Topic: The Value of an MBA

In this #mbachat we will discuss ‘The Value of an MBA.’   The best time to start building your network was at least a year ago and more importantly before you needed it. Growing your network doesn’t necessarily mean growing the quantity of followers. Growing your network could simply mean improving the quality of relationships that will encourage people to act on your call to action. During this #mbachat we will discuss some of the top tips.

For more information about the #MBAchat, visit Powered by Business.

Many different elements must be considered when determining which MBA program will best fit your needs.  Elements such as cost, future career options, the possibility of relocation, the state of the economy, and program flexibility will greatly influence decisions you make about which MBA program you pursue.  The Tech MBA Online program is designed for working professionals who seek a cost effective option that doesn’t require them to compromise the quality of their education for the flexibility it offers.

For more information on this topic, register for our webinar on Monday, November 1st 2pm EST, Using an MBA for a Career Change.

The Top 6

Six reasons that career changers or prospective students should consider getting an MBA online from an accredited program:

1. Flexibility: Most people that have a good job can’t take a leave of absence to pursue an MBA.  Many of these positions also require travel, which can make a traditional on-campus program difficult to complete. Finding an MBA program that offers schedule flexibility is key.
   For example, Megan Benam, an employee of Kimberly-Clark who works in the area of product development, is currently enrolled in the Tech MBA Online program.   Megan believes that one of the program’s major selling points is the ability to fulfill her travel obligations with her company.
2. Down Economy (retool): The best time to look for lucrative career options is when the economy is good.  When there is a downturn in the economy the things you would do to get a promotion or a pay increase are now considered to be the standard. Many times it;s necessary to re-tool yourself so that you can keep your current job.  Re-Tooling with education is one of the best ways to increase your value.
3. Cost-to-Benefit Ratio: There is a cost benefit of completing your MBA online.  Every person who is thinking about getting an MBA has to determine how much they’re willing to invest in themselves and their MBA program.  This should be determined by your post-graduate goals and will be driven by three factors:  out-of-pocket cost, opportunity cost, and long-term cost (the cost to repay an loans taken out for your education).  Most elite MBA programs can cost six figures.  A close examination of these three factors, as they relate to various MBA programs, should help you arrive at a program that best suits your needs based upon the real cost of the program.  For instance the total cost of the Tech MBA Online program is $38K.
4. Career Re-Alignment: The average person changes their major multiple times as an undergraduate.  Most people change their careers multiple times.  An MBA can help you re-align your career options once you have gained experience in your current field.  You will find that obtaining your MBA will open many doors that will allow you to successfully re-align your career with your current and future professional goals.
5. Expand Career Options: The program you choose should expand your career options — in other words there should be a tangible benefit in pursuing an MBA.  You should not consider getting an MBA if you don’t see the opportunity to expand your career options.  The acquisition of an MBA can be an effective tool in leveraging career options.
6. Re-Location: As you pursue your MBA the opportunity to re-locate with your current company or to seek employment with a different employer may arise. An online MBA gives you the ultimate flexibility of not having to wait until you have completed your program or having to switch schools to pursue your career opportunity.

Action Item: For prospective students you can evaluate what your future earnings (annual salary) post-graduation from an MBA program and determine what would be the appropriate investment (cost of our program is $38,000–less than most new SUVs!). Learn more about finance options for the Tech MBA Online.

What are you doing to prepare for the GMAT? Have you looked for a mobile app to help you study? There are a number of apps that you can use on your iPhone, IPad and Android devices to help you prepare for the GMAT. Here are a few recommendations–check them out!

Watermelon Express ($24.99)

Watermelon Express leverages the power of technology, social collaboration, and data analytics to build the smartest and most convenient educational tools for students and test takers across the world. Watermelon Express consists of not only a management team and developers, but also students, publishers, affiliates, and marketing partners in the community. Each one of these contributors provide their own unique approach towards education.

Over 40,000 students across 64 countries have used the Watermelon Express iPhone, desktop, and/or web app within last 12 months. This vibrant community of individuals is well on their way to achieve their career goals.

GMAT Practice Quiz (Free)

As the world’s largest privately-owned GMAT Prep and admissions consulting provider, Veritas Prep maintains a large network of instructors, consultants, and students. The Veritas Prep GMAT Practice Quiz iPhone App has been downloaded more than 50,000 on the iTunes store!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the app, it lets you practice all five GMAT question types — Data Sufficiency, Problem Solving, Sentence Correction, Critical Reasoning, and Reading Comprehension — and do it on your own terms with multiple customization features.

GMAT Club (Free)

The GMAT Club Apple application is specifically designed to help you prepare for GMAT on the go. Simply take one question at a time and the application will remember which questions you have taken as well as show you detailed statistics. Keep your prep fun – shake your iPhone to get the next question and if you get it wrong, you’ll get buzzed!

The application from GMAT Club, a large community with 90,000 members and 700,000 GMAT&MBA related posts, has 111 HARD 700+ level GMAT quantitative questions.

Be prepared for the GMAT, and feel confident using your mobile device to help you study.

For an in-depth look of why engineers should consider an MBA, sign up for our free webinar on Tuesday, October 12th at 7pm EST.

This blog post focuses on four main reasons that the combination of engineering and an MBA makes sense: (1) developing business communication skills, (2) seeing the big picture, (3) rounding out your skill set, and (4) soft-skill development.

Developing Business Communication Skills – In business there is a common language that is necessary to communicate with professionals in marketing, finance, and accounting. This language is oftentimes quite different than what is used in most engineering-related work situations. To advance into the world of management an engineer has to become comfortable existing and communicating outside of their core engineering responsibilities. Through the process of getting an MBA, your classes, team projects, and case studies in class familiarize you with what you can expect to encounter in the business world.

Seeking the Big Picture – For an engineer that thinks in terms of ‘the big picture,’ the MBA can bring the world into focus. An MBA exposes engineers to concepts and business-related topics they normally don’t learn about in engineering school. As a person, an employee, an engineer we don’t know what we don’t know, so exposure to the world of possibilities is important.

Rounding out your Skill Set – In an engineering role the scope of your responsibility might center on core engineering related content only. However, companies are being forced to do more with less. The average employee now finds themselves in a position where it is in their best interest to add more value to their skill set. An engineer’s ability to operate in cross-functional ways increases their value as an employee significantly.

Soft-Skill Development – Soft-skills are more important than ever. An MBA program helps engineers develop their soft-skills. The difference between one employee advancing or not can often times be traced back to soft-skill development. Developing skills in this area enables an engineer to better communicate their ideas and integrate their passion into what they do. An increased personal investment in work projects leads to a deeper level of commitment and creativity in the business environment.

The bottom line is that the company you work for, or that you want to work for, is going to require you to do more with less and to creatively bring your ideas to the table. An engineer with an MBA will have a whole new world of opportunities because they are equipped with the ability to broaden their worldview about how the world of business operates.

For an in-depth look of why engineers should consider an MBA, sign up for our free webinar on Tuesday, October 12th at 7pm EST.

The MBA remains the gold standard for advancement in the business world; it is one of the most storied and coveted degrees that a person in business can earn. The history of the MBA goes back to 1881 when the first business course was offered in the United States. The discipline of business studies has come a long way since the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania offered the first business courses in the U. S. all those years ago.

Since the inception of the MBA over one-hundred years ago,  the workplace environment, demographics of workers, advances in social technology, and the increasingly globalized nature of business in general have impacted the way we learn and work. The rise of social and multi-media technology has seen quality online learning transform from a synchronous, and many times one-way, to an asynchronous and interactive learning environment. With over 285 Million mobile devices (91% of Americans have them) in use by the American public, the possibilities offered by this media to educate the new knowledge worker are too important to ignore.

To meet the growing needs of the continuously evolving and technological business workplace, the Tech MBA Online program was launched in August 2010. The program includes: an international residency, professional development seminars, networking events and opportunities, a program-specific advisor, a technology specialist, and a communication coach. One of the primary goals of the Tech MBA Online program is to properly prepare a worker for the new workplace. The Tech MBA Online program is AACSB accredited (only 15% of business schools world-wide hold this level of accreditation) and utilizes the same research/teaching faculty as the on-campus Tech MBA program.

Here’s the Data

• 67% of American Workers have been engaged in virtual teams
• 91% agree that virtual work saves time and money
• 16% of workforce is hyper-connected and will increase to 40% in the next few years

There has been a significant increase in the use of virtual work teams to leverage technology, reduce travel costs, and make work teams more efficient. We live in a culture of increased connectivity where mobile devices continue to change the way we work, live, and learn. The way we consume content is changing as well: Apple has sold over 450K iPads and Amazon has sold over 3 Million Kindles.

Reasons for Re-Wiring the MBA

• Knowledge-Balanced Economy – Transactional jobs will be outsourced and tactical jobs that require workers with more tech-savvy skills will be left in the United States.

• Empowered Workplace – Workers are using technology to get their jobs done and there is an increase in online learning in the workplace that is easily accessible for a tech savvy worker.

• Work/life balance – The online program allows you to continue working full-time and balance your work responsibilities. Most people don’t have the ability to leave a job in the current work environment.

What are you doing to re-wire yourself for the changing workplace?

An MBA degree provides the fundamental building blocks for professionals at the macro level, to be effective in the workplace like project management, understanding financial statements and developing marketing plans. As the workplace changes faster than the curriculum does, individuals will have to take what they have learned in the classroom and apply it to a different set of assumptions.

The new MBA graduate will be a worker that integrates social technology into his or her skill set, will be able to communicate to a multi-generational workforce and solve customer’s problems creatively with less headcount. In the short-term soft skill development will be a personal investment to develop. Soft skills will become more of a requirement to separate them from other graduates and existing workers they are competing against for jobs in the new workplace. A professional with an MBA degree is primed to be an empowered worker.

Empowered workers and technology are transforming the workplace. Organizations with bureaucratic work environments that don’t empower workers will not attract the top talent. Just last week Josh Bernoff of Forrester released a new book that he co-authored with Ted Schadler called, Empowered: Unleash your employees, energize your customers, and transform your business. In Josh’s book one of the main thesis is to let your employees be HEROes (Highly Empowered Resourceful Operatives).

Developing a HERO- powered Business

“Managing a business like this means setting up technology and management structures and creating culture that grants a lot more autonomy to the employee problem solvers.”

- Josh Bernoff, Senior Vice-President, Idea Development at Forrester Research

Empowered Workplace

The empowered workplace looks different than the one your grandfather went to, it embraces technology (smart-phones and mobile devices) and talent to solve customer problems. The new generation of worker (Millennials and Gen Y’s that have embraced social technology) will not be motivated by traditional benefits of big bonuses or big raises alone mostly because the supply is decreasing. The work they do and how they do will be just as important.

There are tangible benefits of empowering employees to utilize their creativity and to become more invested in the process: (1) better customer service, (2) non-traditional solutions to customer problems, and (3) greater use of company resources. This means shifting authority in organizations, reduced the control of managers and establish a new set of policies by which an organization operates.

Changing Workplace

• Corporate Culture: Traditional corporate culture will have to shift to becoming more autonomous and decentralize decision-making specific tasks that workers execute.

• Red Carpet vs. Red Tape: Policies have ruled the way companies operate, in the future management and technology will have to work in concert to enable employees to solve customer’s problems with less head count.

Changing Worker

• Partners vs. Assembly Line Workers: Empowered workers will seek an environment where they have more ownership over the work that they do and influence the process. The days of dictating and micro-managing workers and expecting to get the best work out of them is gone. Workers expect to participate.

• How They Work will Matter: The new worker is not a cubicle worker they want flexibility in how and where their work gets done. Workers having direct impact on their work life will produce a higher quality of work for the organization.

Empowerment can help companies and professionals with MBA’s create a competitive advantage for themselves and their organizations. However there are trade-offs, benefits, and risk that must be balanced.