What Can You Do With a Master's in Business Administration?
An MBA, or Master's in Business Administration degree, is a graduate-level business degree. Generally, an MBA takes two years to complete and will comprise courses in marketing, finance, business economics and quantitative methods. An MBA is a significant investment of time, money and personal resources, therefore the decision to pursue one should not be taken lightly. However, with some thought and preparation, an MBA should really pay off.
Other People Are Reading
-
Skills
-
An MBA gives you skills for any career; from engineering to music to health care to education and, traditionally, the business world, where an MBA may be a necessity for advancing in a business career. With an MBA you will have shown the requisite management and leadership skills that can help you access administrative roles beyond what your undergraduate degree will allow.
Entrepreneurship
-
Having an MBA also means you can strike out on your own and start your own company. Working for one's self is a realistic and enjoyable prospect for many MBA holders, not least of all because it helps you manage your time and set your own priorities and work targets. With courses on everything from accounting to e-commerce, an MBA degree will help you get started toward the possibility of working for yourself.
-
Brand and Networking
-
Possessing an MBA suggests you are serious about bettering yourself and unafraid of reaching the next rung on your career ladder. An MBA degree program is all about building effective lifelong networks and contacts and strengthening your personal brand and career strategy. Since MBA programs tend to draw people from very diverse industries and cultures as MBA students, alumni, faculty, business and community leaders, an MBA will let you leverage these differences and translate them into opportunities to market yourself and to excel in the marketplace.
The prestige of a particular MBA program can also add value or premium to your network-building process.
Career Advancement or Career Change
-
An MBA is also helpful for switching career paths or industries. Many people use an MBA to seek a management role after having acquired expertise in a different sector altogether -- such as teaching, nursing, social work or law -- and want a management responsibility in their field.
An MBA should help, too, if you want to switch from one domain of business to another -- from marketing or sales to finance or strategy planning, for example. An MBA can help you make a quantum leap in your career path, with a concomitant increase in income. Payscale, for example, estimates that an MBA graduate at IBM Corp. earned on average a starting salary between $85,191 to $141,414 for 2010-11.
An MBA, while not guaranteeing success, can give you all-round problem solving and time management ability, and specialized business skills that should serve you well both professionally and personally.
-
