Online MBA Forum

I was interested in the comments on the Married Bliss entry earlier this week, and I went back to talk to my friends. They said that in some ways, the fact that the wife decided to study for her MBA was self-defence, and also a way of making the changes in the relationship work out.

Education is such a powerful agent for change in life that they decided that if they were going to try to make their marriage work, they had to find a new equilibrium, and education had changed one of them, maybe it would allow some degree of counterbalance.

At the moment they think it is working, but it has substantially changed the character of their marriage - and not all bad, by any means. But it all still hangs in the balance.

And no, he didn't think that he would go back to ironing his shirts, but on the other hand he was earning enough to send them to the laundry - highly satisfactory for all parties concerned.

Like all conferences, the procedings look boring on paper. When I first looked at the workshop options, I thought I would go shopping instead. But being a good employee, I chose a couple of workshops that were least boring.

I went to the first one this morning, and to my surprise I really enjoyed it. We discussed industry expectations of graduate programs, and I found that I could both really gain from listening to the speaker, and also had some real contribution to make to the discussion.

We didn't actually talk specifically about MBAs today, but tomorrow's workshop is about professional qualifications and the impact of the MBA on career paths. If it's as good at today's session, I'll really think this conference is worthwhile.

I'm off to a conference tomorrow, to discuss graduate teaching on professional courses. Of course, MBAs will figure strongly in our discussions, so if possible I'm going to do this blog as the conference happens.

It will be really interesting to see what the online MBA crowd have to say that is different from the traditional classroom crowd.

Watch this space!

A good friend of mine has been married for some 15 years. About 6 years ago her husband gained his MBA, and it gave his career an enormous boost. He became CEO of a medium sized engineering company, and took it through a very successful cycle of expansion.

I asked her what effect this had had on her - she also has a successful career, and up until this career boost of her husband's, she had been the larger salary earner. She said that it really changed his character. He became so focussed on work that she had to take over almost all of the household matters, and it had affected her career quite adversely.

However, they had eventually reached an understanding, and when the engineering company floated on the stock exchange, her husband became chairman and took more of a back seat in the business. She has just finished her MBA, so I look forward to talking to him about how it has changed her.