Study: MBA boosts IT salary more than experience, technical degree

IT professionals who lack an MBA might be shocked to learn how much money they're leaving on the table. A new study of IT salaries finds that a Master of Business Administration degree is worth as much as 10 years of IT workforce experience, and is far more valuable financially than any other master's or bachelor's degree.
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The new study examines more than 50,000 employees nationwide and “for the first time shows that [an MBA] really leads to significant improvement in one’s salary,” Mithas says.

Curiously, the study found no evidence that employees who have both an MBA degree and significant IT experience gain a significant edge over people with an MBA only.


http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/041408ed1.html?page=1

 

According to article the data collected for the study was "Mithas and Krishnan examined four national online surveys from 1999 to 2002".

These were the best years of IT but I really doubt that the we have same situation today where a lot of the IT work goes to India or other countries. Nowadays, all it takes to be an IT consultant is to learn how to use elance.com and send the work to India or Russia.

 

If one believes recent articles in Business Week, India's talent pool is tapped out. Moreover, the falling dollar has made offshoring less attractive than it was a few years ago. Under these conditions, an MBA would be useful in managing these evolving risks of offshoring.

 

Offshoring is a huge business nowadays and an MBA indeed helps. As a matter of fact, I have seen a trend towards Supply chain management as an MBA specialization. It seems that companies are interested in specialists that can handle global suppliers and offshoring. However, the typical IT MBA that is more technical oriented (e.g. programming courses) is not doing very well since most of the technical work can be outsourced to India, I know this very well since I used to teach technical MBA courses and we hardly get any students nowadays due to the low demand of technical skills.

IT might come back in the future but I would stay away at least till things are more clear. It is far more profitable to get a CPA than a CCNA nowadays.

 

A new trend: "nearsourcing" - outsourcing to areas in time zones close to the main business unit, such as Latin America. This is done to mitigate certain communication problems inherent in outsourcing to distant locales like India or eastern Europe.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2008/tc2008043_531737.htm?chan=technology_ceo+guide+to+tech_ceo+guide+to+tech+--+consumer+tech+at+work

 

Interesting link, Mexico seems like a better option. At least the money might come back to the US due to the NAFTA agreement. I always wondered why Mexico did not profit from the IT boom given its strategic location and more cultural ties (at least in the southern part) to the US.

In addition, the more money you put into the area might help with the issue of illegal immigration.