Want to do marketing degree...MBA with conc. in marketing or MSc in Marketing?

[sanantone]

Sanantone I'm curious to your position on these master degrees. You have posted multiple times with a heavy stand on not seeing value in certain ones like Leadership & Marketing. Are you basing this off of hiring those with these degrees, running a company with these degrees or just a casual position on what you feel the skills these degrees may produce?

Having worked with clinical degrees (hospitals), business degrees (corporate), non-degrees (autodidact talent), hired all three over the last 5 years (as a CEO) - I have never thought of any knowledge through self-taught or degrees as not being a value. As I am enjoying my time with WGU, some of the cooler classes have been on the MSML side. When I look at the future for my kids (all youth) degrees on Leadership, Ethics, Global Sustainability, Environment etc are all ones that excite me for what their impact will be.

Getting a BSBA/MBA may always be a greater paper value and even though my success came before either, I do appreciate the interest to secure a recognizable degree for the HR exercises. The reason for these new degrees highlights the world is changing on value interests/needs. Success in business is not found in a book but in the field and those with greater skills in leadership & ethics should show long turn value for the world.

Leadership is a combination of a personal trait and learning by experience. To flip your words around, success in leadership is not found in a book. You can take courses that will help you become a better leader, but it's certainly not worth a whole degree. Leadership courses are one very small subset of organizational psychology which is already a sub-field of psychology. Unlike with human resources where you can break it down into courses about law, labor relations, training, compensation management, etc., leadership degrees are largely broken down into meaningless categories that could all be covered in a couple of courses. The best comparison I can think of right now is completing a whole degree in Java. You wouldn't be learning a variety of skills; you would be learning one meaningful skill broken down into 10-12 courses. Leadership degree programs are pretty much money-grabber programs similar to homeland security programs, except that homeland security programs at least come with more topics to cover.

I've told this story before, but I was so angry when I had to take Leadership in my doctoral program because there wasn't another elective for me to take that wasn't scheduled at the same time as one of my required courses. It was nothing but a more advanced version of an organizational behavior course I took at a community college. It was already boring the first time; I didn't need to suffer through it again a second time. When I was searching for doctoral programs, one of my professors in my masters program recommended a doctoral degree he completed in leadership. I looked through the courses and course descriptions. He completed the degree as a means to an end. I, on the other hand, did not want to waste my time and money learning very little, which would have happened if I had decided to enroll in that program. If you've taken several psychology courses, just about everything in leadership courses will look familiar, like a very small part of the big picture, and very watered down.