How an Online MBA Can Help in Your Career?
June 26, 2009 by MBA Tips and Reviews
Filed under About MBA's
“You do not need an MBA to success in your career; you still can be a CEO or Vice President of a company without an MBA”. I believe you heard about this statement before, but why there are still so many mid-career professionals trying their very hard to get an MBA? Is an MBA really helps in your career?
Every working individual has their own career goal to be achieved along their career path. The length of year to achieve the goal is vary depend on individual’s capability. For example two persons who currently work as marketing executive have set their career goal to become a Marketing Vice President as their highest career achievement. One of them achieve it within 5 years but the other one only achieve it after 10 years of working hard. What makes the different between these 2 working individuals? There are many career opportunities opened for you along your career path, it depends on how you manage to get ready yourself to qualify for it and secure the opportunity.
Unless you are satisfied with your current job or you are not aimed to achieve supervising or management position; otherwise, a graduate degree in business management will prepare you for the career challenge that you may face along your career path and get ready yourself to grab any opportunity that is opened to you. In fact, an M.B.A is the fastest path between where you are now and where you want to achieve. With an M.B.A in hand, you may use it to get a higher job position in your current field or you may choose to switch job with higher position and better salary in other business area.
The available of online education can make your life easier if you want to earn an MBA degree to achieve your career goal. There are so many online MBA programs available in the market. The good news is you have a lot of choices to choose your favorite MBA program, but the bad news is you might face difficulties to choose one because most of these online MBA look good until you are hard to pick the best among them. In additional, there are many fraud MBA degrees offered by diploma mills which you need to beware about them. The rule of thumb, before you request the information from the universities that offer online MBA programs, check whether these universities and their online degree programs are properly accredited by an Accrediting Agency approved by Ministry Of Education.
The online MBA allows you plan your learning schedule that fit into your available time slots so that it won’t crash with your work and family time. You can get the learning material online from any location as long as you have internet connection to login into the school’s system; hence, it will get rid of your concern if you are a working individual that need to frequently travel to outstations or oversea for job assignment.
Summary
You do not need to have MBA to achieve your career goal but with an MBA in hand you pave a smoother and faster path to reach where you want to achieve. The available of online education enables you to earn an MBA from your comfort home and at your own pace.
Thanks to Amelia Turner for contributing this article to our MBA blog:
Every working individual has their own career goal to be achieved along their career path. The length of year to achieve the goal is vary depend on individual’s capability. For example two persons who currently work as marketing executive have set their career goal to become a Marketing Vice President as their highest career achievement. One of them achieve it within 5 years but the other one only achieve it after 10 years of working hard. What makes the different between these 2 working individuals? There are many career opportunities opened for you along your career path, it depends on how you manage to get ready yourself to qualify for it and secure the opportunity.
Unless you are satisfied with your current job or you are not aimed to achieve supervising or management position; otherwise, a graduate degree in business management will prepare you for the career challenge that you may face along your career path and get ready yourself to grab any opportunity that is opened to you. In fact, an M.B.A is the fastest path between where you are now and where you want to achieve. With an M.B.A in hand, you may use it to get a higher job position in your current field or you may choose to switch job with higher position and better salary in other business area.
The available of online education can make your life easier if you want to earn an MBA degree to achieve your career goal. There are so many online MBA programs available in the market. The good news is you have a lot of choices to choose your favorite MBA program, but the bad news is you might face difficulties to choose one because most of these online MBA look good until you are hard to pick the best among them. In additional, there are many fraud MBA degrees offered by diploma mills which you need to beware about them. The rule of thumb, before you request the information from the universities that offer online MBA programs, check whether these universities and their online degree programs are properly accredited by an Accrediting Agency approved by Ministry Of Education.
The online MBA allows you plan your learning schedule that fit into your available time slots so that it won’t crash with your work and family time. You can get the learning material online from any location as long as you have internet connection to login into the school’s system; hence, it will get rid of your concern if you are a working individual that need to frequently travel to outstations or oversea for job assignment.
Summary
You do not need to have MBA to achieve your career goal but with an MBA in hand you pave a smoother and faster path to reach where you want to achieve. The available of online education enables you to earn an MBA from your comfort home and at your own pace.
Thanks to Amelia Turner for contributing this article to our MBA blog:
Amelia Turner, an educational article writer for http://www.your-online-degree.info - You can find more details information and free resources about online MBA programs, financial aids and other information on online education that can help you to make decision to earn your degree online.
Which is Best: Pmp or Mba?
June 11, 2009 by MBA Tips and Reviews
Filed under About MBA's
and forum posts discuss whether it is better to go for a PMP or MBA. I think they serve 2 different purposes, but there is great value in each. Having earned both a PMP and an MBA, I have some definite thoughts on this, but of course in the end it is a personal decision.
Many people may remember the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, and how The Great Oz described a university education to the scarecrow, who lamented “if I only had a brain”. He was seeking “smarts”, or the capability to think deep thoughts, the ability to analyze, interpret, distinguish, and reason. In the end, Oz granted the scarecrow a degree, which, Oz said, put him in fine standing with those who came before him attended universities, and learned to “think”.
MBA and Education
This, I believe, is more what an MBA is all about. It helps to teach us how to think about a broad set of situations. This provides exposure to different ways of thinking, many situations, and crosses virtually all business functions. It also builds skill in areas such as finance, marketing, operations, and more. It is certainly much closer to the business world than a liberal arts education, which is ALL about thinking, but nonetheless is has a great deal of breadth.
Certifications and Qualifications
Now, on the other hand, let’s consider certifications. Certifications became very popular a while back in the IT field, where companies like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others created certifications around their products. They needed a highly qualified and consistent-thinking implementation community in order to support their complex products. Becoming certified was not and still is not easy, and requires hard work and experience.
Certifications, such as the PMP, have become popular and are similar, yet also different in some important ways, than technical certifications. They provide a framework for handling certain common problem sets, they are challenging to learn, and they are clearly a skill. But this is where they diverge from the education provided by an MBA. They provide a clear “skill” for the workplace. Education does not necessarily do that, although it provides great background that can help someone perform better. The certification provides employers with an indication of a minimum level of knowledge and achievement, and professionals with a distinguishing and proven minimum skill set.
What an MBA or Certification Can Provide
Certifications for me have been a way to gain formalized learning is less familiar areas, or in areas where I want to focus and develop some specialized knowledge and skill. Thus they have applied directly to immediate and medium term career goals. I previously have earned technical certifications, specifically in Lotus Notes Application development and Administration, and several years ago earned the PMP certification. I n both cases, they helped me with more immediate career goals, especially the technical certifications. The PMP certification has helped in very practical ways, and also opens doors.
I will say that having had the discipline and broader thinking of the MBA background helped me not only to more easily earn these other certifications, but also to perform more effectively and with greater perspective with the certifications. Personally, I think I was much more effective with it in situations that involved certifications that I would have been without it.
It’s a Personal Decision
That being said, just as a university education is not necessarily for everyone, and MBA is not necessarily for everyone. Therefore, when all of the logic is put aside, this becomes a very personal decision. Different people have different learning styles. It may be that one person would be better off getting a certification like the PMP, work in project management for a time, and gain exposure and experience, the advance their career from there. Some people learn much better by doing and could be wasting their time in school. Similarly some people do not need the certification or the degree! But most of us will benefit best by one or the other, or both.
In conclusion, in a choice between PMP and MBA, I generally would recommend going for the MBA, but again that depends on the person. It will serve anyone in the long run, but in the end, experience is the best teacher, and performance results are best indicator. A degree will make it easier to earn certifications, if desired, at the appropriate time, but it is not necessarily required. The MBA shapes thinking in a broader and more comprehensive way for the long run. If time or resources is a concern, or there is a more immediate career need, then certainly earning the certification would help in the short term to anchor the career. But in the long run, I think an MBA would serve most people the best.
Thanks to John Reiling for contributing this article to our MBA blog:
Many people may remember the movie “The Wizard of Oz”, and how The Great Oz described a university education to the scarecrow, who lamented “if I only had a brain”. He was seeking “smarts”, or the capability to think deep thoughts, the ability to analyze, interpret, distinguish, and reason. In the end, Oz granted the scarecrow a degree, which, Oz said, put him in fine standing with those who came before him attended universities, and learned to “think”.
MBA and Education
This, I believe, is more what an MBA is all about. It helps to teach us how to think about a broad set of situations. This provides exposure to different ways of thinking, many situations, and crosses virtually all business functions. It also builds skill in areas such as finance, marketing, operations, and more. It is certainly much closer to the business world than a liberal arts education, which is ALL about thinking, but nonetheless is has a great deal of breadth.
Certifications and Qualifications
Now, on the other hand, let’s consider certifications. Certifications became very popular a while back in the IT field, where companies like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, and others created certifications around their products. They needed a highly qualified and consistent-thinking implementation community in order to support their complex products. Becoming certified was not and still is not easy, and requires hard work and experience.
Certifications, such as the PMP, have become popular and are similar, yet also different in some important ways, than technical certifications. They provide a framework for handling certain common problem sets, they are challenging to learn, and they are clearly a skill. But this is where they diverge from the education provided by an MBA. They provide a clear “skill” for the workplace. Education does not necessarily do that, although it provides great background that can help someone perform better. The certification provides employers with an indication of a minimum level of knowledge and achievement, and professionals with a distinguishing and proven minimum skill set.
What an MBA or Certification Can Provide
Certifications for me have been a way to gain formalized learning is less familiar areas, or in areas where I want to focus and develop some specialized knowledge and skill. Thus they have applied directly to immediate and medium term career goals. I previously have earned technical certifications, specifically in Lotus Notes Application development and Administration, and several years ago earned the PMP certification. I n both cases, they helped me with more immediate career goals, especially the technical certifications. The PMP certification has helped in very practical ways, and also opens doors.
I will say that having had the discipline and broader thinking of the MBA background helped me not only to more easily earn these other certifications, but also to perform more effectively and with greater perspective with the certifications. Personally, I think I was much more effective with it in situations that involved certifications that I would have been without it.
It’s a Personal Decision
That being said, just as a university education is not necessarily for everyone, and MBA is not necessarily for everyone. Therefore, when all of the logic is put aside, this becomes a very personal decision. Different people have different learning styles. It may be that one person would be better off getting a certification like the PMP, work in project management for a time, and gain exposure and experience, the advance their career from there. Some people learn much better by doing and could be wasting their time in school. Similarly some people do not need the certification or the degree! But most of us will benefit best by one or the other, or both.
In conclusion, in a choice between PMP and MBA, I generally would recommend going for the MBA, but again that depends on the person. It will serve anyone in the long run, but in the end, experience is the best teacher, and performance results are best indicator. A degree will make it easier to earn certifications, if desired, at the appropriate time, but it is not necessarily required. The MBA shapes thinking in a broader and more comprehensive way for the long run. If time or resources is a concern, or there is a more immediate career need, then certainly earning the certification would help in the short term to anchor the career. But in the long run, I think an MBA would serve most people the best.
Thanks to John Reiling for contributing this article to our MBA blog:
John Reiling, PMP, MBA is experienced Project Manager and writer on Project Management topics. John’s web site Project Management Training Online, provides online PMP Prep training and online PMP PDUs training . John writes regularly in his Project Management blog, PMcrunch.com .
