Is MBA worth it??.. my take

Day before yesterday it was CAT 2006. This year 1.91 Lac students took CAT with some dreams in their eyes. I also probably had the same dreams when I sat for cat 2 yrs back. But the question that comes to my mind is that is all this trouble worth it???

Most people take CAT coz they believe that doing MBA from a top notch b-school in the country will make them a star.

It wouldn't.

I believe that Indian MBA system isn't worth it for the two very simple reasons

1. 99.9 % of people graduating from top 5 or top 10 b schools don't even have the guts or the intentions to start any sort of business.
2. MBA doesn't make you rich!!

All the Indian b schools are churning out are brilliant people who can at best form the service class and help someone else's business.

Believe me.. Most of these people will form an insignificant part of the corporate structure of the top organizations they will work with.

And based on my analysis of the scenario.. The present booming scenario.. I can very well conclude that most of the jobs that are available today don't even need an MBA degree. Any person with a general aptitude for the job & pure common sense (which I believe most people have)can do it. Still most companies are caught up in the fever to recruit 'mba's' from top schools and pay them lavishly (atleast that's what the industry thinks).

So it logically takes me to my next point.. Are we mba's rich??.

I sincerely doubt this one. All we get is a decent salary which can ensure a decent standard of living. But it stops here. At this point you have to choose between a lavish living style (a lot many people believe that they need it coz they have worked for 20-25 years to be here) and your other needs which could be a house/car etc etc.

I know a lof of my engineering peers who are earning 10 lacs+. They haven't done anything great. They haven't done an MBA, not even from correspondence. They were just smart people.

But then most of the people who make it to top 5 b-schools are also smart, else the competition wouldn't have let them be there.

I know there are some lucky ones that get those ibanking profiles and other international placements. I-banking I believe genuinely pays but about other foreign placements.. I seriously doubt. All they offer is a similar living standard in some other country. And the media is quick to convert dollars to rupees and fancy the salaries that these people get.


One thing I am really sure now is that mba's aren't paid well. We ofcourse can afford air deccan economy tickets but we still dream of business class. We still fancy jobs which will entitle us to fly business class, ofcourse on company expense. But that too seems a distant dream atleast till 5 yrs from the time you pass out.

So where is the MBA dream...

I often meet business men who somehow graduated (BA's etc from unknown colleges) and pay much more income tax than what a MBA gets as ctc 3 yrs into his job. I amn't talking of exceptions here... these are just small time business men...

So where are we mba's????