Business & Entrepreneurship | ILLUMINATION

MBA Degrees Aren’t Worth it — Do This Instead

Why study how to start a business when you can just start right away and learn business administration through first-hand experience?

Are MBA programs worth it? Is an MBA degree worth it?

You’ll be surprised to discover the truth about MBA degrees and what you should do instead of an MBA program.

These important questions direct people to make a pretty big decision: Should you spend an average of $62,000 (or higher) to be taught how business works? Or do it yourself and learn from your mistakes as a small business owner on your own?

I was in the same situation that you are in right now. I contemplated whether I should take an MBA program after I get my B.S. in computer science or not.

I researched for hours trying to find the answer not only to my question but to other people’s situations as well, and I decided to make it available through this story to help other people who are facing the same predicament that I faced.

If you didn’t know prior to reading this story, an MBA degree is a Master of Business Administration degree. MBA students are taught a variety of topics related to business, such as accounting, marketing, finance, business law, operations management, and many more.

While MBA degrees may seem like a good way to get into business, they teach you less than you could learn by starting your own business; they hardly help you get a job in business; and they’re way too expensive for such a poor return on investment.

MBA degrees teach you less than you could learn by starting your own business

MBA degrees have only two-years-worth of material that you can study. Starting your own business can last as long as you live — after reaching the legal age of eighteen to register your own business.

Learning about business by actually running your own business will teach you hundreds of times more through experience than you can learn reading about it.

By starting your own business, you’ll essentially be forced into the game of survival as a business. If you don’t make enough revenue by the end of the month to break even or profit, you fail. If you don’t make any revenue, you fail even worse.

This may seem like a scary or demotivating situation to encounter, however, it’s necessary for entrepreneurs to have failures so they don’t waste their time on a business model that doesn’t work.

Entrepreneurs learn from their mistakes in business and try new things with new business models until they find the one that not only becomes profitable but also grows into a business that can make them wealthy.

MBA degrees hardly help you get a job in business

According to a survey conducted by intelligent.com, “68% of graduating full-time MBA students say they don’t have a full-time job lined up.”

That’s more than two-thirds of MBA students who haven’t acquired a job yet after graduating from college and receiving their MBA degree.

If getting the degree you want won’t help you get a job that will make the degree worthwhile, then why spend so much money on an MBA degree?

For people who want an education to know how to start a business, they don’t realize that all they need to start a business is to actually start. Simple actions like designing the product or delivering the service will likely bring an individual much closer to knowing business than studying in an MBA program and writing a long business plan without ever starting the business and seeing if it would make money.

MBA degrees are way too expensive for having such a poor return on investment.

As mentioned previously, the average MBA student pays $62,000 for an MBA program education. The price of this education wouldn’t be a problem if it had a return on investment that was at least decent.

It’s a major problem if the majority of MBA students study for many years and carry tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt on their shoulders without ever being able to find a job that will pay them well enough to survive, or not even find a job at all.

Additionally, for businesspeople who want to get an education before they begin their business journey, it’s a waste of their time and money because there is no education requirement for someone to start a business.

Who should get an MBA degree anyway?

For most people, obtaining an MBA degree after studying for two or more years doesn’t make any sense. The money you spend is unlikely to be worth it over time. You shouldn’t get an MBA unless you meet one of these two situations and want to study to get an MBA degree.

• The company you’re currently working for offers one or more jobs that would increase your salary and boost your career. The requirement to get this better job is an MBA degree.
• You no longer want the career path that you studied for originally and instead want to move to a business-related career for preference or to increase your salary.

While MBA degrees don’t guarantee that a student will get a job related to business or whatever field of work they want to do, they still give a business education, and where there is a market, there will be a product that is available for consumers who want it.

At the end of the day, whether you choose to study as a student in an MBA program or not, you will still have the freedom to learn more about business, either through being a business owner or through the various online resources on the internet.

Summary

Choosing to study for an MBA degree really only comes down to whether it is a requirement for a job that you want, or if it provides you with the education and experience for a new career path that you would like to delve into.

Thank you for reading. Please let me know what I can do to make this story better for you by writing me a comment. I’m happy to hear your suggestions so my stories can be more helpful to my readers.

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