Don't Pay for Your MBA: The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Get the Business Education You Need

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Don't Pay for Your MBA: The Faster, Cheaper, Better Way to Get the Business Education You Need Page 3

by Laurie Pickard


  Budget the Right Amount of Money

  How much money should you invest in yourself and your future? Think of it as your scholarship fund. How and from whom you acquire it (money you have set aside for a rainy day, savings from your current salary, financial support from your employer, contributions from your family) matters less than the fact that you have earmarked a certain amount of money for your business education. Setting up this fund relieves you of anxiety if and when you need to pay for courses, materials, or experiences during your studies.

  What kinds of expenses can you expect to incur during your business education? This short list includes most of the primary ones:

  1.MOOC certificates. Most MOOCs on the big platforms, such as Coursera and edX, do not cost anything to audit. However, some providers of online business education require a fee for access to quizzes and assignments and for a certificate of completion. Typically these cost between $40 and $150. Setting aside some funds for certificates makes sense for a few reasons. First, they offer proof of your perseverance and professionalism. A certificate proves that you are a determined go-getter who will invest time and money acquiring business acumen. Second, they strengthen your determination because they provide motivation to stay the course. Behavioral economists call it “loss aversion.” It turns out that we dislike losing even more than we enjoy winning. Hence, we will more likely complete a course that we’ve paid for than one that didn’t cost us a nickel. Third, it can serve as a tangible reminder that you are making progress toward your goals.

  2.Specialized content. While you can take many courses without dipping into your scholarship fund, some providers do charge fees for courses. Often, skills-focused courses taught by industry experts are available only to fee-paying students. The fees can range from under $10 to over $1,000. You will probably want to invest in such courses as you progress with your business education and begin to concentrate your time and resources on the area of expertise you want to develop.

  3.Books. Most courses assign required reading or suggest supplemental books on the subject. Usually, these readings are provided as downloadable documents and are included with the course. The good news is that most MOOCs do not require you to purchase pricey textbooks, which can cost over $100 apiece. However, you would be wise to supplement your classroom education with books. Imagine that you are building a business library that not only gives you immediate knowledge but also allows you to refresh your learning later in your career.

  4.Coaching, mentorship, and networking. We will spend much more time throughout this book discussing how to replicate the in-person components of a business education. For now, suffice it to say that coaches, mentors, and a strong professional network can play a major role in the development of your career. These services can add a significant amount of money to the cost of a self-directed business education. For example, the services of an executive coach can run over $150 per hour. Use such resources sparingly, perhaps setting aside $500 for coaching, networking, and mentoring services.

  5.Travel. Travel, particularly international travel, can give students in traditional business school programs a valuable global perspective. Of course, international travel can cost a pretty penny. Consider the business benefits of any trip you take to a foreign country. Planning a surfing adventure in Costa Rica? Combine it with a few weeks helping young Costa Rican entrepreneurs develop their business plans. If you decide to include international travel in your curriculum you will need to beef up your scholarship fund by at least $3,000 to cover airfare, accommodations, and meals during your international experience. We will look more closely at the benefits of international travel in Chapter 9.

  When determining how much money you want to bank in your scholarship account, you might ask yourself this central question: How much money am I willing to spend on opening up a whole new world of career opportunities? You can spend your money a lot of different ways. What will you get out of a given expenditure? You might yearn for a lavish dinner at an expensive restaurant, a new pair of designer jeans, or a weekend getaway at a mountain resort, but spending money on those indulgences will not give you many long-term benefits. A self-directed business education will. It can add many thousands of dollars to your lifetime earning potential. When budgeting for your business education, never forget to ask yourself, “What can I hope for in terms of a return on my investment?” Every good business decision aims at a good ROI.

  You can use My Business Education Budget worksheet (Figure 1-1) to help focus your thinking about your own scholarship fund.

  Figure 1-1. My Business Education Budget

  Hold Yourself Accountable

  You stand to reap an enormous windfall from your business education, getting a much higher return on your investment than a graduate from a top business school since your education comes at a fraction of the cost. It all depends on holding yourself accountable for the result. The going will get tough at times. Other demands on your time, family commitments, dwindling resources, frustration, and just plain weariness can threaten your progress. When that happens (and it will happen, trust me), you need to muster support from within and from your network of friends, family, and fellow students.

  To maintain your momentum, you might try a few of these tactics:

  Put some skin in the game. Regardless of the size of your financial investment in your education, you do not want to lose that investment. Only continued hard work can make it pay off.

  Tell friends, family, and coworkers about your plans. They can offer much-needed encouragement along the way. Use one of the many goal-setting apps available for smart-phones and tablets. Apps such as Way of Life and Coach.me will send you daily reminders, track your progress toward your goals, and help you manage your time.

  Discuss your educational plans with your supervisor at work. Your employer will value your effort, provided it doesn’t interfere with your work.

  Acquire an accountability partner, someone who can serve as a weekly or monthly progress monitor. Regular feedback can help keep you on track.

  Enlist the help of a career coach. A coach can help you clarify your values and your goals, making it easier to stay motivated to reach them.

  Join or create a business study group. We will explore this topic at length in Chapter 6, but for now, think about finding a few teammates who can lend you a helping hand or a sympathetic shoulder when you need it.

  You’ve set up a scholarship fund. You’ve devised ways to maintain your motivation. You have taken your destiny into your own hands. Now you are ready to complete your first Adviser’s Challenge. These hands-on activities, often involving problem solving or project-based learning, encourage you to take an active approach to your education. The first one (see Figure 1-2) asks you to lay the groundwork for your success in your business education, taking into account the insights you’ve gained through your self-administered admissions process.

  Figure 1-2

  ADVISER’S CHALLENGE

  LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR SUCCESS

  Prepare your study space. Create a comfortable, quiet study environment where you can spend time without distractions and interruptions. Working on your laptop in the living room while others are watching a football game can stall your progress.

  Ask others to respect your quiet time. Be sure to ask your roommates, family, and friends to honor your need for stretches of time when you must concentrate on your studies. They will appreciate knowing when you will be available again.

  Set a study schedule. Designate particular days and times as dedicated study periods. A preplanned schedule helps you form good study habits. Choose times for study when you feel fresh and eager to work. As a weekend or evening student, you may struggle to find times where you can get the most from your studies. Tired people do not make the best learners. Once you’ve chosen your study times, mark them on your calendar.

  Reward your own efforts. Periodically treat yourself, even if it’s something small, like a chocolate bar or a new bo
ok. These rewards can provide excellent incentives to keep on keeping on. As you begin your education, plan what events will trigger such rewards, whether that’s finishing a course, getting a good grade on a test, or completing an Adviser’s Challenge.

  Notify an accountability partner or partners. Let the supporters in your network know that you’re embarking on a new educational adventure. Make sure they also know when to expect status updates from you. The more your network knows about your progress, the more support you will receive. You do not want to disappoint your best advocates any more than you want to disappoint yourself.

  Make a contract with yourself. Write down your motivation and accountability plan. A monthly or quarterly review of this document can remind you about your goals and your strategy for reaching them.

  How does the admissions process work in practice? Here is how it worked for Hillary, a young woman who had always dreamed of starting her own publishing business. A passionate lover of books and storytelling, she envisioned a business that would combine literature with her deep commitment to social justice. But she knew that motivation alone would not make her dream come true. She needed some serious business training to get her new venture off the ground.

  Hillary had already discovered MOOCs. She was enjoying a course on gamification, a popular concept in education design, when she stumbled across my No-Pay MBA blog and saw that I was recruiting people to join a learning group, a network whose members would support one another’s self-directed efforts. As she contemplated taking the plunge into business MOOCs and joining a cohort of other learners, Hillary pondered her past experience with self-directed learning. She loved the MOOC she was taking and she could easily picture herself succeeding in almost any course, as long as she found it interesting and knew it could help her advance her career as a budding entrepreneur. Of course, given her goal of starting a business, she fell squarely into the Entrepreneur camp.

  What about the time and money it would take to reach her goals? At the time, Hillary was a single parent, caring for an infant daughter. She decided she could find time for her studies while her daughter napped. Nap times might fluctuate, but Hillary would always have sufficient time to take at least one new course. Like most single moms, she was living on a pretty tight budget, but she figured out a way to set aside $250 to finance her studies.

  Finally, to hold herself accountable, Hillary did join the No-Pay MBA learning cohort. Her father gave her his unquestioning support, and she did manage to complete most of her studies during nap times. Most important, perhaps, she developed strong relationships both with other MOOC MBA students and with a group of women entrepreneurs, all of whom offered tremendous support, especially when Hillary felt rather worn out, as every single mom does from time to time. In the end, her self-directed, debt-free business education has paid tremendous dividends. Her coursework provided exactly the information Hillary needed to launch her business, giving her the confidence and the methods to get a business off the ground without seeking venture financing. The social-impact-focused, multimedia publishing house she now runs enjoys a steadily growing client list. Hillary’s self-directed learning and entrepreneurial spirit also landed her a speaking role at the 2017 Women’s Economic Forum, an opportunity that stemmed directly from the networking Hillary did as part of her education. You’ll be hearing more about Hillary and her inspiring story in the chapters to come.

  Have you completed your self-administered admissions application? If so, you’re ready to dive in and start learning! Your first task will be to build a foundational understanding of business concepts and start learning to speak the language of business.

  POINTS TO REMEMBER

  1.Conduct your own admissions process in which you select yourself, set a big goal, budget time and money, and hold yourself accountable.

  2.Identify yourself as an entrepreneurial learning-oriented professional.

  3.Determine your specific goal and consider whether you are an Executive, an Accelerator, an Entrepreneur, or an Explorer.

  4.Set aside the right amount of time and money for your studies.

  5.Write a concrete plan for holding yourself accountable for results.

  6.Use the admissions process as a time for reflection, making sure to build other such moments into your overall business education.

  2

  Meet the Modern MOOC

  Attending Your Virtual Orientation

  BEFORE you go any further, you might want to attend the equivalent of freshman orientation. If you already know how MOOCs operate, you can skip this little chapter. If not, spend a few minutes reading the following pages. They will give you a satellite’s-eye view of the terrain ahead.

  Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, burst into public consciousness between 2011 and 2012, inspiring The New York Times to declare 2012 “The Year of the MOOC.”1 Yet online education did not appear because someone coined the term MOOC. From the very beginning, the Internet offered a way for people, initially scientists, to learn from others and share information around the world. So what makes this new breed of online courses so special? In the early 2000s some of the top universities, including prestigious institutions such as MIT, Yale, and Stanford, began experimenting with offering portions of their curricula for free online. MIT, for example, began its OpenCourseWare project in 2001 with the expressed goal of making all graduate and undergraduate courses available at no cost online. But, like any new form of electronic social communication, early forays into open courses looked like horse-and-buggy travel compared to today’s high-speed trains and tomorrow’s starships (a topic we’ll discuss in Chapter 9). Back then, you could obtain the syllabus for a course, links to some reading materials, and a few poor-quality recorded lectures. In some cases you could even get instructions to complete a few assignments. But the experience lacked interactivity and graded assessments. Nor could you synchronize your experience with other learners. You might be simultaneously using course materials with 1,000 fellow students, but you could not connect with them.

  By the late-2000s, several professors and teams of professors in different parts of North America set about building courses that took full advantage of the digital age, replicating (as much as possible) a lively and engaging classroom anyone, anywhere could join. Stanford University’s computer science department jumped enthusiastically into the fray. Beginning in 2008, computer science professor Andrew Ng put ten of Stanford’s most popular engineering courses online for use by the public. Meanwhile, his colleague Daphne Koller started experimenting with the “flipped classroom” model as a way of boosting student learning. The flipped classroom involved recording and distributing lectures with quizzes embedded in them for students to watch before class, while making physical attendance optional. In-person class time was used for working through problem sets and other hands-on activities, not for passively listening to lectures. Meanwhile, around the same time, a group of academics in Canada were experimenting with a course structure in which a small group of tuition-paying students studied online with a much larger group of nonpaying students. This group of pioneers coined the term “massive open online course,” or “MOOC.”2

  However, one course really put MOOCs on the map: Introduction to AI, created by Stanford professors Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun, two of the world’s best-known artificial intelligence experts. In 2011, Norvig, a former NASA scientist, and Thrun, renowned for his work on self-driving cars, released a graduate-level course on artificial intelligence that was open to anyone who wanted to take it. As soon as the course was announced, it attracted 58,000 registrants from 175 countries, even before going live.3 When the course began, students from around the world flooded onto the platform to stream video lectures, puzzle over problem sets, and answer one another’s questions in a discussion forum. Word spread, and learners continued to join the course week by week until a whopping 160,000 people had taken part in it. The course professors were stunned by the response to Introduction to AI. After Thrun and No
rvig’s course went massive, other courses soon followed. Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller joined forces to offer courses on a platform designed by Ng and some of his students. That platform would evolve into Coursera, the largest and most well-known MOOC platform.4 Each of their first courses attracted around 100,000 students.

  Following the success of these initial experiments, the next year saw MOOCs blast into the stratosphere. Thrun and Norvig’s partnership became the MOOC platform Udacity, joining Koller and Ng’s Coursera. A third platform, a nonprofit called edX, grew out of a collaboration between Harvard and MIT. Based on the overwhelming response to their pilot offerings, these three platforms, sometimes referred to in the early days of MOOCs as “the Big Three,” set about making first-rate educational experiences on every subject imaginable, at little or no cost. Students from Singapore to San Francisco could study creative writing or computer science with the click of a mouse.

  Now you can log in from anywhere, register for a free account, and within minutes you can be attending lectures, taking quizzes, submitting assignments, and engaging in spirited exchange in a discussion forum. Eager learners, from precocious high school students to Ph.D. candidates and retirees, have flocked to MOOCs as the most Ph.D. efficient, least expensive, and most flexible way to get a top-notch education. In 2015 Coursera, which has become the largest MOOC platform, boasted more than 17 million students. Students had their pick of over 4,000 individual courses, and the numbers are still rising.5 In addition to the original Big Three, platforms such as FutureLearn, NovoEd, Iversity, MiriadaX, and Open2Study all offer courses for learners around the world. Universities from the United States, Europe, and many other parts of the world have partnered with these providers to offer their courses to a global audience.

 

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