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Comment by mdorazio | Hacker News Reader

Of the "valuable" set of classes, what % would you have only been able to attend/learn from in an MBA program? I was accepted to several top MBA programs and decided not to go for a variety of reasons, including that virtually all of the classwork was things I had already learned or could easily learn via online coursework or community college without spending a quarter of a million dollars.

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There's nothing stopping you from learning everything on your own. BUT you miss out on the MBA network. When you're forced to spend 2 years with a cohort of 75-100 people, you develop a close-knit bond when you spend most of your time eating, drinking, studying (and sometimes sleeping) with these people. If I want a job at a company that one of my MBA classmates works at, an interview is literally one phone call away.

I realize the network effect is positive for you, but I think it's negative for the world at large. One would hope that hires would be merit based, not simply that your are friends in the MBA club.

It doesn't have to be binary there. It can be merit-based and heavily dependent on having friends in the club. And that's not a special property of the MBA folks. That is to say, you might be good enough to be a lead engineer at Google, and they're not going to give you that job if you aren't, but it's still a whole lot easier to put yourself into the position of being able to do that if people in your network work at Google. MBAs are no different. You don't get to be a VP of finance because you used to do bong hits with the CEO, but if you're someone who is able to do the job of VP of finance (and can convince people of that), then that connection to the CEO is hugely valuable.

Networks aren't just for MBAs. I'm a software engineer, and I got my current job partially because one of my best friends works here and he gave me a referral. Now, I'm sure I passed the interview on my own merits, but I might not have even gotten to an interview if not for my friend letting me put his name on my job application.

How are they going to hire you if they don't know you exist?

Most referrals for jobs aren't based of real deep friends, but based off acquaintance connections..

I said nothing about the network, which is indeed likely valuable (though I argue you get a much better ROI by working with/networking with people who are already successful instead of with people who might one day be successful). The parent comment was specifically about the value of classes, which I strongly disagree with.

You might want to re-explore your opportunity cost.

At any top educational program, you'll get better competition and coaching from professors, peers, and alumni access than self-teaching. At most MBA programs, you can take accelerated courses or skip re-learning skills.

Better with respect to what? I'm referring specifically to the classes and associated academic knowledge, not to other aspects of the program.

I'm not referring to other aspects of the program, either.

> "you'll get better ... coaching from professors, peers, and alumni access than self-teaching."

Not all of the academic knowledge is in the textbook.

If I want to learn anything, I know the best way to learn is to get great coaching and a great curriculum. The unbundled (self-teaching) route is harder to navigate successfully, though, everyone thinks they're the exception!

I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one. If you want to learn anything, the best way by far is to learn by actually doing it. The perfect example is languages - you learn far faster and more thoroughly by immersing yourself in the language and using it every day than you do by learning in an academic setting, great coaching or not.

Many business topics are the same way - you will learn much more by actually applying the knowledge to real-world problems than by working through textbooks and case studies. When hiring people, I and my peers vastly prefer demonstrated hands-on experience to any equivalent amount of academic knowledge.

You go for the network either regional or national. You can read the 30m MBA for the other stuff.

Agreed, I was trying to understand what part of the classwork the parent comment found compelling enough to spend the time and money on for an MBA program.

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