I would like to find out if the MS in Administration from Central Michigan University or the MS in Project Management from George Washington University are just as well respected as an MBA? Can an individual with one of this degrees demand the same type of salary and go into the same type of fields that an MBA can?Would these degrees receive the same amount of respect in the work place and from future employers as an MBA would? Bo
In order to answer this, we have to make some pretty broad generalizations. The first thing is to realize that not all graduate degrees are the same - we need to compare apples to apples, and not apples to oranges. An MBA is an apple. An MS in Project Management is an orange. An MBA from Penn State is an apple, as is an MBA from Duke/Fuqua, as is an MBA from UoP. Some apples are more desirable than others, but they are all apples nonetheless. It also depends greatly upon the job position/role being sought. If I were on the prowl for a new VP of Sales, or perhaps an VP of Operations, I would prefer an MBA over an MS in PM. If I were looking for a new HR executive, I would consider a different educational background, such as a MS in Human Resources. Along those same lines, for something like a VP of Operations, I would strongly consider someone with a graduate degree in Logistics, Operations, etc., over someone with an MBA. Its not as black-and-white as saying that one type of graduate degree carries more weight than another (although some would argue that MBA grads reign supreme, I would argue, as not all MBA grads could run a project or complex project/program with the efficiency of someone with an MS in PM, etc, etc.). Hell, for that matter, I've actually rejected PhD job applicants in favor of someone with just a 4 year degree, because I felt that their educational background (alone) was more in line with what the organization needed, but thats another story. The reputation of the school is also important, but not mutually exclusive with the type of degree. Which is better, an MBA from UoP or an MS in PM from Harvard? Unfortunately, there is no "easy" answer to your question. One must consider quite a number of variables ... At the end of the day, you should consider your own personal career goals, and drive backwards from there. Which degree will be of the most value in attaining those goals? Cheers.
Values of MBAs I would suggest that the higher the examination element then the higher the value of the MBA. The more universities have gone on about anti-plagiarism software, the easier it has become to cheat. The better the software the easier to cheat. This is because the anti-plagiarism stance acts as a magnet for those seeking to offer original cheating i.e. they write the dissertation/essay for you and you hand it in. It's straight forward cheating, not plagiarism. The writers will have more experience than you of writing dissertations anyway and will be more familiar with sources of information. So, software improves and a niche market expands. It's lucrative too - $90 an hour and a dissertation is about 40 hours. Just do a search on the net and you'll find sites offering you original work - in fact as it's not illegal, people here (if they had no morals) could easily set up such a business themselves! What should happen is that the universities lobby Congress/Parliament to get the law changed so those producing services that act as an incitement to defraud can be prosecuted. But I don't think universities really care. By making a big fuss about anti-plagiarism softare they appear to care - but they don't really want to be too tight in case it drives away candidates. So we now have the unholy partnership. Universiities boasting about catching cheats etc all the time keeping very quiet about the other cheat sites to make sure that students still enrol with them. An MBA costs about $40,000. What's an extra $3600 to get someone to write your dissertation? And no-one does anything about it at all!
Okay, who is "unixman," and how did he get so smart? My gut reaction--despite the fact that I am an MBA--is that it shouldn't matter. This is from experience. When I was a student at National University, there were two basic master's degrees in business available. The MBA was a 15-course program, with 9 core courses and 6 electives. The 6 electives could be taken in one area as a concentration, such as Finance, Marketing, or Accounting. Or, one could take 6 courses in any areas and take a "general" MBA. Because of scheduling challenges (which I'll get in to in a minute), I chose the latter. The other master's in business was an MA in Business. This was a 12- course program, consisting of the same 9 core courses, but only requiring 3 elective courses. No concentrations were available, of course. Students wanting the MBA had to take the additional 3 courses, whether or not they wanted to declare a concentration. The question was, was it so important to take the MBA instead of the MBA that it was worth taking (and paying for) the 3 extra courses? For me it was. I was on active duty, stationed in Sacramento. I was finishing up my MBA at National when I got a short-notice assignment to San Antonio. I had my core courses completed, but I'd already transferred in (from Chapman University) the maximum credits allowed. I was 4 courses short of my National MBA when I got the orders. I petitioned the university to waive the credit transfer limit to allow me to go to another school and transfer 4 more courses back to National to complete the MBA. Orignially, they approved my waiver, but only to allow me to transfer 1 course, and to award me the MA. I appealed, with the Chancellor's help, pleading my case that the MBA was the degree I needed, that I was serving my country and couldn't prevent the move, that I would be a stalwart representative of the university (as both an advocate of nontraditional higher education and as an education officer in the Air Force). They approved me for the MBA. I took 4 classes from Webster University, transferring them back to National and taking the MBA. Whew! All of that said, I still don't think it mattered. I'm not convinced that employers care a whole bunch about these differences. It matters if you take a narrowly focused program versus a broad one (like an MBA). But other than that, I'd take the degree that best fit my career goals. If I was a project manager, I wouldn't hesitate to take a master's that specialized in that area. Flexibility is for people who don't know where they'll be in the future. (There are a lot of those, of course. I was one of them.) I would be much more inclined to take a degree that was related to my career from a good school, rather than a precisely relevant degree from a lesser school. And that's from someone who's taken his degrees from schools that aren't particularly prestigious. (Although I've always been impressed with Union and its contributions to nontraditional doctoral learning.) Don't get caught up in degree titles. Take the degree that will push you forward. If prestige is important, go for it. If you need more flexibility, take a more generally defined degree. Hope this helps.
Hehe. I'm new to these forums, although I've been lurking for about a year or so, in an effort to get my own distance learning train on the tracks. Graduated high school. Joined the Army. Played with tanks, and blew stuff up. Got out of the Army and entered the IT industry. Started as a junior mainframe/assembler programmer at a bank. Went to college for a semester, but dropped out due to my workload. Fast forward to now: I've held every conceivable technology role an organization can offer, from lowbie, grognard programmer to CTO. I've delivered addresses at venture capital conferences in NYC, participated as an angel investor in a number of ventures, some of which did well, some of which did not. I taught the UNIX/C systems certification curriculum at the University of South Florida (USF) as a private consultant. I've been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Computerworld, and a few others. Published a few books along the way, too. I just don't have a college degree yet. So, here I am. Testing out, learning a few things, and generally plodding along. I'm officially getting my "checkbox" now. In spite of my accomplishments, my lack of a college degree has been a personal monkey on my back for far too long. I agree. This is why I would recommend a backwards approach. Identify the long-term career goals, and then research the market. Try to determine where a school's graduates are employed - what are they being paid? How is their pay rated against their peers? Then choose the degree that makes the most sense, taking all the variables into account. But again, apples cannot be compared to oranges. If one determines that an MS in Nerftronics is what they will need to attain their career goals, great. But an MS in Nerftronics may not be the same as an MA in Nerftology, perceived or otherwise. There are simply too many variables to consider (job specification, target industry, geography, job competition/market, etc). Getting back to the original question posted in this thread, I think most employers will "respect" (generally) any graduate-level work. It marks a sense of accomplishment. On a related note, it is equally as important for people to set their expectations properly. It is entirely unrealistic for someone to obtain an MBA (or an MS in XYZ) from an unknown or obscure school and expect to jack down 300K a year walking out the door, like their friend Jimmy who went to Kellogg/NW. Not saying it isn't possible - just not likely. I've managed to cobble up a pretty nice living for myself, but I never expected to do it without any degree at all - I consider myself to be an anomaly, created by the system I serve. The high-tech industry "made" me. I am their product. I am also (now) their "victim", as I am hitting glass ceilings without my magical piece of "smart" paper. Cool - what branch/unit? Cheers.
Hey Guys, I did do some research and most of the jobs that I am interested in want you to have a Masters degree in a business related field. So I guess an MBA, MSA and MSPM would do satisfy the qualification. Bo
Making due allowance for a first posting I wonder on what evidence 'Worldwide' has for saying: 'So we now have the unholy partnership. Universiities boasting about catching cheats etc all the time keeping very quiet about the other cheat sites to make sure that students still enrol with them.' Reputable universities not only discipline cheats, they take preventative measures to limit their scope (including final exams only, closed book, invigilated by independent agencies, no choice of questions, all graded by the faculty not short term 'hires', Externally examined by senior faculty of other universities, no grade drift). Some less than wonderful preventative measures (adopted by disreputable schools and not a few reputable ones) include 'examination' systems that award grades for 'off-site and out of sight' assignments. This is a low cost option for the disreputable (they don't care about quality or provenance) and a high cost option for the reputable (in grading carefully the assignments, though they cannot be sure of their provenance). There is no 'alliance', holy or otherwise. I am not clear what the difference is implied in the statement: 'It's straight forward cheating, not plagiarism.' Claiming something is written by the name on the exam paper when it was written by someone else without acknowledgement is plagiarism and cheating. Fraud is fraud. And no responsible university tolerates it.
Re: Values of MBAs Not being an academic or otherwise versed in many different areas of study, I don't see how this would work in my own original field: physical sciences. When I took my MSc in analytical chemistry, I had to design, run and write up the experiments to create the data upon which my thesis was based. My advisor often wandered through my lab while I was working. So I simply cannot see how paying someone to write up a thesis or dissertation would work in a scientific field, unless that person was also an expert in the subject matter. And how would the experimental data be created, unless it was all faked? So is this phenomenon of paying someone to write up a thesis or dissertation limited to the liberal arts? And would this also not be uncovered during orals? I have to admit I have never even heard of a paid dissertation writer. Although I have certainly heard of paying services to write up class assignments or research papers. This is an interesting topic. Regards, Michael Lloyd Mill Creek, Washington USA
MBA cheating (Largely to Professor Kennedy) Making due allowance for a first posting I wonder on what evidence 'Worldwide' has for saying: 'So we now have the unholy partnership. Universiities boasting about catching cheats etc all the time keeping very quiet about the other cheat sites to make sure that students still enrol with them.' Surely no allowances are needed? You ask for evidence and I'll give it to you - hopefully you'll follow links: read these: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1005332,00.html http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,5500,628914,00.html http://education.guardian.co.uk/mba/story/0,12010,817434,00.html In each case all the people mentioned were contacted and asked to lobby Parliament, lobby education groups etc etc to try and get sites like this one: www.elizabethhall.com made illegal. Not one of the fine upstanding people replied to the emails (from three separate parties over an period of 6 mths) and a search of the internet reveals that despite numerous newspaper articles where very moral people condemn her no-one (including journalists) is doing a thing to try and make the service illegal despite the fact they are procuring fraud by the very fact that they're advertising cheating services. So we have universiities going on about plagiarism software but doing nbothing at all about www.elizabethhall.com etc etc (there are other sites but this one is the most blatant) so the universitiies seem holier than thou to the media but don't really want to stamp out the real cheating service....I have trawled this site too and though the www.elizabethhall.com site is mentioned I see no condemnation and certainly no-one suggesting it should be made illegal. "Reputable universities not only discipline cheats, they take preventative measures to limit their scope (including final exams only, closed book, invigilated by independent agencies, no choice of questions, all graded by the faculty not short term 'hires', Externally examined by senior faculty of other universities, no grade drift). " I went to university last year - I won't say which one but it is very reputable. We were allowed to take one piece of paper into the exam with unlimited words. I put 2800 words on my one piece of paper. For the other exams we were given 12 typical questions and 6 came up word for word; for another exam we were told two journal articles were in the exam and lo and behold there were two questions saying 'according to the article by ****** what are the main points....." That's not cheating but it does show - anecdotally - how universities in the market place want to make sure their students do well at all costs. Hence they will not really be cracking down on cheats who advertise their services. The 'alliance' is by default. "I am not clear what the difference is implied in the statement: 'It's straight forward cheating, not plagiarism.' Claiming something is written by the name on the exam paper when it was written by someone else without acknowledgement is plagiarism and cheating. Fraud is fraud. And no responsible university tolerates it." Firstly if the cheating is 'undetectable' which is what the site boasts then it's not that a university 'tolerates' it as they don't officially know it's happening BUT by doing nothing about fraud sites such as the one I have mentioned they, by default, allow it.
Call me crazy, but I'm struggling to understand what all this has to do with the question(s) posed by the original poster of this thread?
Unixman, You took the words right out of my mouth. I would appreciate it if you guys would get back to my original question. Thank you very much. Bo
Returning to topic title Going off topic is largely my fault - I apologise. I tend to think MSc carries more weight than MBA as 'Administration' seems too general (to the outsider). In my opinion as an employer I'd tend to take the person who qualified by examination precisely for the opportunities to cheat on dissertations I have alluded to before.
I agree with Rich. When looking at job ads, very few seem to actually ask for someone with an MBA. Most of the ones that I am seeing want someone with a business related degree. An MBA and an M.S. in administration or project management will each open up a lot of the same doors while leaving some mutually exclusive to that particular degree. My gut feeling is that the majority of us don't need MBAs and that a more focused degree such as management, project management, technical management, etc. will still provide ample flexibility to fill squares for most employment while providing management with an education more related to what they do - managing people or programs.
