Thread: MBA vs MS help?

Take this with a few grains of salt, but two things seem evident to me overall. First, a graduate degree of any kind, whether and MBA or MSPM, would make you more marketable to anyone. Assuming you've got the experience, which it seems you have, the graduate degree just opens the door for you and the experience carries you through it.

Second, operations management is HUGE right now. As someone who can analyze the operations of a department or entire business, identify the bottlenecks, and propose cost effective solutions, you are someone immensely valuable to any company anywhere in the world. It's a big statement, but every company who is serious about doing business tries to make their operations as efficient as possible. I know someone who made a few hundred grand just by suggesting a different bathroom hand soap. By switching, the company saved millions. She didn't even have a BS! Think what you could do with a master's on your side.

Just my $.05

I am not an American so I don't know how things work at your end, but generally it doesn't really matter which school you attended, as long as your degree is real. i.e. a Phd from the university of Phoenix will do you no good

Over here, the degree is almost always a job requirement. The ad may say 'Masters degree or equivalent by experience' but in 99% of the cases they will take the person with a Masters degree if it comes down to choosing between someone with it and someone without it and no major other differences.

The only exception is if you have a major other selling point that people look up to, like having certain certifications / clearances / other achievments.

So I don't think it matters which one you get. If you like the MS better, get that one because learning what you like is a whole lot easier than learning what you don't.

I think Bruno is right here. If you work for a company and they want you to have an advanced degree and your just satisfying their requirement, the degree, well, its just a piece of paper and it doesn't matter where it came from but if you ever change jobs or are going to go into a different or related field the degree will be scrutinized and a distance learning degree is always viewed with suspicion.

As far as math goes with an MBA a good school will require it in spades. I went to Grad school at the University of Chicago and the MBA students (and everyone else too) had to take a placement test before they could register for a single course in the statistics department and basic calculus was a prerequisite to even take the placement test.

So the moral of the story is don't make the mistake of thinking an MBA is just an MBA and its source doesn't matter.

Oops!

Some programs are notoriously math-oriented, and Chicago is one of them - I totally forgot.

So yes - different schools have variations - and this is why I suggested to Josh to ask about sample work to help him understand

Cheers
Ivo