Online MBA Forum

A good friend of mine is just coming to the end of his MBA course at a front line school. He tells me that it has been the most productive year of his life - and this is from a person who had a double first in physics.

He has not only enjoyed and profited from the online course work that he has completed, he has benefited from the week long group blocks. He says that the networking opportunities were unparalleled, and are already making a difference to his business. He has been introduced to funding bodies, and has had his business case reviewed by his professors with considerable impact.

He maintains that the fees that he has paid, although fairly large, will be covered by increased profits in ten months. After that, he's free and clear, and looking forward to an extremely lucrative period for his business which he says will be directly attributable to the online MBA program.

We often assume that qualifications are about acquiring more information, and that the net effect of taking a degree is to "remember" more facts. Actually this is not true, particularly in the case of an MBA.

The real purpose of any degree is to teach students how to think effectively. Studying an MBA is a real illustration of this, as it requires students to take facts, analyze them in the light of circumstances, and to create new solutions to situations. Studying for an online MBA is a good way of taking data, analyzing it to create information, and then using it in the light of experience to create knowledge.

This week I'm off to a conference on IT governance. When I looked at the list of speakers, everyone that is from industry has an MBA. I noted this particularly as I had access to a list of speakers and their resumes as a part of my activities in organizing this conference. I also notice that many of the delegates have MBAs.

So I've decided to see if I can have a conversation with as many of these people as possible to see how their MBAs have affected their lives, and how they managed their study periods. It will be interesting to see how many of them studied their MBAs online.

My next few entries will be about the conference, so it may be interesting to keep track of some real live experience.