I Want My MBA

(11min 34) Click on “Play” to hear the podcast or click “Get It” to download.

You’ve made it so far in your career without an MBA. Is now the time to work for one, or are you too old?

Today on BTalk Australia Phil Dobbie talks to John Edwards, the Director of Marketing and Communications at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management, about what you can hope to gain by putting in the study hours halfway through your career.

Download the podcast here

Thanks to BNet

Comments

[Hans Wijgh]

MBA's are a mixed blessing and you need to be really careful which school you go to.

Historically the customers of MBA programs were big business, and the curriculum was designed to produce white-collar "factory workers" that are trained in the “big business ways”. Over the years nothing much has changed @ MOST of the MBA programs, although there are few exceptions.

Fast forward to the Post ’08 world.

Large corporates are at a loss with regards to the future of their own business, and indeed in some circles the future of the capitalist system itself is being brought under the microscope, including the recent contributions made by our PM Kevin Rudd.

To my mind the future doesn’t belong to those companies that got us into this mess, but to agile and innovative companies and individuals who are able to re-invigorate their businesses (and society) without the slavish adherence to the “big business ways” as taught at most MBA schools.

In fact some have suggested that MBA programs have part caused the problems we are now experiencing. So be careful and ask yourself whether you're prepared to repeat the mistakes of the past or whether you want to belong to the future, and then choose your school accordingly!

To paraphrase a famous advertisement: MBA's ain’t MBA's !

[Grant Crossley]

Thanks Hans

Good to hear your thoughts.

I started my MBA at AGSM back in 1994. The first year was very inspiring. I remember doing an assignment on whether email had a future...

Anyway, the reason for the reply is I believe that in any educational process, the key is to develop knowledge that takes us beyond our realms in our current lives.

What I have found has always impacted this knowledge the most for me personally, is not the text books, not the courses, not the school - it is the people I meet and the communications we share, whether that be the lecturers, the tutors, the teachers or - by a long stretch -the winner - the students who absorb that education and via discussion apply it to a chit and chat over lunch, or whatever.

With that in mind, it will be discussions such as those students who have studied MBA's, communications, science, engineering, arts or whatever that take us forward beyond the current global change we are undergoing.

Would love to discuss further... maybe over a coffee?