Shauna Curphey - Writing

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MBAs Got Game

Meridian, March 1, 2001

By Shauna Curphey

While the media buzzed about degree-less wunderkinder conquering the New Economy, the number of students receiving master’s degrees in business climbed steadily. More than 90,000 students graduated with MBAs in 2000--nearly double the number from 20 years ago. Despite, or maybe because of, the dot-com bust, freshly minted undergrads and seasoned executives alike still find it takes three magic letters to make their careers a slam dunk. Here are five reasons why.

1. Bulk up the play book
Two years ago people were foregoing the MBA and lunging after the attractive stock options offered at small start-ups, says Liz Riley, director of admissions for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Duke has seen those same people turn to an MBA degree when they learned they needed the knowledge and skills to strengthen their new companies.

But this business-school onslaught isn’t just for dot-commies. Mark Heinzig, a civil/structural engineer who runs a consulting firm with his wife on the West Coast, pursued an MBA degree to diversify their firm. He retooled at business school and came away with the ability to offer pre-venture capital consulting and business process analysis to clients. “We have six different revenue streams,” says Heinzig, “so we’re less vulnerable if one drops down.”

2. Cross-train
“You can’t enter an MBA program and try to find yourself,” says Duke’s Riley. “Most people aren’t just preparing for the first job, but to get a set of skills to manage the lifetime of their career.” MBA curricula often require students to study a range of business disciplines, including economics, management, decision making, accounting, marketing, manufacturing, finance and organizational behavior.

“The way I look at it is as a broadening experience,” says Kent Deger, an engineer who earned his MBA from City University, Seattle, in 1994. Since graduation, he’s run his own retail business, worked on a proposal for a large port development project in Turkey and started a financial publishing company.

3. Scrimmage
Business school lets you play the game without facing career-wrecking consequences. More than half of the Harvard Business School’s students participate in faculty-supervised field studies during their second year. Teams of three or more work with a faculty advisor to solve business issues outside the ivory tower. Many business school students also pursue internships, which give them a chance to test employment options without making a final commitment.

Elite schools also offer academic competitions that sprout real-world successes. Since 1998, for example, the annual MIT $50K Enterprise Competition has encouraged MIT students to apply their classroom expertise to the boardroom rigors of establishing and running their own businesses. MIT’s winner last year patented EyeGenRed, a dye that makes DNA visible to the naked eye. At the awards ceremony, the team announced that they were looking at a $230-million market for their product.

4. Meet the players
Though it’s not listed on any syllabus, b-school students practice the art of the schmooze. From formal alumni mixers to furtive whispers during lectures, business school provides a venue to forge career-boosting connections. During a biannual Silicon Valley tour, students from MIT’s Sloan School of Management hobnob with West Coast e-commerce industry leaders. The trip gives students an edge on career opportunities and routes to venture funding.

Students also build in-school partnerships that lead to successful ventures after graduation. Five students from Carnegie Mellon’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration teamed up after graduation to form Stars and Stripes Omnimedia, which oversees the Stars and Stripes newspaper, magazine and Web site serving the military community.

The Harvard duo that made runner-up in the 1999 business-plan competition went on to form SupplierMarket.com, which offers an online marketplace for industrial buyers and sellers. The company raised $48 million in venture capital, grew from five to 100 employees in six months and was recently acquired by California-based Ariba.

5. Take home the gold
An MBA degree confirms the adage that you have to spend money to make money. Education at a top business school doesn’t come cheap. However, a recent study of 4,830 MBAs from 51 leading schools found that the degree typically pays for itself in five to eight years. MBA salaries are up 25 percent since 1997. This trend will most likely weather the dot-com shakeout, since traditional sectors continue to demand MBA talent. Roughly one in three graduates secures a job in consulting, with yearly salaries $87,000. Those old-economy stalwart--banks and industrial companies--offer average starting salaries of $79,000 and $77,000 respectively. Consulting and banking offer three times as many jobs for MBAs today as compared to 1994, and industry and technology offer twice as many.

Though not all students pursue an MBA to join the ranks of slick consultants and wired investment bankers power-lunching on Wall Street, the degree has not lost its sheen as a passport from the bush leagues to the big leagues. Of course, the old rules of the game still hold: After graduation, what MBAs make of the degree still hinges on talent, motivation and mettle.