What Do MBA Studies Mean?
An MBA education should prepare you to advance your career in a tight economy. Explore your MBA career options.
In today's tight economy, it's an advantage to have an MBA.
Although it may no longer guarantee a lucrative banking job, a Master of Business Administration enables you to analyze the global market in search of new opportunities, as well as to start and grow your own business. Executive programs freshen up your business knowledge; provide you a forum to tackle business challenges with peers; and allow you to expand contacts.
Types of MBA Degrees
If you would like to change careers, you may enroll in a full-time MBA. If your boss wants you to stay put, you may pursue a part-time MBA. Higher-level executives also have options. You may pursue an executive MBA, or complete executive education, allowing you to obtain certificates in growing areas. Distance business education is also available.
Breakdown of MBA Courses
MBA studies typically include core and specialization courses. Accounting, finance, marketing, business strategy, organizational behavior, technology and operations management classes are usually required. These are combined with courses related to your concentration. For instance, if you are specializing in finance, you may also take portfolio management, advance investments, and corporate control and governance courses.
Executive education, meanwhile, includes short-term courses in specific areas such as sales force performance, customer insight tools, and strategic alliances. In addition, MBA programs are increasingly offering courses in strong or emerging areas. These include corporate finance; luxury brand management; entrepreneurship; environmental, social, and governance issues; and health care.
Required MBA Skills
Traditionally, the MBA was perceived as a way to advance finance and management consulting careers. Students were highly analytical and focused on these particular fields. Today, many of these habitual business school recruits are not leaving their jobs. And new MBA recruits are usually not planning to switch careers into these positions, as hiring is still sluggish.
As a result, business schools have increasingly modified not only their course offerings, but also what they look for in an MBA student. More students are entering programs with social science, law, medicine, and engineering backgrounds. As an MBA, you should be able to analyze numbers; close deals in foreign countries; motivate diverse peers; and rely on ideas beyond the business world to launch singular products and services.
Depending on the program you choose, it could take you between one and two academic years to complete a full-time MBA. If you enroll in an executive MBA programs expect to meet at night, during weekends, or several times a year. Executive education may be completed in seminars lasting a few days, and distance education when you are available.
Real World MBA Experience
As part of your studies, you may intern in companies or engage in so-called living laboratories. Laboratories could include theater classes to perfect your communication and creative skills and trips into the real world to see how people interact with products, such as mobiles, in order to produce better gadgets. As an MBA, you could also engage in international programs to hone your cultural skills and business plan competitions to launch your own company.
Maricelle Ruiz-Calderon
Maricelle Ruiz-Calderon has worked as a marketing consultant, professor, and journalist in the United States and Europe. She possesses experience in a variety of sectors, including technology, education, consumer goods and financial services. Maricelle earned a Master in Journalism from Northwestern University and an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.
Business School Rankings & Profiles • Bloomberg Businessweek
Chad Troutwine - Why You Should Pursue an M.B.A. • Wall Street Journal
Academics - Required Curriculum • Harvard Business School - MBA
Madison Priest - Why More MBA Applicants Are Choosing European Business Schools • www.vault.com
Matt Symonds - Weaving Creative Careers into an MBA Mix - Mar 17, 2010 • www.businessweek.com
Martha Lagace - What Is the Future of MBA Education? - Q&A with: Srikant M. Datar and David A. Garvin - May 03, 2010 • Harvard Business School
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