Years ago, I was goaded into pursuing my MBA by a co-worker.\nIn a summarized version of his work-life plan, he did not was to be slinging code\nthe rest of his life. The MBA was a stepping stone to the \u2018next-level\u2019 of one\u2019s\ncareer. I didn\u2019t put much thought into this until I was moved into a management\nposition and realized how much I didn\u2019t know. So, I followed his advice and\nsigned up for the OLLU MBA program that was taught through an extension college\nin Dallas, Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the next few years, I spent every Saturday in a physical\nclassroom until I earned my degree. It was by far the best choice I have had\never made. I met folks from all walks of life, every age, and in just about\nevery profession you can think of. I have highly encouraged co-workers and friends\nthat the MBA can be an asset in all aspects of any type of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Three years ago, I decided to pursue my master\u2019s in computer\nscience. I signed up for the Online Master in CS from Georgia Tech. While the education\nand structure were not like anything like a traditional brick and mortar school\n\u2013 it was easy for me to adapt to. The primary reason, in my opinion, was that the\nmaterial in CS in more quantitative while my MBA was more qualitative. This could\nbe argued but that\u2019s for a different article. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two years ago, my wife decided to pursue her MBA and signed\nup for the SOSU Online MBA program. To her excitement, she graduated last month!\nWhile I couldn\u2019t compare my MBA to my MS in CS because of the different discipline\n\u2013 I was able to relate and collate the differences I seen in her Online MBA vs\nmy traditional MBA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s understandable that content and methodologies taught will\nchange and evolve over time. I\u2019m in the IT field \u2013 believe me I understand this\nmore than most. While some things that her program went over was vastly different\nthan mine, I could not say if that was right or wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every program is bound to have differences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I did witness was the complete virtual desensitization\nto actual soft people skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let me elaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most powerful classes I had was taught by a professor\nwho intentionally put the class in conflict every session. Our class contained all\nraces, religions, and sexes. In class we would do a lot of role playing as managers,\nemployees, etc. An example of one typical session would have a manager\n(student) who had a choice to terminate one of two employees. One employee was\nplayed by an older student while the other employee was played by a different race\nof student. While initial session was scripted, how the manager approached it\nand how the employees reacted were not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What I learned from this class was invaluable set of soft\npersonal skills. Everything from how to read body language, facial cues, voice\ninflection, and how to tell when some is getting to the point where emotions\ntake over logic. That\u2019s it ok to stop a meeting and restart when things get out\nof control. While this class dealt a lot with employee conflict in person \u2013 the\nOnline MBA didn\u2019t cover this at all. In fairness, that\u2019s not 100% true. It did\ncover some material sorta-kind-of-related to this in class books and online articles.\nBut is that same? No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Asking a student to respond to a forum post over a hypothetical\ntopic that might deal with racism is nowhere near as comparable as to looking\nin the face of actual person and discussing the same topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my personal opinion, the online MBA is still worth it\u2019s\nmoney. However, if you want to truly be an exceptional manger, leader, super, etc.\nthen you will have to think outside the box and put yourself in a situation, class,\nor mentoring program where you can develop your soft skills. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Years ago, I was goaded into pursuing my MBA by a co-worker. In a summarized version of his work-life plan, he did not was to be slinging code the rest of his life. The MBA was a stepping stone to the \u2018next-level\u2019 of one\u2019s career. I didn\u2019t put much thought into this until I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2026,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2023"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2025,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions\/2025"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bonesnap.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}