[cosmie]

During my undergraduate program, I was a Teaching Assistant for a statistics department housed within a business school. The department was going through a re-branding from statistics and operations to "business analytics", and I got a lot of exposure to the inner workings of graduate education at the time.

Some students in our department were there for an MS in Statistics, others for a dual MS and MBA program. The single greatest indicator of whether or not an MBA was useless was whether the person was actively or passively choosing to get an MBA. About 70% of students were passively choosing to get a graduate degree. Either they had no idea what to do after their bachelors, they realized really quickly after their bachelors that what they thought was "adulthood" in college was not real and decided to run back to it, or they were following the trope of "bachelors -> 2-3 years in industry -> MBA -> ??? -> profit" with no idea of what "???" was except that they'd put in their 2-3 years already. For all of these students, they were passively choosing to get an MBA either to fill a checkbox or to avoid the alternative.

Then there were about 30% of students that actively chose to pursue an MBA. These students almost all had actual, real-world experience and actively chose to get an MBA because of specific needs or circumstances they had. In some cases it was to make a strategic career shift, in some cases it was to better orient themselves after making a career shift, in some cases it was to get over a ceiling in their industry where it was required to keep growing. But in all cases, if you asked them why they got an MBA, they could tell you without hesitation explicitly what prompted that decision, and the value they expected to derive from completing their MBA program (and why the MBA program was the right avenue for getting that value).

MBAs aren't useless. But a very sizable percentage of people graduate with them are useless[1], and would be equally as useless with or without the MBA. And the same holds true for most advanced degrees, from what I've seen.

[1] From the perspective of "hire a bunch of MBAs to solve problems". An incompetent worker without credentials is just as incompetent with credentials. And success in receiving an MBA from an academic environment does not denote success potential in applying the MBA in a business environment.

[datavirtue]

MBA is at best dangerous without real world operations experience. Business case studies and accounting are meaningful and a lot of fun once you have contributed to a business and have tried to run your own business or marketing effort. Jamming business training into somone who has never really analyzed an operation or contributed significantly is near futile...they just will not have anything to relate it to.

[zerkten]

> Then there were about 30% of students that actively chose to pursue an MBA. These students almost all had actual, real-world experience and actively chose to get an MBA because of specific needs or circumstances they had.

Coming from the UK my assumption was that MBA degrees were only open to those with some type of actual experience. That is based on my own research around 2002 where I found that Master's in Finance, Management, etc. were the only options for someone with limited real-world experience.

Is this a case where the entry requirements have shifted, or is this a regional thing? I went down the Master's path, but found an opportunity to come to the US on an H1B so I dropped out. I found what I've learned to be incredibly useful, but given how far I made it through I can't justify an MBA for reasons other than the credential or networking.

[cosmie]

The reasons are mixed. In some cases, it's a shift in entry requirements. One institution's admissions standards is another institution's market opportunity. Which is partially a regional thing, due to the sickening willingness of unsustainable institutional growth on the back of ever increasing amounts of student loan debt (which has special status in the US that makes it both incredibly easy to qualify for and almost impossible to ever discharge via bankruptcy).

But a more globally-applicable path is sideloading into an MBA. Many institutions offer "dual degree programs", where you get an MS in Finance or Management or what have you. And because the requirements overlap so heavily with an MBA, for an additional semester or two of classes you can get an MBA as well. So you get in for just the MS, then after you start you switch to the dual degree track. By that point you're already past the general qualifications, already within the graduate school, and already a student. It's mostly an administrative change internally, and as long as your faculty like you it's pretty easy for them to push through.

[yardie]

The MBA programs of the 70s and 80s had business experience as one of the requirements, with GRE and undergraduate degree as the remainder. Since the 90s a lot of programs have completely dropped the business experience requirement. Quite a few have gone to integrated 5 year (BBA + MBA). Makes it easier to expand an expensive program from a cadre of rich, impressionable undergrads rather than a workforce who understand value for money.

[chrisweekly]

"can't justify an MBA for reasons other than the credential or networking"

I suspect those two reasons constitute a sizable portion -- maybe even a majority -- of a typical MBA's value proposition. At the elite schools, the networking component alone might justify the costs.

[mathattack]

At the top 6-8 schools in the US, networking plus the placement office justified the bill. But if you’re an @$$hole then the networking won’t help.

[platinium]

This is a great anecdotal argument -- I just want to note that it also applies very well, pretty much verbatim, to some other graduate school educations too, such as engineering or comp sci.

[cosmie]

Pretty much. At my last company, I managed a data and analytics team. The vast majority of applicants were over-credentialed individuals trying to break into data science (even though we didn't brand the positions as such). While I applaud their achievements in and of themselves[1], very few were able to articulate why their advanced degree would apply or be beneficial for the roles I was attempting to fill or justify the salary requirements they'd request.

My two best performing and best paid employees on that team were exact opposites - one had just finished a masters in math and the other had an incomplete bachelors. But both were able to articulate why they had made the choices they made and demonstrated the ability to make deliberate, pragmatic, and calculated decisions. Which is an invaluable skill to have on your team.

[1] I'm a terrible academic. I focused more on working and making money while in school, and gave the bare minimum amount of attention to my classes to get by. So I do truly have appreciation for people that can dedicate themselves to school enough to achieve an advanced degree. But that appreciation is separate from them being able to derive work value from that degree.

[plaidfuji]

It’s very common for PhDs in technical fields to pivot to data science once they hit a wall in their career from the oversupply problem. I’ve had a couple of friends make this jump - but they either came from a computational background or devoted at least a year to learning the necessary programming skills and math. Out of curiosity, did the overcredentialed people you interviewed have any actual experience applying analytic techniques, or were they just people with advanced degrees blindly trying to move into a hot field?

[opportune]

If those 2-3 years in industry were in management consulting or finance, then I wouldn't have put those people as the "no idea" group, that's a normal part of progressing within those industries if you've been promoted quickly

[cosmie]

You're exactly right, and I would put those in the the latter group, not the former. Those individuals know precisely why they're getting their MBA, and don't have the "???" step in their progression. Rather, they intend to leverage the network and exposure they developed during their 2-3 years consulting, plus the signaling from the MBA, to pivot into a particular level and type of role post-MBA.

Your caveat at the end is also pretty key. If you spend 2-3 years barely scraping by with mediocre results in consulting and don't get promoted, and expect to do the post-MBA pivot, you'll have issues (or you have family connections and it's all moot anyway).

But I was more speaking to people who go and get a random entry-level industry job after their bachelors, spend 2-3 years putting their time in, crawl back to school for an MBA, and expect the six figure job offers to just roll in. That's surprisingly common (not just for MBA, but for many graduate programs).