Business Forum: Is MBA degree worth the time and money?

Is this kind of criticism enough to dissuade students from pursuing the degree? Not likely. The demand for the degree can be seen in our own community. The flagship program is probably the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Business, followed by several others including the University of St. Thomas, St. Mary’s University, Hamline, Concordia and Augsburg, to name a few. In addition to the standard schools there are about 50 online MBA programs available.

As the demand for the degree continues to grow, so does the demand for more relevancy.

Several national news magazines rank the business schools annually and while there is some fluctuation among the top 20 business schools, the names that regularly appear at or near the top include Harvard, the University of Chicago, Michigan, Duke, Northwestern and Pennsylvania.

Part of the argument for getting an MBA has to be considered in dollars and cents as well as future earnings. A student who wants to earn an MBA degree from a top school will pay in the neighborhood of $80,000 to $100,000 for the two years. There is a push-pull effect surrounding this process as well. As the demand for an MBA grows, so will the demand by the students for more options. The colleges and universities also play a part in this process. The business schools have become a new and major income stream for the colleges. But according to Prof. Datar, the demand for the traditional MBA, with high price tag, will start to tail off in favor of part-time or even online degrees.

In order to keep the MBA relevant, the colleges offering them will have to make the curriculum more responsive to the global economy. Here are some suggestions:

¢ Stress the importance of understanding the ethics of doing business in the world. Unfortunately, this subject has often gotten little concern in the “how-to” curriculums of most business schools.

¢ Include more relevant classes dealing with current issues facing communities both locally and globally.

¢ Teach the importance of the culture differences. The vast majority of students will be working with and/or for companies that do business worldwide.

¢ Teach the integration of the world of business and the world of geopolitics. Oftentimes they overlap.