Prior to studying an MBA, and also throughout the graduate course, many people will ask you a simple question – ‘Why are you studying an MBA?’.
Most will ask ‘Why MBA?’ out of genuine interest, some out of frustration with the amount of your time it’s taking away, some out of admiration and a few out of envy. It’s important that your answer is clear and relevant to your own motivation and not for the sake of the person asking the question.
The success of any major project often relies heavily on its purpose. A project’s purpose motivates those involved. It engages and inspires. It helps people push through challenges and find solutions. When the opposite is true, when a project has unclear objectives, it has a greater chance of failing.
So, what is your purpose in earning an MBA degree? Which reason/s most apply to you in seeking a powerful business education? What answer will you give when you’re asked why you’re at business school?
Let's explore.
1. Launch (or relaunch!) your career with an MBA
Every career is built on knowledge. Few courses offer the breadth and depth of business-essential knowledge as an MBA.
An MBA course can help you forge a new career path. It can also have enormously positive effects both on salary and seniority as a business professional.
It can do this because it differentiates the MBA graduate from those around them in the eyes of managers, recruiters and potential employers. It is evidence of their knowledge and capabilities across a business and as a manager or leader of people.
An MBA qualification is also proof of an individual’s superior time management and teamwork skills. It also leaves its graduates with endlessly transferable business skills, including leadership, teamwork, communication, analytical skills, strategic thinking, creativity and more.
Each, on its own, is a career booster. Combined, they offer a potent mix of talents that great businesses are always seeking. They can lead to you working in more senior roles across organisations or new industries.
Career-wise, an MBA can:
- Enhance your current career
- Differentiate you from others
- Offer you the opportunity to change careers
- Give you new, highly valuable transferrable skills
2. MBAs supercharge your salary
According to the Graduate Outcomes Survey, professionals in Australia with a postgraduate coursework qualification in business and management, which includes MBAs, had an annual median salary of $120,000 in 2023. In comparison, those with an undergraduate degree in the same study area earned $69,200. This demonstrates how much more you can earn when you further your tertiary studies.
This is in line with the findings of a 2023 report by the Graduate Management Admission Council, where 69 per cent of employers reveal that workers with graduate management degrees, including MBAs, usually earn more than others at their organisations.
Many MBA graduates obtain this qualification to pursue leadership and management roles. According to SEEK, business managers can earn an average annual salary ranging from $110,000 to $130,000. The role is also expected to grow by 9.2 per cent in the next five years, indicating a healthy demand for this high-paying position.
In terms of salary, an MBA graduate degree can:
- Immediately boost income
- Make a massive difference to lifelong earnings
- Help fund a better lifestyle for you and your family
3. Develop lifelong global professional networks
The building of a powerful network has always been an excellent argument for completing an MBA. After all, you’re spending intense time, whether on campus or online, working on projects and sharing experiences with high achievers from all over the country and often around the world.
An MBA is the type of experience that develops lifelong friendships. Of course, those friends over the next few decades are going to spread their wings throughout organisations around the globe.
Sometimes they will be looking for people they know to help fill senior roles, meaning you’re now part of a high-powered recruitment network that offers entirely new career opportunities.
Sometimes you’ll need the advice of people you trust who are experts from outside your own organisation. Their distance and objective point of view mean they can see clearly and help develop solutions without the baggage that comes from being inside the company walls. This means you’re also now part of a powerful problem-solving team.
Finally, being a part of such a group of people from different sectors, industries, territories and walks of life means you naturally get to see issues, opportunities and challenges from numerous points of view.
Diversity, as the business world has discovered, is an essential ingredient in the recipe for success. It enhances decision-making powers, improves resilience and reveals options that are simply not visible when there is not a breadth of career and life experience on board.
In terms of networking, an MBA can:
- Put you in the company of high achievers
- Offer a sounding board for ideas and challenges
- Open up new job opportunities
- Give you a diverse perspective and a broader worldview
4. Start and scale your own business
An MBA is not necessarily about success within a traditional organisation.
Many have used the knowledge gained from an MBA program to launch their own business and become an expert in their field.
Entrepreneurship is one of the greatest management and leadership challenges. It requires flawless strategic business management skills, deep knowledge of people management techniques and processes, a powerful understanding of business operations and an advanced understanding of various business areas such as marketing, human resources and finance.
After startup comes a growth phase that, when approached without the required level of strategic planning, often creates so much pressure it proves fatal for businesses.
Knowledge gained with an MBA gives an entrepreneur the confidence to enter that growth phase with everything in place.
Growth, of course, at some stage means finding new customer segments and entering foreign markets. This challenge is the same for managers and leaders within organisations. Most MBA programs have a focus on entrepreneurship because it is often just as important within large organisations as it is for fast-moving startups.
All in all, an MBA teaches its students how to have a strategic overview of an entire business.
For your own business, an MBA can:
- Teach you how to scale with confidence
- Show you how to identify new markets
- Give you the confidence and knowledge to go beyond borders
- Inspire you to work on your business instead of in it
5. Become a powerful business leader
If an MBA is boiled down to a single idea, that idea could well be ‘leadership’.
Leadership is about taking competent and confident responsibility for the success of an organisation, a department, a service, a product or a brand.
It’s about convincing the people around you, whether it’s just a few or thousands, to become engaged in a journey that is bigger than the sum of their parts. That has a lot to do with flawless communication, from clear delivery of information in a one-on-one situation to conveying consistent and relevant messaging across the entire organisation.
It’s about inspiring and caring, listening and creating an environment of trust. Once known as a soft skill, great communication is now recognised as a game changer.
Every MBA has a strong focus on leadership, including academic study, case studies and practical experience in project groups.
Various forms of interpersonal communication are deeply analysed in an MBA, including different audiences such as departmental teams, boards of directors and other stakeholders such as community and shareholder groups. One vital ingredient of communication, of course, is asking questions and listening.
In the business world, excellent leadership is a powerful advantage. It’s only becoming more important as unique challenges arrive more quickly than ever before.
In terms of leadership, an MBA can:
- Teach you how to influence people
- Give you skills to lead businesses through difficult challenges
- Show you how to identify and interpret the right data
- Offer you far greater credibility as a leader
- Give you powerful communication skills
6. Get out of your comfort zone
A guarantee of every MBA program, whether face-to-face, online, part-time or full-time, is that it will take you outside your comfort zone.
It all happens in an environment of safety and security, but all MBA students are stretched and challenged just as they will be in the business world.
In the course, this teaches students entirely new skill sets, from leadership to strategic thinking and much more. Outside the school of business, it offers other skills that are just as valuable in personal life as they are in business – time management, discipline, prioritisation, utilisation of networks, delegation and more.
Without being drawn outside your comfort zone, little growth can occur. But an MBA is all about personal growth, so courses and coursework are typically designed to ensure you’re constantly tested, learning along the way from your own successes and failures.
By taking you out of your comfort zone, an MBA can:
- Teach you numerous new skills
- Develop your self-discipline, particularly when studying an online MBA
- Boost your confidence and behaviour around time management
- Give you a better ability to express business ideas and strategies to senior management
Elevate your career with an MBA
You can enjoy plenty of benefits by pursuing an MBA degree, such as higher salary prospects, building a strong professional network, transforming your business ideas into reality and more. Ready to embark on your journey? Discover various MBA courses available in Australia and enrol in the best program that fits your long-term career objectives.