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A Wiser Retirement®
292. Is an MBA Worth the Investment?
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In this episode of the A Wiser Retirement® Podcast, we explore whether pursuing an MBA is truly worth the investment. We’re joined by Nancy Mercer, Assistant Dean and Director of MBA Marketing and Admissions, and Dr. Lauren Heller, Dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College, for an inside look at how MBA programs have evolved and what prospective students should consider. We highlight Berry College’s distinctive approach, including small class sizes, personalized mentorship, and new online flexibility. We also dive into career outcomes, employer support, and the lasting value of accreditation.
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Evolution of MBA Programs Today
Speaker 1I think the average age of an MBA is about 28 now nationwide. That is significantly younger than in the past. So the sort of launch into management and the kind of tools and the needs that MBA students are bringing to the table are evolving with it, I think.
Speaker 2Welcome to a Wiser Retirement Podcast. Are you curious about whether an MBA is worth the investment? I'm Casey Smith. Today, I'm joined by Nancy Mercer, assistant Dean and Director of MBA Marketing and Admissions at Berry College, and Dr Lauren Heller, the Dean of the Campbell School of Business at Berry College. Each week, we bring you practical advice on retirement, investing and planning for your financial future. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening. Let's get started Well, hello.
Speaker 1Good morning. Good morning Casey. How are you?
Speaker 2So first of all, a couple of things. One is the last few podcasts. We flipped it, so people have been interviewing me talking about a topic, so I'm glad to be back in control of the microphone. Second of all, if you guys have not been to Berry College, go take a visit to Berry College. Man 27,000 acres of land. The campus is very, very, very attractive and the education is quality.
Speaker 1I say that as an alumni, you're our number this time too. Two to one right.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yes, right, yeah, that's right, um, so thanks for coming down from Rome to to talk about the MBA program. Uh, I guess in full disclosure. Uh, you know I have a vested interest in Berry college so it might be a little bit biased.
Speaker 4Uh, I sit on the.
Speaker 2Campbell school of Executive Advisory Council currently as a chairman. That's right, and so I enjoy running two meetings a year with Dean Heller and working with Nancy and helping the program become even better.
Speaker 1And he's the business school's biggest cheerleader, whatever that looks like.
Speaker 2Yes, I have the award. I don't know, I haven't gotten you pom-poms yet but, we'll work on that oh geez no, and the plaque is being married.
Speaker 2So so, yeah, I graduated from uh, from barry, a long time ago, uh, 2000. It's easy year to remember, uh, and and I'll say that my journey uh has. Yeah, I'll say I don't think in any education you, you learn everything you need for life, the best part of life, and that's how that works. But it gave me the tools I feel like I needed to get started and it takes some ambition and your own work ethic right.
Understanding MBA Fundamentals
Speaker 2I think that I agree. So many people, uh, they go to school, um, thinking that if I go to this school then I'm gonna come out, I'm gonna make a100,000 a year and it doesn't. It doesn't. It does look like that and maybe in some careers by default, maybe not many. It just takes a little work, networking, ambition. The networking at Barry, I think, is fairly easy because we are a smaller school and so you try to help the others up that come along. But my time there was was invaluable and so I wanted to share a little of that with that, with our, with our listeners and our client base that listened to, to listen to the podcast. So let's go ahead and jump into this. First of all, we all know what undergrad is. We go, but why don't we make sure that everybody understands what an MBA is? Give me the cliff notes. Or was it MBA for dummies?
Speaker 5That does exist. Actually it's not our program but it does exist.
Speaker 5No, I would say the Masters of Business Administration is what MBA stands for. It's been around since 1908, maybe? No, I would say the Masters of Business Administration is what MBA stands for. It's been around since 1908, maybe Harvard was the school that created it initially. So it's a longstanding degree, primarily for students who are moving into managerial positions, leadership positions. Dean Heller, feel free to jump in. It's been at Barry, I will say, for we celebrated our 50th anniversary two years ago, so it is a degree that's sort of specialized at a higher level of business. I would say Anything you want to add on that.
Speaker 1And I think in this sort of modern age of AI and other things and we might get on to this later in the podcast but it sort of provides you a sort of Swiss army knife toolkit of all sorts of different business skills that people use in their careers A little bit of accounting, a little bit of finance, a little bit of strategy, marketing everything that a manager needs to succeed and grow. As you said, casey, it's about the tools you need. You still need the hard work, you still need the networking you still need to you know, work all of those tools. Just like if you had a Swiss army knife and kept it in your pocket, you wouldn't do anything.
Speaker 2So what's the difference between an MBA and an undergrad? You think now, specifically the last year and a half of undergrad. So you go through your core. I'm sorry, you have your core but then you go through your, like, your specialties of finance. So what's the finance if the finance major gets a finance MBA?
Speaker 4is it?
Speaker 2is it more like case studies is kind of the workload, and is that fair to say?
Speaker 1Yeah, there's more cases, less like memorization. Exactly. You cannot flashcards your way through an MBA right. It's a lot more group work. That's very intentional If I think about actually how the office is set up at Wiser, where we have different people mentoring and working and bringing different skill sets to a team. An MBA trains students to one of our sort of AI proof degrees, in the sense that it's not just about learning a tool that then you know AI can do flashcards Right.
Speaker 4Very easily Right.
Speaker 1It's about taking all of those tools and synergizing them and thinking strategically in different areas in finance and accounting, and I guess my question is how do you fail an MBA? Oh well, it's happened. It does happen, I mean it, it's happened, it's happened.
Speaker 4Yeah, it does happen, I mean it sounds like you just wouldn't be participating.
Speaker 2You just, you're just like, you paid the money and then you didn't show up for anything.
Speaker 5And that does happen.
Speaker 1Well, and it is about developing professionals in a work environment right. So it's participating, but it's participating on a higher level. I teach an MBA course in our healthcare track we do have a specialized track for healthcare administrators and managers and I teach an MBA course in the summer that is cross-listed with different assignments with an undergrad course. I let a select number and I very, very carefully choose them of undergraduates sort of sit in with the MBAs in the summer and have different assignments. And what's really fun for me is come presentation day, our first set of presentations for the MBAs. I watch my undergraduates watch the MBAs make presentations working professionals who do this and their jaws are on the floor and that's fun for me as a professor to sort of sit there and pop popcorn and watch because the level of expectation we have for a working professional to present.
Speaker 1It's not yeah, it's not about reading your three by five index cards in front of your. Powerpoint or, god forbid, reading your PowerPoint slides and not looking at the audience. This makes my heart die.
Speaker 4Right, right.
Speaker 1It's it's much more engaging, and so it's a really neat learning opportunity to see that come together. So, yes, it's participation, but it's it's taking that in a very applied context. Yeah.
Speaker 2That makes, that makes sense.
Speaker 5Yeah, and I would just add too it really focuses on developing the person's leadership ability. So at the undergraduate level you're not probably going to graduate and move right into a leadership opportunity, but at the graduate level you need that skill set. So you need to develop those skills that come along with making strategic decisions. So it focuses a little bit more on higher level decision making.
Speaker 2So let's talk about that. You think about certain careers like teaching. You get your master's and there's a pay scope for that and you just go oh, I have a master's, I get this much. It doesn't work that way in corporate environment, so what? How would you measure success at post MBA graduation?
Welcome and Introduction
Speaker 1Yeah, there's a lot of ways to do that. So certainly, mbas do tend to have higher earning potential, right. But it's not just because, yeah, there's some pay scale and low weight, you got your master's and that's what you earn. It's about the tools they now bring to the table, right. So it's about them to be able to be in a room and be in a participant in conversations about strategy, to be able to be part of a management team that's working with people from a variety of different areas and understanding a little bit about what the CFO is going to bring to the table, what the marketing team is going to bring to the table.
Speaker 1So often that results in different titles and different earning. That comes as part of that, but it can also result in sort of some intang using a lot of. She credits the MBA with lots of tools to help her run that store, just be able to read a balance sheet, to be able to be thinking about marketing and strategy and inventory. And you know we have other students who maybe inherited family businesses and can point to specific courses in the MBA where they saved their family business. What did you say, nancy?
Speaker 5It was something like $20,000, right Just from a course that he took in the MBA. Yeah, so right.
MBA vs. Undergraduate Experience
Speaker 1That's so um and so yeah, so some of the ROI can show up in a salary, but some of it shows up in other ways too. What um?
Speaker 2uh, how many? How00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00. Typically I think it's reimbursement right, because if you weren't successful. They don't want to pay for that.
Speaker 1Right, yeah, it's funny that trend has changed. I'd say, in the past 10, 20 years. Gone are the days where you go and you work at a company for 5, 10 years and then they just pay for the MBA. I think part of that is that companies were paying for, were paying for the nba and then their you know employees would get the nba and find jobs elsewhere, right and so um.
Speaker 1So that's changing a little bit. Companies are doing some of that um, but we are seeing a lot more self-pay. For one reason or another, we're also seeing companies maybe pay for a certification or for a course, for specific tools that they can then use at the firm. But the nature of the MBA has really changed over the past 20 years. Mbas have also gotten younger than they did maybe 10, 20 years ago. I think. The average age of an MBA is about 28 now. Nationwide. That is significantly younger than in the past. So the sort of launch into management and the kind of tools and the needs that MBA students are bringing to the table are evolving with it, I think.
Speaker 2Yeah, sometimes when the hiring slows down for graduates, they go right into an MBA program. Do you, do you have a preference? Would you rather see someone go work for a few years and come back, or would you, would you say, an undergrad can go right into? I know, I know that's it varies, probably like nursing or education, it probably I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about at this point, but some people some people just seem to go right into it, and other people come back after a couple of years.
Speaker 1So one of the strengths of our program that I really think is neat is its diversity. So we have a decent number of students. That come about 59% of our incoming. So I'm looking at Nancy because she's the one that pulled these statistics, I'm citing my source by looking at her. Um, but about 59 of our incoming students are not business majors. Um, they come in from all sorts of different you know, other majors that are they're coming to learn business?
Speaker 2yeah, exactly. So we have like an agriculture major and then they have their own company or want to start their own company yeah, they have no business knowledge whatsoever.
Speaker 1Music, we've had biochem, we've had communications.
Speaker 5Animal science. It's a big one at Berry, for sure.
Speaker 1All sorts of different ones. But then we also have these working professionals that really bring some wonderful things to the table from local companies. So up in Rome we have a lot from our local healthcare systems. Local industry, yeah, Local industries. You know Mohawk, Shaw, International Paper, some others, Right. But so what I think is really interesting is the mix that those groups bring to the table.
Speaker 1So if someone were to say to me, oh, it's a recession, should I just get my MBA? My question back to them would be why? So what is it you're looking to achieve? What are you trying to? You know, what do you really believe the MBA will do for you? Why are you here? Right, there are good answers and bad answers to that question, and I think it involves having a conversation with an admissions team or somebody like that.
Measuring ROI and Success
Speaker 1One thing that we pride ourselves on at Barry is we really believe in a culture of mentorship and a sort of personalized. When I'm teasing with my colleagues, we call it artisanal education. It makes us sound like Whole Foods, I think. But the idea is that you can have a conversation about what might be best for you. Right, when you get advising, you're going to get it from the director of the program from the dean and from faculty. Right, we don't do paid advisors. You know other than faculty, you know other than faculty. So there's some distinctiveness there, and so I think it's a lot about the conversations. You have to decide what that is for you.
Speaker 2Bringing it back a little higher level. Sure, oftentimes we see online advertised executive MBA. What's the difference between executive MBA and an MBA?
Speaker 5So an executive MBA traditionally is going to be directed at sort of a higher level student. Someone who's already in a management position or a leadership position, tends to have a little more structure to it, tends to be on the weekends or maybe they meet every other month, so there's a lot of sort of ways to progress through that program.
Speaker 2A lot more expensive generally speaking, I can tell they seem to be a lot more expensive, but a lot shorter.
Speaker 5They are shorter and so they're sort of trying to capture and make the most of the times of executives who don't have a lot of extra time to be, off work or whatnot, but very focused, I think, on sort of that higher level, perhaps C-suite kind of decision making that you need to be able to do.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 5Interesting.
Speaker 1And the market does recognize that it's shorter. Right, there's a lot of you. If you do a Google search right now, you have a lot of people asking is an executive MBA? The quote unquote same as a quote unquote real MBA and in some ways it's a different product, right? So? But yeah, the price tag tends to be higher. It tends to be fly them in for a weekend and they'll, you know, stay in very nice hotels and do some intensive work and I'm always paid by the employer, the employer is sending that person through the program.
Speaker 2Yeah, that makes sense.
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Speaker 2So what? Let's talk about types. We have a lot of online MBAs and then we have a more traditional structure. What is Barry doing?
Speaker 1So I'm so glad you asked, casey. So we're actually in the process of transitioning to an online MBA with in-person residencies. So, as I mentioned, the MBA is changing. Students are getting younger, but also students are looking for more flexibility. Now we have working professionals that have families, mentorship. Keep that focus on in-person sort of interactions, right and engagement, but sort of condense it down. Give some of the benefits of what we hear from an executive MBA in terms of condensing all of that down, but then allow the flexibility of online.
Speaker 1So we have traditionally been a hybrid program in some respects where we've been sort of two weeks on, one week off in person, and what we found in feedback from our students is that's not the flexibility they need. They basically need where they would like the in-person right. They want that in-person interaction. They need to be able to take entire courses online or not. We have an MBA student right now that's in Italy. For great reasons related to her company, she certainly can't fly to Barry two weeks on, one week off, right, and so what we're doing is we're actually redesigning the entire program. It's very exciting, and so sometimes when people think online education, they think the pandemic right.
Speaker 1And that is terrifying.
Speaker 2Nobody wants to go back to that Like loosely connected Zooms.
Speaker 1Yes, that is not online education, that is emergency remote teaching. They are very different, right. So to do this well, it really requires a redesign of our entire program. We're piloting two different core courses this upcoming year. Our supply chain course and our capstone strategy course will be online. This year we're also piloting some new residencies, so we're going to have an orientation residency up at the wind shape section of our campus, of those beautiful 27,000 acres, and we're going to have students, faculty and the deans embedded together Right Embedded together over a weekend with some really intensive group work and teamwork and analytics skills. We may zoom in a pretty famous author, among some other things. So we'll see on that. That's sort of a TBD.
Speaker 5It's a teaser, yeah that's right.
Speaker 1You got to come to find out.
Speaker 2So what is Barry offering right now as far as MBA programs? So there's different tracks. What are the different?
Speaker 1tracks. Yeah, so we have a part time program and a fifth year program, right, or? Or we could think of it more like a full time program. So the part time program is meant to be completed in two years. Students take an average of two courses a year. Sorry, two courses a semester, excuse me.
Speaker 5It's a really slow progression. Yeah, two courses a semester.
Speaker 1And in doing that it allows them to balance a full-time employment right. They have to do it well. They have to plan their time, particularly toward the end of the program. I think all of them are, you know, really doing that balance well. But when they do that they can earn it that way. Or we have a fairly new fifth year program. It's really a year and a summer. So I want to be clear about that.
Speaker 1That's right, but essentially students can do that straight out of undergraduate and meeting certain admissions requirements. There is an elevated level of admission requirement for this program. It is graduate school right, but we have fifth years from Berry undergrad. We have fifth years from lots of other schools who come to Berry for the MBA specifically, and so for that that is a full-time program, four courses a semester that would always be in person, not online.
Speaker 2Is it the part-time program? They'll be online, no, actually both are transitioning.
Online MBAs and Program Flexibility
Speaker 1so one also unique, distinctive, I think, feature of our program is our fifth years and our part-timers come together in the classroom. They might be at different stages in their cohort, but they both take classes from the same faculty and so that transition will work for both of them. So what are the different major?
Speaker 2offerings.
Speaker 1So right now we have a professional development track and when we have a healthcare management track. Those are our two main programs. We have some things with professional accountancy but those are, as you know, some changes in the CPA. That's sort of going by the wayside. Students are in the professional management track, that's right, but we do have some significant interest from both current managing professionals in healthcare. I don't know if you know about Northwest Georgia, but it's a bit of a healthcare hub.
Speaker 2It is.
Speaker 1You get some of the best healthcare in the state there. And so a lot of those folks from our friends at Harbin and Atrium and Advocate and Advent. There's been a few buyouts so I have to remember the new names a little bit Thankfully.
Speaker 5They all start with.
Speaker 1A.
Speaker 4Yeah, that's good. So when in?
Speaker 1doubt guess an A name. But then also we've found the healthcare track has been neat for, say, a biochemistry pre-med major that comes out of undergrad and, for very strategic reasons, wants to take a gap year before medical school and might want to learn how to run a practice while they're at it and have some basic business skills. Those students have been very successful in the health care track. Some folks like that Um and so and they're and they're fun to teach. It's also fun to get such a variety of working professionals in the healthcare industry. I talk more about that track cause I teach in it, um, but they're a fun group.
Speaker 2So what's the uh Barry? Uh, in undergrad is known for reasonable class sizes. Obviously. What's class size for MBA track?
Speaker 1We try to cap it at 25. It's incredibly important. The nature of MBA work are group work and more intensive activities, and that would remain the same when transitioning to online. People sometimes think, oh, the minute I transitioned to online, now I can be with a million people and you wouldn't even know. But that redesign also means that we need, in some ways it makes class size even more important because we need those in-person and sort of one-on-one, I should say interactions.
Speaker 1So we try to keep it about there. Once in a while we have big classes and have to mess with that, but generally that's another thing that keeps us distinctive.
Speaker 5Rarely over 30. Yeah, in a class you think about.
Speaker 2Just go back to career track again. If I get an MBA from Phoenix online I'm just guessing, because I've always worked for myself or have been basically, uh, self self-managed. Um, if I was hiring someone, if I saw an MBA from Georgia tech versus Phoenix, that's two very different things to me, absolutely. Um, if I see an MBA from really any private school, in my mind I go, oh, that's probably a good MBA program. Uh, but then I you go, you think about cost, so costs, the spectrum is all over the place.
Speaker 1Absolutely.
Speaker 2I guess some of them are over a hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1Uh, Wharton's is 200 and some 200,000. Yeah.
Speaker 2Um, what are they learning there that you couldn't learn through other means? I don't know. It's probably the networking.
Speaker 1If I had to guess. If we're saying a top five program, I think the top five program is all about their alumni network. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2But for most people the ROI on $200,000 doesn't make sense to me and I would definitely not go into debt. I you know I love Barry college. But I often get the question do I go to Barry and do I get school loans, or would I go to KSU and go for free? And I say go to KSU and go for free because you don't. You just the debt is so hard for people to overcome debt, especially if you have to take, you know, if you're having to take out $15,000 a year for Barry and you want to be a teacher, right, right.
Speaker 1It's like that doesn't make sense. An undergrad is so different. What's really?
Speaker 2interesting and Barry has many programs that you can qualify for to get the cost way down. So don't not go to Barry because you need a supply and see what's offered to you. But I go back to saying MBA. Why would you loan $200,000 to go to an MBA program?
Speaker 1I couldn't agree with you more, Casey. And do we have a deal for you?
Speaker 2I'm always surprised. I don't think I need an MBA. I'd like to teach one someday, so maybe I should get it so I can teach it. But when I hear about the price of berries I'm always like maybe I should sign up. Maybe I'll buy three or four of these things.
Speaker 1So, tell me how much it is how much is it to get to the program? Total cost out the door You're looking at about $22,000 for a for a berry MBA over two years, $22,000.
Speaker 2I could probably justify that in the return on investment.
Speaker 1Right, oh, absolutely so. If you look nationwide, I think median ROI in an MBA all of them is about 13%, which is still a pretty healthy increase. Right, If you look at salary over a lifetime? But the median price of those MBAs studied is over $100,000. So when you think about getting a great MBA, getting smaller class sizes, getting really in-depth mentorship, getting some good networking, I will say It'll cost you $60,000 a year.
Speaker 2Well, that's the sticker price. People don't really pay that for the undergrad. Maybe get the master's or 22. I'm like, okay, there's a value here. Every board meeting, what do I say? They need to increase the price, right. Every time, I always say they need to increase the price. This thing should be at least 40, right, but so I think there's tremendous value, especially if it goes online. You probably could see a price increase because of the supply demand curve. With you being an economics, that's true.
Speaker 1You understand that supply demand curve. You're speaking my language, Casey. You know I love a supply and demand diagram.
Speaker 2I guess our last board meeting we got really broken out into the P&L on a master's program. Yes, we did. All of us business owners sitting there going. We need to increase the price increase.
Berry's MBA Offerings and Value
Speaker 1I was so excited. I should have known that the minute I show a spreadsheet to a bunch of business leaders. Everyone's going to get excited. I was like y'all are my people we live.
Speaker 2We live in that world. Yes, spreadsheets all day long. So I mean that that's a that's a tremendous value to get through this program. But I think that's how you have to look at it. I even, personally, I'll go in my soapbox for a second. Like undergrad costs are so out of, out of, out of line with the rate of return.
Speaker 2I think college is important, um, but I don't I think the cost of college. It has to be really considered. Like you had a client one time there. Their son was wanting to go into the ministry and I said what college is he want to go to? And they said Duke. And I'm like well, how would you spend a thousand dollars to go to the ministry? You're not gonna make anything. Uh, it's a different calling. Uh, different rewards. Uh, in the in the end they went to UGA and they did it under the Zell and it was free, almost Right. So they made the smarter decision, right, roi for that, for that situation, um, but I I firmly believe that Barry, barry, I think Barry has a heart on this, um, but I think academia across the board, it's it's get the students in.
Speaker 2We can keep getting our 6% increase every single year and they can get loans because the private industry will just fund this stuff, cause you can't even file bankruptcy. If you could file bankruptcy on it then it probably would flip the cards a little bit, but you can't file bankruptcy. So we see people coming out with 80, 90, a hundred thousand dollars in student loans in their first year job. They're making $60,000 a year and they're probably making that for a while. Right, and you can't. How do you overcome that?
Speaker 5Yeah.
Speaker 2So they really should say this is my degree.
Speaker 2This is the region of the country I live in. The region of the country I live in, this is what I want to do, most likely be hired to do, and this is the pay scale for doing that. And then it tells you what the chances of getting paid back that loan are or what your life looks like after that loan. And you should have to initial that and and I you know it's not going to the loan companies are just going to make the loan. But I think the schools should be more involved in in stepping in front of the situations that we love to have you here.
Speaker 2But and in Barry's case, barry's in a great position to do that because there's so many applicants and the school's not very large. There's less than 2000 students on the Barry, cambridge and the undergrad program, so they, they literally turn away a lot of people every single year. So if you turn away a lot of people every single year, so if you turn away one to say this isn't a good financial decision for you, right, there's somebody else in line who maybe it is the right financial decision for them, or they have the resources, or our endowment just keeps getting bigger and we keep discounting our tuition, but it's just something as a planner that I see on the other side. I don't see the beginning. I don't get asked questions at the beginning. I get hey, hey, I have a student loan debt. What do I do about?
Speaker 5this and of course you can never say say it because it's already been done.
Speaker 1But you want to say we do cover that in our personal finance courses we do make sure students understand that student loans are the only you know you can't get out of them with bankruptcy be, careful, all of those things, for that exact reason that you talk about, right, and I am proud of the fact that Barry is a very sort of missional place in that it was founded from participation of donors and parents and other things. If they follow the requirements of the program, they'll graduate from Berry debt-free, yeah right, which is a really neat sort of way to think about this. But absolutely, I have a daughter myself. She's nowhere near college age yet, but we'll be having those same tough conversations, casey, if she wants to go be, I don't know, an underwater basket weaving major.
Speaker 1I won't.
Speaker 2I won't call a particular major out Right right right but they're not in the business school.
Speaker 1the ones I'm thinking of Correct.
Speaker 2Anything else you guys want to add to this conversation about the MBAs in general or Berry College MBA program?
Speaker 1in general or Barry College MBA program. Yeah, no, I think when thinking about costs for an MBA, it's really important to do your homework. So, yes, our sticker cost is pretty low. Other MBAs sometimes advertise lower sticker costs but then, particularly at state institutions, you'll find they have a lot of hidden fees, like all of a sudden you didn't know you were paying for the athletics department with you know a $900 student fee per semester.
Speaker 1That was literally my PhD alma mater. I believe that's how much I paid for go Tar Heels, but I'm pretty sure that's how much I paid for those Right I mean I had to. I mean, he got Duke and I've got to get my beloved Tar Heels.
Speaker 4At some point.
Speaker 1That's right, um. So I would encourage you to you know sort of reach out and do your homework and compare apples to apples. Make sure you know what you're getting from a university of Phoenix degree, right, um? Versus a Berry degree, right.
Speaker 5And you might want to touch on accreditation as well.
Speaker 1Oh, that's another thing. Another thing that people should be looking for is they want a business school that's accredited so we and accredited by you know, an elite organization. So, for example, we're accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, or AACSB. As part of that accreditation, there are a lot of requirements for the training of our faculty, for the currency and publication of our faculty, for our student outcomes.
Speaker 2That's the biggest thing I've gotten from my time at Berry and volunteering. My time is learning about AACSB and, as my own kids have looked at schools, that's the first thing I go to. Are they AACSB accredited? And most of them are at least the ones we've been looking at. There's a couple that that yeah.
Speaker 1University of Phoenix is not exactly.
Speaker 1Well and sometimes it helps. I was actually just two days ago. I just flew back from Scotland and I was in Glasgow working on a partnership for our NBA, a potential international immersion with the university of Glasgow. They have an amazing business school there, the Adam Smith Business School, so it's easy to remember and one of the reasons it's so easy for us to work together is we're both AACSB accredited, so they have knowledge that, hey, our students are going to have certain requirements, they're going to know certain things when they go through our program. So then we can work on a partnership and we can have our students work together and consult for real businesses doing real work, and we have that as a baseline. So, yeah, I would say definitely think about what you know, research, accreditations and what they have and make sure. Like you know, programs can look very shiny and pretty and flexible and all of those things, but it's really about what are employers going to value? Ask about their placements. That's another thing students should look at.
Speaker 2Yeah, what jobs they're getting, yeah, what jobs are your students getting?
Speaker 1that were different, right? That's another important point to think about when looking at an MBA.
Speaker 2Well, thank you for doing this and coming in and talking about the program, and I think that certainly anyone who wants to advance their career, this is one program to be looking at.
Speaker 5Yes.
Speaker 2But, more importantly, what's the important role of an MBA? It sounds like it really helps you with leadership, and my requirement here for all our young advisors you start down the CFP track, so you're sort of a financial planner.
Speaker 5Sure.
Final Thoughts and Accreditation
Speaker 2But you think about, as their careers evolve, some point we need them to be me and you have to become me either by reading the books that I read or going through programs like this.
Speaker 2So that's uh, that's really important. Um, thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're interested in learning more about why is a wealth management or Barry college, uh, you can go to our show notes. There's links to both us and Berry there. If you want to listen to more about education-related podcasts, we have episode 295, what is FAFSA and how Does it Work, and then episode 287, William and I had fun with a topic called the Financial Stuff. They Don't Teach you in School. You didn't hear that.
Speaker 5I've already seen it stuff they don't teach you in school.
Speaker 2You didn't hear that. Related educational videos on the YouTube channel. How do I prioritize my financial goals? And then, obviously, what is financial planning? Youtube channel is A Wiser Retirement. Be sure to go there and like and subscribe if you like what you see. Thanks again, guys, and maybe we can do this again some other time.
Speaker 5Sounds great, thank you, casey, appreciate it.
Speaker 4Thanks for listening to a Wiser Retirement Podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. That way you don't miss any new episodes. We'd also appreciate if you could leave a rating and review.
Speaker 4If you have any questions about anything that was discussed today, head to wiserinvestorcom and reach out. This podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and is not to be considered as investment advice or solicitation to buy or sell any financial products, securities, digital assets or any other investment vehicles or a basis to make any financial decisions. Wiser Wealth Management Incorporated is a registered investor advisor with the SEC. The host and or guests may personally own securities, digital assets or other investment vehicles mentioned on this podcast. Neither the host nor guests of the show are compensated for their participation and no referral fees are paid to or received by any host or guest for clients, listeners or similar interests. Investments involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor, tax professional, insurance professional and or legal professional before implementing any strategy discussed herein. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.