Thursday, August 6, 2015

Business Education Alternatives to the MBA

Since the recession, the number of employees seeking the MBA has declined. Today, adult learners are considering less expensive ways to get Business Education instead of spending thousands of dollars on a degree that may or may not advance their career.

The cost of the MBA varies, but GetEducated.com has the average cost at $36K. The top MBA schools can be over $100K.

Some reasons to pursue the MBA may be:

Your Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) from your corporation is generous and will pay for most or all of this degree. You can gain essential business skills to add to your resume and may gain a better job or promotion because of this popular advanced degree.
Your manager or department manager is pushing you to add business skills to your technical skills. Maybe you have advanced into a department that everyone on your team has a MBA or equivalent and you need those business skills to keep up.
You want to move into management, upper management, finance, accounting or another business department. Many of these jobs will require an advanced business degree.
You may decide that other types of business education may be less expensive if you have to pay for the degree yourself or have to take out a Student Loan. Here are some less expensive business education alternatives:

Certificate in a specific area of business-accounting, finance, human resources, management, supply chain management, etc. Certificates are short programs of between 4 - 10 classes in a specific area. This certificate does not replace a full graduate degree, but may show your expertise in an area of business needed by your department or company. These certificates can come from a graduate school and may become the concentration of a MBA or MS Management in the future.
Certification in Project Management, Financial Planning, IT Management, etc. Certification results from an assessment process (exam or an exam plus professional experience). The result of passing the certification exam is a designation to use after your name. Certified Financial Planner (CFP) or Project Management Professional (PMP) are two popular examples.
Graduate degrees in a Business-related field. Degrees such as the MS Management, MS Finance or MS Human Resources may be less expensive and more useful to your career. Business-related graduate degrees are more narrow and specific than the generic MBA, but usually do not require the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and require fewer prerequisites.
Although the MBA is still very popular with adult learners, there are business education alternatives that may enhance your career in a less expensive way.

Dr. Sandy Womack is the owner and Director of EduPlan, specializing in academic advising for adult learners, college finance advising, career development and tuition assistance administration. Contact Sandy at the EduPlan website: http://www.eduplan.org

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr._Sandy_Womack



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