Devaluing the MBA - Blair McPherson

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Devaluing the MBA

Blair McPherson

Published Date9 Years Ago - 1427 Views

It isn't fair to expect people applying for senior management posts to have an MBA yet refuse to fund any of your own employees to obtain the qualification. It isn't fair but it is the reality in Local Government and I suspect most of the public sector. MBAs are incredibly expensive ( to those of us who come from a different era) and budget cuts mean training budgets have been slashed, smashed and ground to almost nothing. The average departments annual management  training budget would barely  meet the full cost of some of the most expensive MBAs. Management schools have recognised this, evidence of this can be found in the course literature which is littered with photos of youthful looking students not long finished their first degree course. These MBA courses are targeted at young people who hope to enhance their employment prospects with a management qualification. This isn't what MBAs were about. They were about experienced managers sharing experience with other experience managers and having time to reflect on how best practise from commerce and business might be applied to the public sector.

Courses continue to stress the networks you will make and the value of combining work experience with academic knowledge. But these networks are not of the same value when the individuals are all junior managers in their respective organisations and the value of measuring your work experience against academic knowledge is so much less when you have so little experience to draw from. I don't think these courses represent value for money for employers and short change students who simply haven't got enough experience to get the most from the opportunity and have little to offer other students on the course.

On average it takes two to three decades to reach the top management posts in the public sector so it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect people coming on to MBA courses to have 10 years management experience that way they have some thing to offer as well as gain.

I am not even convinced they enhance the career opportunities of these inexperience managers since employers would probably prefer someone with more management experience over someone with very little management experience but possess an MBA.

The MBA in the past certainly enhanced opportunities for experienced managers wanting to move into senior management and as one such person I did benefit both from the experience and the qualification. But not now,in fact some business schools in seeking to attract more and less experienced students are devaluing the qualification.


Blair Mcpherson www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
 

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