What Value Does Today’s MBA Have?

Mark Rice, dean of Worcester Polytechnic Institute's School of Business, said the intersection of technical knowledge and business skills is the “sweet spot” for WPI's graduate business students.

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By Livia Gershon Special To The Worcester Business Journal

How much good does an MBA do? The perennial question for career climbers has again been batted around in the media this year after a Wall Street Journal article in January reported that many new graduates with master's degrees in business administration are finding the path to high-paying jobs more difficult than they had expected. The story suggested that the big businesses that once grabbed handfuls of newly minted MBAs are now less interested in the degree.

But to some Central Massachusetts colleges that offer MBA degrees, it doesn't really matter if the parade of young graduates in business suits into corporate offices is slowing. What they're offering, the schools said, is not a cookie-cutter introduction into the world of big business but a broad suite of options to help professionals bring an understanding of business principles into all sorts of fields.

One case in point is Anna Maria College in Paxton. Director of Business Programs Elzbieta Manos said that, three years ago, the college “completely revamped” its MBA program. Instead of offering just the marketing and management classes that are almost universal in business schools, Anna Maria developed distinct programs in areas like health informatics — geared to quantitative types interested in working in health insurance. Another concentration helps people who want to enter marking or administrative jobs in sports fields, while a third focuses on the needs of public-sector workers whose jobs demand an understanding of business.

Manos said students can also choose a self-designed program. For example, she said, one student who had an undergraduate degree in art entered the program to gain the business knowledge to open a studio, combining classes on management and financial matters with electives in visual arts.

“I would not have thought of it, but once she told me I said 'Go for it,'” Manos said.

New Direction? Same Direction?

If some students get MBAs to launch themselves on particular career paths, many others pick up the degree to advance in existing roles. Manos said the Anna Maria program is split about 50-50 between new graduates in their 20s and people in their 40s and 50s, many of whom have found they need master's degrees to advance in their organizations or apply for more senior positions.

“I literally have almost no one in their 30s and early 40s,” she said.

Jane Pollock, a recruiter and senior vice president at Management Recruiters Inc. Boston Group in Westborough, said she works with companies all over the country looking to fill engineering positions, and she sees many candidates from steel mills and other industrial jobs who have MBAs.

“A lot of it is because the companies will actually send them back to school and pay for it,” she said. “They want good leadership skills. It's very important to them.”

That intersection between technical knowledge and business skills is the “sweet spot” for Worcester Polytechnic Institute's School of Business, according to Dean of Business Mark Rice.

Rice said enrollment in WPI's MBA program has grown from 138 students in 2010 to 201 this year, with most attending part time. “Some are getting encouragement from their companies, particularly those who are seen as high-potential future leaders,” Rice wrote in an email. “In other cases, companies treat support for tuition reimbursement as an employee benefit rather than an employee development initiative.”

Pollock said companies often want engineers to get MBAs so they can move on to positions in which they lead others. At Nichols College in Dudley, director of enrollment Donald Montgomery said that need isn't limited to technical jobs. He said one mission of Nichols' MBA program, as well as its related master's of organizational leadership offering, is teaching skills such as negotiation, creative decision-making and innovation management, which apply to a wide variety of positions that involve leading teams.

“There are leadership skills that can be taught to managers,” he said.

At Fitchburg State University, MBA Graduate Program Chair Joseph E. McAloon said demand for the degree is up, and coming from people in various disciplines.

“Almost any degree can use an MBA,” he said. “It's still a tough economy, but the MBA certainly gives folks an edge.”

How much of an edge is not always clear. Jack Mohan, owner of Management Recruiters Inc.'s Boston Group, said new college graduates may make themselves more immediately valuable to employers by getting a couple of years of work experience instead of enrolling in a full-time MBA program. Ten years later, though, he said the person who has the degree plus experience will probably have an edge.

Mohan said he'd advise people to go to one of the country's top-ranked programs if they can get in. Otherwise, he said, a lower-ranked program can still be valuable, particularly if a worker takes classes at night while continuing to rack up job experience during the day.

“It shows they're a go-getter,” he said. “I like people who are still learning.”

Ultimately, that preference is widespread among hiring managers, and it shows up in paychecks. Nancy Dube, of Dube Consulting in Worcester, said people with MBAs tend to earn higher salaries. “My personal belief is that on-the-job training is just as good, but it doesn't usually justify the dollars,” she said.

Dube said she also thinks about the question in terms of her own work life. She doesn't have an MBA, she said, but wishes she did. “I don't know that I'd be able to charge any more, but I think the credential would help me with some of my clients,” she said.