Education vs. Learning

Don’t Pay for Your MBA- The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Get the Business Education You Need – Laurie Pickard (AMACOM)

This has been one of the seemingly endless, personal, debates that I have had over the course of my career; should I take the next educational step, bite the bullet and get an MBA. The debate is marked by any number of the familiar touch points that these kinds of debates usually have; the lack of time to commit to getting it done conflicting with work and family, the high cost, again conflicting with family and lifestyle and the invariable question, is it truly worth the investment of time ad treasure?

I will admit that most often the debate comes up when a colleague or manager has encouraged me down that road with talk of a higher level position or new management role. I have continued to nurture and invest my own personal learning, but without taking the step of enrolling in a formal educational program.

It is that at this point in the debate that Laurie Pickard’s new book, Don’t Pay for Your MBA- The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Get the Business Education You Need, has tossed gasoline on the fire of that debate. Pickard advocates persuasively for taking the route of taking MOOCs; Massive Open Online Courses. I encourage you to Google MOOCs and be astounded by the truly massive variety of low and no, cost courses that  are available and accessible to furthering your learning.

Pickard also goes as far as arming you with a road map and the tools to design the course of study you want to undertake; whether it’s sharpening your skillset, growing into new areas or setting yourself up to take the plunge into a full on MBA program, she helps you chart the course. This allows you to evaluate your personal progress, determine how much time you want to commit and design the best program to achieve your goals, not somebody else wants. It’s a safe bet the no high priced MBA program can offer you access to a personally designed core curriculum like the one you can build, especially at the comfortable price of a copy of Pickard’s book.

This is the kind of investment parents should make for those perpetual students, who can’t quite manage to figure out what they want to do. A second copy may also help those parents figure out what direction they personally want to take.