In December I wrote out the case for and against an MBA and couldn't quite close it. The five months since closed it, then went to the second question: which program, in what shape, without walking away from the career the degree is supposed to serve.
I've decided. UC Davis Graduate School of Management, part-time, in the Bay Area program. Classes start this fall.
The part-time choice was arithmetic. Full-time means roughly two years out of the workforce: tuition, two years of salary I wouldn't earn, probably a relocation, and then re-entering the market hoping the gap on the resume reads as an investment. Part-time means I keep working and keep getting paid while the degree accumulates around the edges of the job. The price is paid in a different currency — about three years instead of two, and the nights and weekends that go with them. I put both versions in a spreadsheet, the way I'd evaluate any project, and it wasn't close.
The program facts, for anyone running the same comparison. The degree is 72 units on the quarter system. Part-time students carry six to eight units a quarter, which works out to nine to twelve quarters, or about three years while employed. Tuition is charged per unit and totals a bit over $100K all-in. The schedule is built around a full-time job: evenings, plus every-other-Saturday sessions at the San Ramon campus.
The Bay Area program runs out of Bishop Ranch, a large office park off I-680 in San Ramon that the campus shares with a few hundred companies. Free parking, conference-room architecture, school after work in a place that looks like work. I find that fitting rather than depressing. GSM also runs the part-time program in Sacramento; San Ramon won on [DETAIL: what made San Ramon the closer campus — where is the commute from?].
Quarters were a selling point too. Ten-week terms mean the units come in smaller bites, and for someone scheduling a degree around a job, smaller bites are easier to plan.
Instruction starts in late September. The December post ended on a question mark. This one doesn't.
— Lo