MBA from Hellenic American University (HAU)

[Stoic]

Your argument has some merit in context of someone with min. work experience in their field, late 20's-early 30's looking to use a MBA to advance.

For someone with experience, advancing within their company or gov type employment these work fine. I suggested this to a  friend later 30's with a decade plus at one of the largest insurance companies, he got a $1.50 an hour raise upon enrollment and will get an extra $2 when he graduates (along with points towards promotions). They will also reimburse him when finished. This $3,000 MBA will have given him a $3,000 raise a year for enrolling, $7,280 raise after grad, even if nothing else changes.

At 54 and a student on this myself, I promise you that very few people have more contacts in my industry than I do, and not doing this MBA to get contacts.

Yes. I would say it's more for people in their 20's and 30's, but your'e right. After you been in the workforce for awhile the alma mater doesn't matter.

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The MBA is the go-to management degree, and management is everywhere. Unlike accounting, there isn't a focus on a handful of companies. I would say that law is the most elitist industry outside of academia.

Accounting is extremely useful though and I would argue that the alma mater for accounting degrees hardly matters. Warren Buffer graduated from Nebraska which is a good school, but hardly a head turner. I think accounting is a bit like engineering where is considered to be a hard degree to get and therefore people consider a degree in that field to be meaningful. But when it comes to the MBA is no secret that even people that go to IVY's spend all their time drinking and socializing in those programs, and there's hardly any homework. If you want to learn you'll be better off launching Coursera and starting a small business. MBA's are for networking and social drinking, which ties back to the brand... since it matters who're your drinking with.

Where you go to school matters of you're trying to work for the Big 4, but that can be said about many major companies in several fields. The Big 4 and major law firms are just the pickiest. As for management positions, the MBA checks the box with a lot of employers that don't care about prestige or can't afford a graduate from a top MBA program.

It depends. For example, a Master's from let's say UT Austin will go further in let's say Toronto, San Francisco, Boston, Hong Kong, Etc, than a Master's from the Hellenic University.  But for the most part you're right, however there's still some aspects of this whole thing that we can't run away from. 

I'm not saying that a masters from the hellenic university is bad. If it wasn't composed of synchronous classes that limit my freedom of movement I would consider it even though I really don't like the MBA title. But I'm just being realistic. People ask me all the time where I went to school at, specially high performing people that I come across of. For example Columbia Alumni, Oxford Alumni, etc. 

With this degree there's time cost associated with it because it's synchronous and the brand is weak in a realm where the brand matters. However if I just wanted an mba from anywhere, or if I was a government employee or in the military, I would be all over this for several reasons. In those industries the check in the box is all that matters.

I personally would prefer to go with the degrees from the University of Malaysia, or a degree from a Spanish public school. Those degrees are from known public universities in those countries and would make a person look interesting if they group it with some travel abroad experience as opposed having a degree from an institution that no one knows about and could very well not be around in 10 years. Also Coursera is advertising masters cheaper and cheaper, so I'm curious about what they will bring out in the next year. 

But yeah $3000 is cheap so at the end of the day.  It's a good deal so don't mind me.  It's almost a no brainer if you have the time for the synchronous courses or don't care about brand strength and want the RA accreditation. Just need to pray they don't start devaluing their brand by coming up with "Get off the couch and call Everest" commercials in the near future to gain market share. As long as they don't take that route it's all good.