Why More People Are Pursuing an MBA Mid-Career
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Here's your Money Briefing for Wednesday, February 24th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. When you think of a typical MBA candidate, you might picture someone who's in their mid-20s, single, and toward the start of their career. But who's to say that MBA candidates have to fit that mold? More people are taking an untraditional route and pursuing their degree mid-career.
This is something that MBA programs have really been striving for over this past year, especially with kind of the proliferation of online degrees. That's been a big driver in trying to get people who ordinarily wouldn't want to take two years out of a career or leave their job, or maybe they just didn't think an MBA was something for them.
Coming up, our business education reporter Patrick Thomas will tell us why more people are taking a less traditional route when pursuing an MBA. And we'll hear from one business school graduate who got an MBA after holding several jobs. That's after the break.
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An MBA can be a catalyst for success in the business world for people early in their career, but more people are pursuing a business degree mid-career. In a moment, we'll hear from a New York resident who did just that. But first, our reporter Patrick Thomas joins us. He covers business education and careers for The Wall Street Journal, and he's writing about this trend. Patrick, thanks for being here.
Thanks so much for having me.
So, Patrick, can you put some numbers to this? Is this a growing trend, people pursuing an MBA mid-career?
What trend is driving more mid-career professionals to consider MBAs?
Well, in recent years, it's become a lot bigger in terms of non-traditional, non-business background MBAs, older MBAs. More have started to pursue the degree in the last year. We saw a big jump in applicants who are older with six or more years of work experience from 17% to 32%. Part of this is because there are more applicants in general this year. We've seen a wave of new applicants following the pandemic-induced recession, which is kind of the nature of how business school applications tend to work.
So why do some people choose to go the more untraditional route and not pursue the business degree right after their undergraduate work?
So it really depends on the person. And I think one of the biggest reasons is some people use it as a career switch later in life. Maybe they have been in a in a job or in something like the military for many years. And they wanted to get more business knowledge, more business acumen and decided to shift careers. And the MBA for a lot of people, if you can afford it, is a really great way to find new career opportunities and learn more about business or learn how to start a business. That's probably the number one reason The other reason for maybe a more non-traditional route that's become more rare over the past few years is your employer sends you to go get an MBA. Maybe later on in your career, that's less often over the last couple of years, but some still do it.
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