The value of today's MBA

If it's the little stuff in life that slows a person down, then one could say Nancy Gibson has deftly mastered the art of speeding things up.

On trips out of town, she shells out cash to fly instead of drive. She wastes very few hours in harmonious slumber. She's even developed a loving relationship with "salad-in-a-bag."

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"I am busy a lot," Gibson said. "It's a luxury to even go out on my lunch hour and get a present for a friend instead of buying it online."

At 38, Gibson's new-fangled ways to juggle more activities are no accident. She is balancing dual roles as a UW-Madison master of business administration student by night and a swamped information technology manager for TDS in Madison by day.

And according to Gibson, she has adapted quite well. In fact, she wishes she had tackled the degree sooner.

"It sure is easier to learn this stuff in school instead of just trying to figure out things on your own," Gibson said. "I'm able to find, conceptualize and apply what I'm getting out of this degree."

Gibson isn't alone in her sentiments about getting an MBA; at least that's what some of her peers are saying. And for people in Gibson's position -working professionals with time at a premium - more schools are making the degree more accessible than ever.

While data over the past two years haven't shown an increase in the number of students getting the degrees - in fact, it seems to have flattened - the MBA is "alive and well," said Joe Mondello of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.

Mondello said the AACSB, which is the main accreditation body for business programs around the world, documented about 130,000 people across the nation who graduated with MBAs in the 2004-05 school year.

Even more pertinent, according to Bob Ludwig, communications director for the Graduate Management Admission Council, recent graduates are quickly being snapped up by employers and are seeing nice pay increases after finishing their degrees.

Ludwig said half of this year's MBA students had job offers by mid-March, up from 42 percent last year. And he said the average expected salary for a new MBA graduate is approaching $90,000, up about $10,000 from last year.

Most people, Ludwig said, earn about $58,000 a year before starting a degree program, and after finishing, they earn about $88,000.

Laura Huggett, a partner and executive recruiter with Creative Financial Staffing in Madison, said more of her clients want potential job candidates to have MBAs.

"One thing we're seeing is that the larger employers in Madison are very specifically looking for MBAs in some positions. ... They won't even consider anyone in areas like process improvement, finance, financial analysis," she said. "And in the past, a lot of those positions had just looked for a CPA certification."

Huggett also noted that managers in the booming biotech industry are more frequently searching for employees who have a blend of technical knowledge and business talent.

None of this comes as a surprise to UW Business School Dean Michael Knetter. He called occasional allusions to "the demise" of the MBA entirely "premature."

"If you look at the data on placement and starting salaries, the MBA degree reached new heights in value when the last economic cycle peaked in 2000," he said. "Things fell a bit from that peak but are now turning back up. It (the MBA) was easy to pick on during the recession. Now that the market's picking back up, those criticisms will abate."

The MBA, which Knetter described as "a comprehensive degree that teaches all the broad, functional skills important to business," is becoming one of the quicker ways to advance in a variety of business fields, especially finance, marketing, human resources and some areas of health care.

"They (the degrees) are still the main educational credential in the business world," Knetter said. "They reached that status because firms find MBA graduates to be useful in a wide variety of settings. In fact, many European and Asian universities are copying the U.S. MBA model."

For tireless professionals and new undergraduates, the UW has three MBA programs: the evening program, the executive program and the full-time program. More than 500 students are enrolled.

Full-time students meet regularly during the day each week, focusing their degrees on 13 areas of specialization including arts administration, marketing research and entrepreneurial management. Evening students meet Mondays and Thursdays over three years, a design that allows career professionals to fit a "general" MBA into their work schedules. And for business leaders, the UW boasts an executive program aimed at accommodating the lives and responsibilities of "high-potential" managers.

Tuition for Wisconsin residents in the full-time program is about $22,000. Evening MBA students pay around $45,000 and executive students pay about $54,000.

Prospective students in the capital region have other options for an MBA degree; just down the street from UW-Madison, Edgewood College's MBA program is well-suited for working professionals.

According to Moses Altsech, a marketing professor at Edgewood, the program's enrollment fluctuates between 200 and 250 students. He hailed the program as incredibly flexible, especially for career men and women.

"The vast majority of our students are professionals with work experience. There are even students in their 40s and their 50s, and they certainly think it's worth it," Altsech said. "The program allows them to do the work without divorcing their wife or husband ... or selling their kids on eBay."

Neil Fauerbach, a May graduate of the Edgewood MBA program, said finishing his degree was a balancing act but well worth the time. He is the development and marketing director for Smith & Gesteland, a certified public accounting firm in Madison.

"I went to school mainly in the evenings with the exception of a few weekend classes," said Fauerbach, who combined his schoolwork with 50-plus-hour weeks at his job. Married with two daughters in their early 20s, Fauerbach said it was a challenge to balance family life.

He said one of the benefits was being able to use the classroom information at the same time he was learning it.

"It's almost like you work in the laboratory. I used something from every single class," he said.

Fauerbach said he doesn't regret the nearly $35,000 he invested in the MBA program over three years. He said he found Edgewood to be slightly more expensive than some of the coursework at UW-Madison, but he was emotionally tied to the college because he had graduated from Edgewood High School as a teenager.

Fauerbach credits the program with helping him to make a few new friends as well as some important business connections. He noted that he's even had the opportunity to use some of his MBA classmates for consulting work.

As for a pay increase, he hasn't seen that yet. Since it's been just a few months since his graduation, he said it's too early to tell. In the end, though, he said it wasn't about the money.