Monday, January 1, 2007

Is MBA worth its cost?

I recently ran a very simple analysis to understand if MBA is really worth its cost. I made some assumptions to make the analysis very simple. Here's what I did:

I took two cases - liberal and conservative case

Case 1: Liberal
---------------
MBA starting salary: $120k
Yearly raise: 10%
Annual Tax: 35%

Year 1 MBA cost: -$50000
Year 1 Opportunity cost: -$50000 (post-tax salary loss)
Year 2 MBA cost: -$50000
Year 2 Opportunity cost: -$50000 (post-tax salary loss)

NO MBA

---------

Year 1 (NO MBA): +$50000 (post-tax salary)

Yearly raise: 7%

Annual Tax: 35%

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Case 2: conservative
---------------------
MBA starting salary: $90k
Yearly raise: 8%
Annual Tax: 35%

Year 1 MBA cost: -$50000
Year 1 Opportunity cost: -$50000 (post-tax salary loss)

Year 2 MBA cost: -$50000
Year 2 Opportunity cost: -$50000 (post-tax salary loss)

---------
No MBA
---------
Year 1: +$50000 (post-tax salary)
Yearly raise: 7%
Annual Tax: 35%

7 comments:

abhishek sourabh said...

that was one hell of an analysis. but it showz you have way too much time on your hands. :).

so the upshot is that salary wise being an MBA comes out to be better only after at least 10 years?

IdeaLog said...

Hey! Yeah, I do have a lot of time on my hands!!

I think doing MBA is like a long term investment. The monetary benefits come for sure, it takes a while though. However, it opens up a lot of new doors.

Anonymous said...

Hi Tahsin..they say MBA helps in the long run ...especially when one wants to scale up to managerial roles...eg. 5 software programmers contending to be a Project manager...then these qualifications come to rescue..basically it increases the probablity of an MBA over a non MBA to make a bigger jump (both monetary and position wise)at a later stage of the career. what do you feel?

IdeaLog said...

Aditi I agree with you, in fact if you read my comment just before your comment, I mentioned almost the same thing, in fewer words maybe.

Also, i factored in promotions and managerial roles in terms of a higher annual salary raise. Doing an MBA is good, however, monetarily it is a long term investment.

BTW, my analysis is based on the prohibitive MBA costs in the US, so it may not be applicable to India.

Unknown said...

I'm impressed, I have just started an MHA program, aka MBA program for Healthcare. May I ask how you created the charts,for example, which software program did you use to create them?

IdeaLog said...

Hi Nancy, thanks for reading. I just used Excel.

Nancyw256 said...

Thanks for responding. I noticed it was posted a couple of years ago, so wasn't sure if you were going to be checking this blog.

Thanks again.