Since an article about the No-Pay MBA went viral on LinkedIn, I have received an overwhelming response to my project. The LinkedIn article was viewed over 350,000 times (and counting) and shared over ten thousand times. Over 700 comments were posted on it.
I want to say thank you to all those who have reached out to me. In the past week, I have received hundreds of contact requests on LinkedIn, dozens of comments on my blog, a slew of shout-outs on Twitter, and many new subscribers to the No-Pay MBA newsletter. While many of the comments on the LinkedIn article were skeptical, everyone who reached out to me directly was enthusiastic about the potential of this method of learning. Your support has been overwhelming and inspiring.
Unfortunately, in order to respond individually to everyone who contacted me, I would probably have to quit my job, so please don’t be offended if I don’t reply to you with a personal message. I’ve tried to be transparent about what I’m doing, so most of the questions I’ve been asked in personal messages are answered on the blog (e.g. What courses are you taking? How did you decide which courses to take? Are you getting credit towards a regular degree? Don’t you think you’re missing out on the MBA network?)
If you’ve read through the blog and still have questions, I encourage you to post them publicly as comments on the blog so that I can respond in a way that benefits other readers who might have similar questions. And please keep the feedback and suggestions coming! I also encourage you to chime in on any of the online discussions that are taking place around this concept. Even though not everyone is convinced that the No-Pay MBA is the wave of the future, I’m thrilled to have sparked such a lively discussion.
Finally, I’d like to share a few of my favorite comments and exchanges inspired by the article:
“Depending on where she applies for her next job, I’m sure some employers will be impressed by her resourcefulness if she actually completes it - this is the stuff cover letters are made of. If her actual skills/knowledge is put in question, employers can do what they do with every other employee and administer some kind of test or pepper the interview with intentional questions about her knowledge.”
“True, she won’t be receiving any accredited degree but she will be showing that she completed the same course load as an accredited MBA which to me shows some ingenuity in the method of receiving the education. Isn’t this an example of what true forward thinking corporations want in an employee that thinks outside the box? Sure, not every firm is going to see this as an MBA equivalent or even a smart approach, but those are probably the firms that sort candidates based on where the candidate went to school without even evaluating the candidate’s potential, etc. This is also not the same as just reading some books. These are college level courses taught by tenured professors with testing in some cases. The only issue for a potential employer is of course verifying the validity of a MOOC MBA but I imagine at least for the foreseeable future there will not be a tremendous amount of them so to take a chance on a person won’t be a big deal. Plus, MBA level people already have an extensive work history at this point in their careers.”
On a related Poets and Quants article:
“Commenter1: This is awesome! Just curious, how would you list this on a resume? What ethical guidelines are there for listing yourself as an MBA from a MOOC?
“Commenter 2: Here’s how I see it: You would include a one-page overview of your MBA studies, listings the courses you’ve taken, the schools that sponsored them, the dates you completed them, and the grades you’ve received. You would divide the courses up by “core courses” and “elective courses.” And you would say you did what no mainstream MBA has ever done: Taken a full load of MBA courses on your own which demonstrated self-discipline, a thirst for learning, and the hard work to see it all through–and you are smart enough to get your MBA for free, saving yourself more than a quarter of a million dollars in tuition, school fees, and opportunity costs. What’s more, you will have gotten it by studying with professors from the world’s best business schools: Wharton, Yale, Stanford, Virginia, Northwestern, etc. You will even be able to say you took a course from a recent Nobel Prize winner, Robert Shiller of Yale, whose course on financial markets is coming out this February.
“Now this isn’t going to work at a McKinsey or Bain, but I think it would impress most employers greatly and make a difference in your employment prospects. And if you are able to pull this off you will have learned everything an MBA at Harvard or Chicago will have learned. You won’t have the network or the ideal sequence of learning that is part of a highly organized, lockstep MBA program. But it’s free!”
“Folks can debate till the end of time on how effective MOOCs can be w/o a stamp or piece of paper, but in the end, it’s the ones devoted to learning and building something useful out of it that will create the learning structure they need and come out with a story to tell on a resume or interview, and no one says networking is limited to B-school.
“Besides, by the time traditionalist MBA kids are done forking over $100k and polishing their resumes for jobs, you’ll be ready to apply what you’ve learned and start hiring them.
“Thanks for choosing to be so open to share your experiences; I’m on a similar path (science oriented), but am happily learning more now than I have in years. Onwards!”
