Why Your MBA is Worthless

I ignored academics to the point where I almost didn’t graduate from college, and it helped me land my dream job as a result.

My academic awakening (or lack thereof) began three years earlier, as I sat inside a small classroom on our college campus. An editor from the Minneapolis Star Tribune was there to speak to our journalism class on what it took to become a newspaper reporter or editor.

She talked about the importance of understanding the craft, of what it took to be a great reporter and what a big-city newspaper would be looking for in the young, up-and-coming journalists that we aspired to be.

During the ensuing Q&A period, one student asked: “So, how important is your GPA? How closely do editors look at your academic transcripts?”

The editor laughed. And laughed. And laughed.

Finally, she composed herself.

“Put it this way,” she told us. “Nobody ever asked me in a job interview why I got a ‘D’ in French class. Here’s what they care about: Can you write? Can you report? Can you work on deadline? Do you have clips? Have you worked in a newsroom? Do you have references? Those are the things that matter.”

After that class, my entire view of college changed. Instead of sweating tests and textbooks, I went out and worked. I wrote for the student newspaper, got an internship at a local magazine, started writing as a freelancer for small, regional newspapers and begged my college professors to connect me with active journalists who were looking for interns or freelance writers.

Prior to sitting in that class, I’d made the Dean’s List for academic performance. My mom was happy.

After my “awakening,” I never made the Dean’s List again. In fact, my GPA slid so far downhill that I almost didn’t graduate.

My mom was not happy.

But all those hours I’d spent working in the real world paid off. My internships, my clips and my newsroom references ended up landing me a job straight out of college at The Arizona Republic, one of the biggest newspapers in the United States.

My mom was happy again.

Unless you’ve worked in journalism, you have no idea how rare it is for a 21-year-old college graduate to get hired on at a huge newspaper like that. It’s the equivalent going from your high school baseball team straight to playing for the Minnesota Twins in Major League Baseball, bypassing college and the minor leagues altogether.

And the only reason it happened was that I came to this realization early on: College is a sham.

In Business, Academic Achievements are Meaningless

Twenty years after I’d sat in that classroom and listened to the newspaper editor, I stood in front of a class of MBA students at a local college here in the Twin Cities, teaching them about social media and business.

“You want to land your dream job?” I asked them. “I can promise you, it’s not going to mean jack squat to an employer that you earned an MBA. You know why? Anybody can sit here, read textbooks and case studies, memorize lessons and recite them to a professor or answer them on a written test. What does that prove?”

“Wow, I think that’s the first time in twenty-five years of teaching I’ve heard my MBA classes referred to as jack squat,” the professor interjected.

I figured if I was going to get thrown out of the classroom, I might as well finish my thought.

“No offense, but I’ve been out in the business world long enough to know that letters behind a name mean nothing,” I continued. “Here’s what most employerscare about: Can you do the job? Do you have real-world experience? Do you have great professional references? Do you have an impressive body of work or proven track record? Do you have the type of passion, talent and intuition that can’t be taught? Those are the things that will make you stand out to an employer – not fancy academic titles or degrees.”

Look, I’m the son of two college professors. My parents were all about school growing up. I’ve been a lifelong learner, and to this day I still devour books, e-courses and anything else I can use to make myself smarter when it comes to running my business or helping my 1-on-1 coaching clients.

But, aside from the internships and a few outstanding professors (many of whom were teaching on the side while working a “day job” for a newspaper), I think college was a complete waste of money.

Harvard vs. Hard Knocks

One of my favorite all-time movie scenes is from Good Will Hunting, where Matt Damon’s character – a self-taught genius with no formal education – takes on a fancy-pants Harvard student who is trying to embarrass Damon’s non-educated friends in front of some girls at a bar.

“You see, the sad thing about a guy like you is in fifty years, you’re going to start doing some thinking on your own, and you’re going to come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life,” Damon says. “One, don’t do that, and two, you dropped $150,000 on a (expletive) education that you could’ve gotten for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”

The small college I went to (the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota) now costs around $45,000 a year, and the idea of dropping $180,000 or more to get a four-year degree is insane to me, especially given the times we live in.

Here’s what I mean: We exist in a world where I can literally ask my phone who the 9 President of the United States was and get the answer (William Henry Harrison) in three seconds. We walk around with a virtual library in our pockets, where every recorded aspect of human history is now at our fingertips to watch, see or learn for free thanks to Google and the Internet.

As long as I can read and write and don’t plan on becoming a doctor, chemical engineer or scientist, what do I need college for? Imagine what $45,000 a year could do in terms of hiring a professional journalist to give me 1-on-1 training or mentoring? Imagine the e-courses, books and video trainings I could buy and consume on my own time to learn my craft? Imagine the ability I’d have to start publishing my own articles online and sharing them with my target audiences through blogs and social media channels? Imagine the ability I’d have via LinkedIn and other social media networks to find, engage and begin building relationships with key figures in my industry?

Class Dismissed

I know there are always exceptions, and yes, I know that some HR Directors or other employers will only look at candidates who have a certain academic record or type of college degree.

I also think that’s a huge – and foolish – mistake.

Imagine your organization missing out on the likes of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, John Mackey (founder of Whole Foods), Frank Lloyd Wright, Walt Disney, Mary Kay Ash (founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics), Rachel Ray, David Neeleman (founder of Jet Blue Airways) and countless others.

None of the people on that list finished college. Some didn’t even finish high school! And yet all of them are among the most successful businesspeople on this planet.

There’s a lesson to be learned from that, isn’t there?