, impact of Moore’s Law and are now missing the impact of the extended enterprise! All of these have lasting impacts on how organizations need to be set up and run! Pity one has to learn about all of these things outside business school while you pay a lot of money to learn half-useful mid 20th century skills!

I’ve run two successful companies after an Engineering degree, I moved to the east coast for a top-25 program. For top-tier consulting/banking/marketing firms, brand names matter A LOT. Both of my companies can easily be viewed (heavy web presence) and come across as pretty respectable IMHO. That said, there’s no way that I would have gotten the interviews I have without this MBA school name on my resume.

Even then, Entrepreneurship seems heavily discounted at that level, based upon the negative reactions I’ve gotten. One of my companies was a consulting company, which I led for 4 years. Two consulting companies this year offered me entry-level positions (not MBA-entry positions), because “you don’t have any consulting experience.”

As Todd said above, some people care more about credentials and names on resumes than merit. My very recent experience confirms that sentiment.

Disclosure: I went to Harvard Business School.

In the old days, B-school was a no-brainer. People had few ways to know you, and the MBA was a critical signal.

Now, with blogs and other ways to get to know someone, the MBA’s signaling power isn’t as essential, though it still clearly helps.

But B-school isn’t just about a badge. It’s also about learning about the entire business world, meeting a ton of people you might otherwise never have met, and gaining access to a remarkable alumni network.

Brad, how many times has your MIT background helped you out? You still work closely with a lot of your classmates and fellow alumni.

There is still a kind of relationship magic to spending time together, face-to-face, sharing experiences.

Yes, it is possible to construct such experiences on your own, but only with great difficulty. There’s a reason we let Toyota build our cars, rather than assembling them ourselves.

I have an MBA from the University of Denver from back in ‘92, and although I use what I learned all the time, there was zero help from career placement and the network scattered into midlevel corporate management (not much help to the serial entrepreneur). I’m assuming the audience for Brad’s blog is like myself who tends toward working for or starting smaller, VC backed companies.

Personally, if I couldn’t get into Stanford, Wharton, MIT or Harvard, I’d take the cash and join a country club. No joke – the contacts you’d make would be better than you’d get at the 2nd tier or below schools, and you can keep working and reading to further your skills.

Must say that I have enjoyed meeting and working with many HBS and Stanford Business School grads.

But, I, too, was accepted at both HBS and Stanford and never went (and have happily never looked back).