BostInno's State of Innovation is a month-long feature on mobile, marketing, retail and e-commerce, and higher education innovation in Boston. #BSOI will include research reports, indexes, and more exclusive content for Channel members and the State of Innovation Forum on June 27th. Contact us to learn more.
Some say the value of an MBA degree is debatable. Others call the costly credential flat-out dead. Although the latter might sound extreme, a BostInno survey of nearly 500 employers reveals graduate school comes at a price students don’t necessarily need to pay.
Sixty-eight percent of the companies who participated in BostInno’s survey ranked undergraduate degrees as the highest education attained by a majority of their employees, assumedly because they don’t see the same value in graduate-level education.
When asked how valuable they consider graduate school be to an entry level employee’s professional development, 86 percent of companies skewed toward the “not valuable” side of the spectrum, and the numbers didn’t start to flip until individuals rose in rank. Only when an employee is working in a leadership level position would 30 percent of companies claim a graduate degree is “somewhat valuable” and another 33 percent, “extremely valuable.”
And employees have mixed emotions about the role a graduate degree can play in their professional development, as well.
When asked how valuable they consider graduate school to be in terms of moving up the ladder, the responses were essentially split 50/50, with 54 percent ranking the degree between “not valuable at all” and “somewhat valuable.”
“Somewhat” is far from reassuring.
In leading up to BostInno’s State of Innovation Forum, we asked our education panelists whether they thought an MBA is still as valuable as it was 10 years ago. Of the five, only Meredith McPherron, director of the Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School, said an MBA was more valuable today, speaking specifically of her home institution.
“Moving from classroom principles to practice is routine now and well-supported,” McPherron said.
Both Mark Chang, director of product at edX, and Christina Chase, entrepreneur-in-residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, responded by saying an MBA is “maybe” as important. Boundless CEO Ariel Diaz followed with a “not really” as important, while Startup Institute CEO Aaron O’Hearn “totally disagreed.”
If anything, the panelists’ overall skepticism highlight the changes schools need to make—and fast.
As Babson’s newly-named Vice President and Provost Dennis Hanno said in a previous interview, referencing the city’s growing number of accelerators, such as Techstars and MassChallenge: “They’ve created a much more competitive landscape for business education. It has pushed schools to come up with a value proposition.”
And this survey only reiterates that.
To join on the conversation, register for our State of Innovation forum. For a look at the panelists, check out the slideshow below.
