Are new MBA's worth $100K a pop per year....

...or is this just the highest form of horse shit?

I mean REALLY?

http://channels.isp.netscape.com/pf/package.jsp?name=fte/mba/mba&floc=NI-ntk5
(maybe this link will work...or maybe we need an MBA...)

Briefly, it says that recruiting is going on "...agressively..." at 350 schools nationwide, that they plan on paying them $100k PLUS RIGHT OUT OF THE EGG, and their most necessary function will be (get this one): COST SAVES AT HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS, AND MANAGEMENT OF OFFSHORE OUTSOURCING.

To be frank, at the shithole where I work, I personally saved them about $50,000 OUTSIDE of my job description. So they need an MBA for cost saves, right?

RIGHT???

Technology: Many tech jobs have been outsourced to India with more to come no doubt, but that just increases the demand for MBA executives in the United States to manage the outsourcing industry.

Round and round it goes........next we will be outsourcing the management of our outsourcing.

Of course, anyone has some function in an organization - or should.
An MBA is just a degree, not a title. If the person can demonstrate some added value to an organization that others cannot than they are worth whatever the market will bear.
Personally, I have an MBA (from a nationally ranked program) but I would never work in a corporate environment. I earned the degree to expand my own knowledge, not to BS my way into a followship organization.
Certainly, many undergrads have more marketable skills than I do for a particular industry. Everyone has to get the most out of what, and who, they are.

for academic value, you do get an education, but as a hiring manager i'd prefer to see a masters in an engineering discipline. a thinking professional i can teach the business side, but an mba i can't teach how to think.

where mbas can be valuable is in forging the basis for career-long business relationships. if you impress your fellow students that you are worth having on their team, or trustworthy enough to do business with, and keep in touch with them every 6 months, then you will have a very impressive rolodex down the road.

THAT's why you get an mba. it follows that an mba from a top school is VASTLY more valuable than an mba from a non-top school.

I appreciate your opinion, but I don't agree. To tag any grad degree as "dubious" is, well, dubious at best. It is a generalization that dismisses truly qualified, intelligent, and "thinking" people out of hand.
I didn't go through grad school to join a club, belong to any organization, or compile my rolodex. I'll make my own way, thank you.
BTW, I was the team leader in all of my academic projects and am in my business as well.

first, i was primarily making a comparison between an mba an other advanced degrees, such as a masters in an engineering discipline. an mba is better than nothing, of course. but my preference as a hiring manager is to see a masters in computer science or chemical engineering. as i said, i can teach the business side to my new hires. in fact, i'd have to teach that to an mba as well, since what we're doing is innovative, and that's the nature of business.

second, "dubious" doesn't be inherently sucks, it just means "questionable". an mba can be a useful degree in certain situations, for certain people, if they put in enough to get out what they need. it's just that that doesn't always happen. what's annoying about the success rate for the mba degree is that that degree in particular is billed as a key to success in business and it doesn't deliver nearly often enough. other degrees have very divided loyalties in that many are more designed to further academic understanding in preparation for a job as a professor or researcher. but an mba is focused strictly on being of practical value in the business world. it should have a higher success rate than it does.

if you want to run your own show, but don't have the basis for understanding what the accountants and the lawyers that you need to work with are talking about, and all the other things that are outside your primary motivation for going into business, then an mba may help do the trick. personally, i picked that up on the job, but perhaps a wall street computer consultant is better positioned to pick up that sort of thing than most....

some industries - like health care. You get some college educated person fresh out of school with nothing but ideas and give them the key to the company. I had thought managers were a dime a dozen. I am always seeing manager for hire at fast food restaurants and mall stores.

Lots and lots of MBA's, (more than half actually) even though they're newly graduated, have already been in the workforce for a few, to many, years, and have another academic discipline in their background. So, this number may not reflect salaries for fresh-faced "kids" with no experience, but merely freshly minted MBA's, who have already been helping some other company progress for years.

When i got my MBA, the youngest person in that class of grads was 30! She was already working as an RN at a major hospital for nearly 9 years. So, i think we would need to research this situation a little more carefully before we decide that it means that some new grad "know nothing" is getting a 100k out of the box.
The Professor

Good MBA grads are worth 100K and more, but there are many other grads whose only "skills" are networking and self-promotion who are certainly not worth 100K per year.

Students take huge loans to pay for it. Do they learn something more? I dont know, on my university the it costs about 18000 EURO a year.

Other people with MBAs! It's a conspiracy!

I will be honest they are two of the weakest coworkers I have ever dealt with. One is more technical and didn't really use hers. The second is in the perfect position to use hers and is just a screw up, can't budget, can't get down in her mind a business logistical process no matter how many damn times you go over it. Her counterpart in the job with just a regular 4 year degree runs absolute circles around her. Working with these two has really lowered the value of an MBA in my mind.

MBA/Managers who move around switch areas etc will try to control put the group the way they want it even though they understand nothing the group actually does, but in the end the one who makes the real calls will always be the old timer with experience in the group. If that person is dedicated and wants to help make the manager look good then the manager will be successful.

I know thats biased but that is my personal experience as of right now, perhaps it will change in the future.

and, just like with every group of people, you have competent ones, and those who don't get it. In general, I was very impressed with the work ethic, education and background displayed by the folks I dealt with -- in particular, there were some managers who I absolutely ADORED: bright, funny, hard working, excellent problem solving skills, and good with people. Now, that may have been a function of the company I was working with and their hiring practices; there was ALWAYS some serious "analysis" of worth constantly going on -- since it was a Management Consulting company, these folks were HARSH on each other. If someone wasn't pulling their weight, they were going to be gone within a very short time (especially since there was a profit sharing motivation happening -- you really wanted to make sure you felt your peers were providing value to the company). You either performed with good people skills, or you were OUT OF THERE. The pay was excellent, but you were expected to devote your life to the company. Eighty hour work weeks were "the norm" and the caliber of talent was exceptional.

Were they worth it? I thought so. In all of the projects I worked with them on, they came in, offered sensible solutions to long standing problems, helped get them implemented, and ended up saving the companies tens of millions of dollars. The new hires were shepherded along, provided ample opportunity to learn/prove themselves, and those who couldn't cut it were gently let go -- school is different from the real world, obviously, and not everyone can make the transition.

But for those who did, I think they were worth every penny. It wasn't just about being "smart" and "educated" -- it was about practical solutions to problems. If they weren't able to save the companies they worked with money, they weren't going to stay employed, and the "hustle" factor with the folks I worked with still impresses me to this day. Also, these were people who were committed to learning and hard work (keep in mind I was working with a Management Consulting company), and they had definitely made personal sacrifices to a) support themselves and their families, while b) getting a challenging degree. Like doctors, that meant their wages had to be higher so they could pay off their student loans, afford to purchase homes, and begin saving money for retirement, etc. because they were already "behind" where other people who had already been earning money were in the savings area.

I learned a lot from them, and if they ever read this (doubtful), I want to give a personal shout out to Hendrik, Dan, Srikant, and JP among others. Talk about some awesome talent....Sigh.... I miss them, but NOT the hours! :)

pays for then fine.

Otherwise go for an PhD.