Business Week Mba Ranking, Mba Rankings, And Exec Mba Vs. Regular Mba

Q: The last time I posted a query here about MBA programs, I received a blizzard of replies to the effect that MBAs are crap. I'm back for more punishment. ("Thank you Sir, may I have another...." Whackk!! Loved that scene from Animal House.) This time the questions, for those of you who care to stay on topic, are: 1. If a school's full-time MBA program has a certain rating, will that tend to reflect on the part-time program as well? For example, I am thinking of doing the U of MD program (The Smith School of Business), since the location is good for me, and as in-state student I can actually afford the tuition. The full-time program is rated 25 by Business Week, which is not great, but it's not bad, either. Business Week does not rank the part-time programs, but does that "25" tend to reflect on the part-time program as well? 2. I've been freelance writing for 20 years, I'm basically a long-time sole proprietor. Should I be looking at an Executive MBA instead of a regular MBA? What, in detail if possible, is the difference between the two?

A:Yes. The caveat is how they deal with instructor assignments. Are they part-time classes taught by the same instructors as the full-time classes? Looking over the registration schedule of classes will reveal this. I'd suggest that a university with a good rating will not make the mistake of hiring a poor professor in their part-time program. The MBA program I went through scheduled their MBA classes in the early evening because they understood that their prime candidate students were not the kiddos straight out of undergraduate programs but rather those adults from the local business community that would apprecciate the ability to take off a little early from work to take a class. As to a rating reflecting upon whether it was done fulltime or parttime, its more up to the individuals effort with the material used in the program. If you apply yourself to the material despite shortcomings of professors, you can get a good MBA at a poor program... it just won't be a rewarding on a resume. I've never had anyone inquire, know or guess what rating my university MBA program. I place more value it how many credit hours they took to get their MB

A: Executive MBA programs are little more than cheater's diplomas... they're available because they are lucrative for universities to sell and they can justify it too themselves with little effort. My advice would be the regular program. The executive MBA program is geared toward people in big corporations with exposure to many aspects of corporate decision making. The idea is that they must pick it up through osmosis and thus don't need to have to prove their intellect with book material. Frankly its a farce and devalues the degree grossly. While at Lucent Technologies, I was asked to sign a letter of recommendation for one of our juniors to take a special MBA program. Believe it or not, this was the shocking program. Stanford Degree in association with Disneyworld was offering an accelerated Executive MBA program that would take two weeks at their Florida vacation site. Supposedly the 12 hour a day intense training was to make them an MBA and if your read the small print of the "Stanford" degree it had an outclause suggesting the university was only a part of the program. It was such a vapid degree grab that we exectutives kept the submitted material on the program to exchange in jokes about how pathetic the MBA training world had become. I don't know if that junior went... I didn't sign off on it. Ah, I see. And how does this undermine their criticisms of MBAs? Or do you think that MBAs are never encountered by us non-MBAs? That maybe .... just maybe we might not have an MBA because it just didn't make sense for us to get one. That we based this on solid reasoning and have had this seconded by many in the business world. That in no way has it hampered our success nor could have increased that success by a penny. Perhaps those that got their MBA feel an overwhelming need to defend it or fear looking foolish for having spent so much money and time getting it. ;-)

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