A matter of degrees: Do you think an MBA makes a person a more valuable worker?

Q: Unlike our "What would you do?" polls, this one asks for your opinion. It's a common assumption that an MBA degree can make you a more valuable worker. What's your take on this?

Nick's reply: Opinions abound on this subject, and mine is just one more. All I want to do is make some observations -- compare them to your own. If you find these helpful, great. If not, bring on the tomatoes.

1. An MBA can teach you how to apply some powerful tools in business. By taking the right courses, you will learn about many business tools that might make an enormous difference to your success. That's good.

2. An MBA program will convince you that those tools should be applied extensively in business. Ever hear the expression, "He succeeded because no one told him it couldn't be done?" Lots of people run successful businesses without MBAs. Savvy people can often learn what they need as they go along -- and they seem to accomplish the impossible. That's interesting.

3. Companies invest enormous amounts of money on newly minted MBAs because they trust the product that business schools produce. My mentor at Stanford used to say, "By the time MBA programs have glommed onto an idea from the business world and start to teach it, it doesn't work as expected because the world has changed." Sometimes, it's not the degree. It's the people. Companies prefer to avoid that really tricky challenge: selecting the best people. So they let MBA schools do the selection for them. That's not good.

4. Some of the smartest people I've met have MBAs. I think they succeed because of who they are to begin with, not because they got an MBA. I know mediocre business people who have MBAs, too, and I don't blame the degree for their mediocrity. The best MBA graduates deftly combine their native skills with their education and it pays off. That's good.

5. The people you meet in an MBA program can form the core of your business relationships for the rest of your life, and that can pay off handsomely. That's good.

If you want to learn the essentials that constitute an MBA education, go for it. If you want to don "The MBA Halo," forget it. The marginal cash value of an MBA (that is, the extra money those with MBAs earn compared to those without them) diminishes as your career progresses, because it's the skills and relationships you develop on the job that determine your real value.

Almost everything you learn in the course of an MBA program can be learned through individual courses and workshops that you can take as you need them. You might not earn an MBA degree this way, but you'll have what you need to do your job well.

OK, it's time to let the successful MBAs in the door. Let the tomatoes fly.

Copyright 2009. Distributed by Universal Press Syndicate

Nick Corcodilos is author of "Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job" and the host of www.asktheheadhunter.com. He can be reached by e-mail at seattle@asktheheadhunter.com or at North Bridge Group, P.O. Box 600, Lebanon, NJ 08833. Sorry, no personal replies.