I am in full blown MBA mode right now.
The past two Saturdays have been spent sitting in class for 8 hours. I was really, really dreading this, but surprisingly, each day has gone by relatively fast. Our professor is fabulous - she's one of my favorites - and she has done a really great job splitting up the day and keeping us engaged and interested. I brought my laptop so that I could stave off boredom if I needed, but to be honest, I haven't need it at all.
A few weeks ago, my undergraduate college sent me their quarterly book. Inside it's filled with relevant information about what's going on at the college and updates on what your classmates are doing. As I flipped through the graduation class years, I noticed that a lot of of the 2010 and 2009 graduates had updates in the career section. As I read through individual names, I noticed that overwhelmingly these updates were indicating that these students had gone on to pursue a post graduate education. Being that I went to a liberal arts college, a majority of them were towards masters in arts and science, which seems semi-reasonable to me. But there were some in business, which lead me to think: How can you go on to get your masters in business if you've never had any relevant business experience?
A survey in my recent Saturday class indicated that a 1/3 of my fellow classmates had less than 1 year of work experience or less as well. 1/3 of the class had 0-1 year of work experience. I have noticed this in my weekday class this semester as well - more than I have noticed in any other previous semester.
I think, personally, one of the greatest assets to being in an MBA program is learning from your classmates' real life work experiences. They have gone through boom times and experienced the atrocity that is laying people off. They have tackled sticky situations and learned that things are not always text book. They have handled office politics and succeeded and failed. I can tell by case studies and discussions in my class who has work experience and who does not and it makes a huge difference on the level and intensity of the discussion. With many of my soft skilled courses, business cannot always be learned in academia. An MBA is best learned when you have business experience to supplement what you are learning. In my opinion, of course. Not to say I think people with very limited work experience can't contribute, I just think that their contributions are that of a different viewpoint than those of us who have significant work experience.
Given this economic environment, it is scary and concerning to see so many undergraduates head towards post graduate education right out of college. I am not in that position, so I don't know what it's like to graduate from college and feel like you have zero prospects job wise, so I guess I cannot truly judge. Our society has told us that a graduate education is the next relevant step, so many of these recent grads are taking the plunge without realizing the ramifications of it. Potential loans from undergrad, saddled with the ginormous mounting loans of business school can be very overwhelming on starting salaries. I can tell you straight up that right now, in this current economic environment that some of my MBA graduate friends with 5+ years of work experience are struggling to find their next steps. An MBA, these days, is not the golden ticket.
Is our current economic climate somehow creating loan saddled, highly educated twenty somethings? What are the potential consequences of that?
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