When it comes to education, I find it interesting how people decide to get different college degrees.The other day I was talking to an IT director who has a degree in computer science with a business minor. Now with about 15 years of working experience under his belt, he’s interested in pursuing an advanced degree and earning his MBA.
I asked him why he was interested in getting his NBA as opposed to Masters of Information Technology degree, he said that he felt like he wanted to round out his business acumen with the Masters of Business Administration. He felt like the MIT would not really add anything to what he’s doing professionally day by day at his job. He’s more interested in pushing himself to learn more about business, strategy, operations… but he’ll continue to do tech work.
I’ll never forget when my uncle asked why I had not gone back to school and earned my MBA. I told him that I was busy doing business stuff all the time and that I really didn’t want to go back to school and earn a traditional MBA. Rather if I’m going to go back to school and earn an advanced degree I would rather do something like a Masters in Cultural Anthropology to study something vastly different than business. In fact, I’m quite fascinated about the development of food and how our agriculture has changed over the last two thousand years. I think it would be really interesting and fascinating to spend time doing a deep dive understanding more about how our food gets to our tables.
You might be thinking “what does the development of food have anything to do with the career development and team training?” The reality is that food has nothing to do with the business world if you look at a surface level. But my undergraduate degree is in International Relations and Art History and the things I studied about European Medieval and Renaissance development of communities has led to a deeper understanding of how groups of people come to exist, develop and thrive together. If you think about it, communities are not much different than a company growing and developing. There are teams of people coming into existence, and learning how to coexist and thrive together toward a common goal.
I have nothing against getting an MBA degree, so don’t get me wrong or misunderstand when I say that I am not interested in getting an MBA. Actually I wouldn’t mind getting an MBA, but I would want to do it overseas and have the opportunity to connect with the global business world. I am not interested taking classes at night and trying to study for a couple hours after everybody has gone to sleep. That sounds like hell to me and I don’t want to pay $40-60k to do that.
What sounds more interesting is to move overseas, perhaps Latin America or Europe, with my children and husband with me. I think we would have an amazing experience as a family and that my educational experience would be much more rewarding, not to mention a lot less expensive than paying for a traditional American MBA degree. But that is me. That is what is of interest to me.
What is of interest to you? Do you know what type of educational experience you would like to have if you’re going to go and earn another higher degree?