Heath Ducker
News_

6 reasons why you should do an MBA

By Professor Guy Ford, Director of the MBA program
There comes a point in the career of many professionals where a certain threshold has been reached and further career progression becomes difficult. It is at this point that people often start to contemplate whether or not a MBA is for them.

Why do an MBA?

Professor Guy Ford

Professor Guy Ford

1. Enhance your career

Generally the most common motivation for studying an MBA is career enhancement to the executive level. You may be a subject matter expert in your field and accomplished at what you do, but have the desire to contribute more widely to the organisation – you want to lead teams, be involved in strategy formulation, form robust business cases, build organisational capability and penetrate new markets to name a few. You might feel that an MBA will help to build the knowledge and skills to be able to rise further through the organisation.

2. Make a career change

Another group of candidates are looking at an MBA as a vehicle for career change. You may have an undergraduate degree in the sciences, social sciences, humanities or engineering, and would like to change your career path, discover more opportunities and potentially increase your earning potential.

3. Widen the scope of your business

Some of our MBA students have built their own small businesses and feel they need a broader set of skills to be able to scale these businesses. Some are looking to build global capability.

You may have become tied down working ‘in the business’, rather than ‘on the business’. We want our students to look for fresh ideas and insights from other successful entrepreneurs. For these students, our MBA provides an opportunity to meet and work with a diverse group of people with a wide range of skills and experiences.

4. Develop lifelong leadership and influencing skills

Graduates of MBA programs tend to have developed sound business knowledge, but many programs fail to seriously address the development of the personal and interpersonal skills needed to effectively manage, lead and influence people. Our MBA program addresses these substantial gaps by placing an emphasis on skills development through our innovate, team-based, coaching-intensive program. We aim to build your personal resilience of our candidates so you can confront any difficult situation that may arise in your personal or professional life.

5. Learn from multiple diverse perspectives

Our program restricts each intake to 50 so we can select a cohort of MBA students with highly diverse skills and talents. This is important as you'll learn to deal with real world problems containing considerable ambiguity. Class diversity gives you the chance to see problems from multiple perspectives, make sense of complex situations faster, and see patterns emerge. We interview all potential candidates to ensure they have the mindset and capability to thrive in a world of endless change.

6. Use experiential learning to find creative solutions to difficult problems

Building on the benefits of the MBA cohort's multiple diverse perspectives, our classes have been reconfigured to take the focus away from instruction in favour of facilitation. We want you to interact and learn from your peers, and our program creates a safe learning environment in which to test new ideas and try new things. You'll feel engaged in your learning because you will be learning by doing.

Want to find out more about studying an MBA at the University of Sydney? Contact us today.

29 September 2017

Related articles

See more