Erwin's StarOffice Tango

What are the benefits of an MBA?
Today I want to start a new thread in my blog. It will be about MBA programs, MBA knowledge and my personal experiences in business life. As a start, I would like to know your answer to the following question:

What are the benefits of an MBA?

When I asked a top US business school alumni this question (or at least a similar one), I was really surprised by his answer. I had expected something like this:

"The tools you learn about and the knowledge you get are extremely useful for your day-to-day marketing tasks."

However, what he told me was something like this:

"You don't go to business school for the content. You go there to make useful contacts and get the branding of top business school. Therefore, you have to go to business school like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Yale, or INSEAD. With the branding, it is much easier to get interesting well-paid jobs, and the contacts help you to find those jobs before someone else does."

As I said, I was really surprised by this answer. Maybe it was because of my German background. In Germany we don't have "elite universities" yet, and thus care less about "branding". In Germany you don't really see people wearing sweaters that show the university emblem or name. In contrast, in the Bay Area you see many people running around in "Stanford" and "Berkeley" shirts.

What do you think? What are the benefits of taking an MBA program? How important is it to go to a top school, and why? What alternatives have you found that worked for you?

I will tell you about my approach in my future blog entries!
( Mai 13 2005, 11:22:55 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

Kommentare:

My girlfriend says that a Yale decal on my car would have looked too much like "showing off" ... there might not have been a second date.

Gesendet von yoyo am Mai 13, 2005 at 11:40 PM CEST #

> How important is it to go to a top school, and why?

McNealy and Ballmer attended Stanford GSB. Dennis Kozlowski went to Seton Hall. Need I say more?

Gesendet von Valjean am Mai 14, 2005 at 12:47 AM CEST #