Getting Your Money’s Worth: The Return on Investment of the Chicago MBA
Although a growing number of business schools throughout the country are offering part-time or Flex MBA programs, many ambitious business students still choose to pursue their education full-time. However, the often high price of tuition combined with two years of lost income can be a huge deterrent in students choosing a full-time MBA program.
Although the thought of taking two years off from a career may be daunting—especially when it comes to a quickly growing city like Chicago—prospective MBAs should also keep in consideration one of the benefits of having an advanced degree: a salary bump. Considering this, students can better evaluate the true return on investment (ROI) program full-time MBA and make smart decisions about where their money will go farthest.
Don’t let the high price tags of MBA programs in a major business city Chicago scare you away. Below are the Chicago business schools that offer students the best ROI.
Kellogg School of Management – Northwestern University
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management boasts one of the highest ROI’s in the world, ranking fourth overall among the world’s best business schools on Forbes recently released list of the best full-time MBA programs in the U.S. Forbes‘ ranking is weighted specifically by how well compensated graduates are several years after earning an MBA.
Forbes ranking notes that 2012 MBA graduates are now making an average of $84,800 in their return on investment. While several business schools will often have a higher-level of compensation for in-state residents because of tuition differences, Kellogg tuition rates remain constant for both in and-out-of-state applicants. On average, students earn around $80,000 per year prior to enrollment, which increased to an astounding average of $196,000 just last year. Most grads pay their entire tuition back less than four years after graduating.
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Booth School of Business – The University of Chicago
In 2016, the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago topped the ValueWalk list for having the highest return on investment in the world. Comparing the relatively low cost of a Booth MBA (around $65,000-70,000) with graduate salaries of up to $150,000 or more, Booth graduates will have paid for their degree twice over by the time they have completed their first year of work. Booth graduates are also likely to find work quickly—within three months of graduation, 98.4 percent of all MBA graduates had secured job offers. Booth alumni also find many of their post-graduate opportunities through a broad network of alumni and career support at the university. In 2016, the university was responsible for facilitating 75.2 percent of student’s new jobs.
Lake Forest Graduate School of Management
The Leadership MBA at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management current tuition is $55,600 per year. According to PayScale figures, Lake Forest MBA grads earn around $107,000 annually—a difference of over $51,000. Graduates from the LFGSM are spread throughout the globe, living in all 50 states and in 15 countries around the world. Alumni from the MBA program hold positions as CEOs of major companies, elected officials, entrepreneurs, and leaders in a wide variety of industries.
Northwestern Kellogg Launches 10 New Courses
Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has just launched ten new business courses for the 2017-18 academic year, according to a recent press release.
“We are very excited to continue our tradition of curricular innovation at Kellogg, drawing on both the scholarship or our research faculty and our connections with practice,” Senior Associate Dean for Curriculum and Teaching Mike Mazzeo said.
For data-focused business studies, the school has launched the brand new Data Exploration course, taught by finance professor Robert L. McDonald, who says; “It is now common in business to need to analyze large and unwieldy datasets. We moved from calculators to spreadsheets in the 1980s and now we need to move beyond spreadsheets.” The premise of the Data Exploration course, he added, “is that students should be able to work with and analyze raw data from a variety of sources and a variety of forms, using methods that scale. We will use R, which has become one of the dominant tools in data analytics.”
Two new marketing courses have been introduced to the curriculum: Customer Loyalty, taught by Kellogg Senior Fellow Thomas O’Toole; and Ethnographic Customer Insights, taught by adjunct professor Gina Fong. On the latter, Fong notes; “Ethnographic research is not just a way to answer important business questions, but also a way to bring the customer to life inside a company, helping make the decision-making of the company more customer-centric. Knowing the insight into the customer gives the marketer the ability to anticipate what the customer needs and wants—sometimes before he or she are able to articulate it.”
Two new collaboration and leadership programs have been introduced to the MBA curriculum as well, with Strategic Communications for Organizations, arriving next winter, and Leadership Development Models & Practices, which is available now. In addition, three new Public-Private Interface courses have been or will soon be introduced by Kellogg, covering Strategic Perspectives in Nonprofit Management, Social Impact & Technology Innovation, and Decision-Making for Sustainable Business.
As well, Kellogg has introduced courses in Commercializing Innovations and the CEO Playbook for Health System Success course, both of which will be offered in the winter and spring 2018 semesters, respectively.
You can read more about the new offerings at Kellogg here.
Alumni Spotlight: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella – University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Once a ferocious beast in the kingdom of tech with massive product launches and Antitrust sagas, it could be argued that Microsoft has spent the first two decades of the 21st century in search of solid ground. The Steve Balmer era, which focused on “devices and services,” brought us the Xbox, the Surface, and the acquisitions of Skype and Linkedin. Wired posits that the fall of Microsoft “stems from its attempts to lock users into its products by refusing to work with competitors,” coupled with a series of “me-too hardware products,” like the Zune and the Kin. There’s also Bing and MSN, which are practically non-entities compared to their competition.
In the last three years, CEO Satya Nadella has been a relevatory savior for the company, spearheading a massive pivot away away from hardware and toward cloud computing and AI. So far, so good. Company shares reached record highs since 1999 and its cloud is valued at a $14 billion annual run rate, which places Microsoft neck and neck with Amazon Web Services, if you include Microsoft Office 365. That said, Nadella remains unphased by the numbers, as he tells the Economist, “When you have a core that’s growing at more than 20 percent, that is when the rot really sets in.”
Let’s take a deeper dive to find out more about Nadella’s past, present, and future.
Learning at Chicago Booth
Nadella’s tenure at Microsoft is inextricably linked with his University of Chicago Booth School of Business education. In fact he started both at the exact same time, in 1992. Instead of opting out of one for the other, he enrolled in Booth’s Weekend MBA program and flew from Seattle to Chicago every weekend for two-and-a-half years.
Nadella believes his Booth MBA was instrumental in giving him the “knowledge and confidence to tackle complex questions at the intersection of business and technology,” according to a UChicago profile. Nadella cites Steven Kaplan’s entrepreneurial finance class as particularly influential on his ability to “evaluate new business opportunities at Microsoft.” On Nadella, Kaplan spoke highly: “He can take a situation and analyze and articulate the issues involved. He can both write well and understand the case quantitatively.”
Wired traces Nadella’s “clarity of vision and empathetic listening style” to his firstborn son Zain’s cerebral palsy, which helped Nadella “see beyond himself and compelled him to force-rank his daily priorities so that he could meet his son’s needs and still perform his job—the same skill so necessary to effective management.” He tells Wired:
“I think back to how I thought about work before and after, and this notion of the words you say and what they can do to the other person. How can you really change the energy around you? It’s a thing that started building in me, and I started exercising it in my day job. It made a lot of difference to how I felt when I went back home. So much of it is mental attitude.”
Early Days at Microsoft
In 2015, Nadella told UChicago Booth Magazine, “Having grown up in the company, what is it 23 years or so, I always come back to the very first thing Microsoft did, the BASIC interpreter. It was this notion of empowering others to do great things.”
Nadella progressed quickly through company ranks. His first major notch on his belt was Windows NT but played significant technical roles in Bing, MSN, and Microsoft’s advertising systems. UChicago Booth Magazine pinpoints Nadella’s real contribution to the company during his tenure of Executive VP of cloud and enterprise businesses.
“At Microsoft, Nadella is navigating a rapidly shifting technology landscape, in which customers have been moving away from traditional desktop computers, toward nimbler mobile platforms such as tablets and smartphones.” Nadella says, “The only way you’re going to have that mobility of the human experience—not the device—is by having cloud orchestrate the movement.”
CEO
When the Nadella era began, he publicly invoked Nietzsche when he said Microsoft must have “courage in the face of reality,” according to Wired. His approach to steering Microsoft is nothing if not rooted in reality. Wired compared his Microsoft strategy to those of “the Silicon Valley startups that have eclipsed it” in which the change is cultural, not just organizational. The Economist writes that Microsoft is much more of a “full stack” firm, in which it “not only writes all kinds of software, but builds its own data centers and designs its own hardware.”
Nadella tells UChicago Booth Magazine, “My vision is to take that productivity and empowerment of individuals and organizations and express it in this new world, which is mobile-first, cloud-first.”
Nadella jettisoned the company’s R&D process in favor of a more transparent, open-ended model, which is perhaps in response to such New Coke-style abominations as the Microsoft Courier. He encourages execs to work with people outside their divisions, whose lines of demarcation have become increasingly ambiguous.
He’s pushing engineers and researchers from disparate parts of Microsoft to work more closely together—even wrangling Bill Gates back into the saddle as a part-time technical adviser to motivate his team. “When I say, ‘Hey, I want you to go run this by Bill,’ I know they’re going to do their best job prepping for it,” he tells Wired. Nadella described Microsoft’s Skype Translator, which offers real-time translation of multilingual chats, as the apotheosis of his cooperative company-wide strategy.
The Future
Nadella tells UChicago Booth that his overarching vision for Microsoft is to adapt to the dialogue between culture and technology but to push for a more productive, harmonious conversation. In March, Nadella shared his vision for a new “platform-neutral” Microsoft with the announcement that the company would soon launch Word, Excel, and PowerPoint editions for the iPad.
“Technology has always led us to have better lives [but] you can measure whether you’re doing anything useful. Do you feel a little stretched? If not, there’s something wrong.”
What To Expect at Chicago Ideas Week 2017
From October 16-22, the world’s top thinkers, tastemakers, idea generators, and innovators descend upon Chicago for the seventh annual Chicago Ideas Week. Ideas Week is the largest affordable ideas festival on the planet, bringing a variety of talks, panels and hands-on labs to venues across the Windy City. Continue reading…
Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business Announces Robert K. Wilmouth Lecture Series
The Mendoza College of Business family lost a beloved member last month after the passing of Robert K. Wilmouth, a longtime Trustee of the University of Notre Dame and past chair of its Investment Committee. Wilmouth died on September 14. Continue reading…
Chicago’s Best 1-Year MBA Programs
Many of the obstacles to earning an MBA can make the process worrisome for even the most eager student. Factors like cost and salary loss as a student can be prohibitive for many potential MBAs. However, one solution may be shortening the amount of time it takes to earn the degree, which can reduce both the overall cost as well as the time without a full-time salary. Through accelerated or One-Year MBA programs, students can get all the benefits of an MBA degree in half the time.
If you are looking to pursue an MBA in the Chicago metro area, one of the country’s top business and cultural hubs, you may want to opt for a one-year MBA program to keep costs low and get to graduation day even faster. Below, we’ve rounded up the best Chicago One-Year MBA programs.
Kellogg School of Management – Northwestern University
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern is one of the top business schools in the country, taking the fourth spot in U.S. News‘ “Best Business School” ranking. The one-year accelerated MBA at Kellogg is the fastest path to earning a degree from this top-ranked school. Beginning in June, this rigorous program gives students an opportunity to immerse themselves in the Northwestern community of business professionals, build leadership experience and learn from some of the world’s top teachers. The accelerated MBA at Kellogg is one of the first One-Year MBA programs in the nation, offering students the chance to bypass core courses and choose from over 200 advanced studies courses.
Mendoza College of Business – Notre Dame University
The Mendoza College of Business at Notre Dame University is consistently rated as one of the top schools in the country, ranking 29th in U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of the “Best Business Schools.” Mendoza’s One-Year MBA offers students a strategic business education in just 12 months.
The benefits of a Notre Dame MBA are numerous, with access to a close knit community of business students and access to Notre Dame’s global alumni network including more than 270 alumni clubs. The one-year program includes 46 credit hours with the chance to also participate in an International Immersion experience. The program begins with a 10-week summer intensive, and then allows students to select from a number of possible concentration tracks, such as business analytics, consulting, corporate finance or marketing.
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Liautaud Graduate School of Business – University of Illinois at Chicago
The Liatuaud Graduate School of Business at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which consistently ranks among the top 25 percent of business schools across the country, offers students the option of earning their MBA in as little as one year through their full-time Accelerated Cohort Program. The accelerated program at Liautaud can be completed entirely on campus through daytime classes, focusing on building a strong peer network, and community of business leaders.
The Liatuaud MBA focuses on the foundations of business and management, offering a 54 credit program composed of 26 credits of core courses. The core curriculum is comprised of: corporate finance, financial accounting, marketing, microeconomics, operations management, enterprise strategy, and organizational behavior.
Northern Illinois University College of Business
The Northern Illinois University College of Business offers a One-Year MBA designed for students to enhance their skills in communication and leadership over the course of 12 months. The program focuses particularly on collaboration, encouraging teamwork by having each year’s cohort begin together and take the same courses together throughout the year. Students will also participate in the One-Year MBA Capstone Project—a live case competition that challenges students to develop a business plan for a real company and with a real business situation.
“The decision to choose NIU’s One-Year MBA program was a very simple one,” said Northern Illinois alum Jennifer Rave. “Not only is it one of the most affordable programs in the area, but the lockstep program that allows you to develop life-long relationships with your professors and peers is just as appealing.”
