Hitting the Books
May 23rd, 2007
A couple of months ago, my employer signed a deal to create an executive MBA program from the University of Idaho at our campus in Sandpoint. Coldwater Creek's CEO, Dennis Pence, is a longtime Sandpoint resident and has been jockeying to get our company listed as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For". Bringing an MBA program to a tiny resort town is one of his many strategies for upping our rank in the polls. At first, I dismissed the MBA idea as being a bit shaky. The University of Idaho has never had a graduate business program, and frankly I don't expect the world's best faculty to be hanging about in north Idaho.
But my attitude changed as I began to consider my options. I've always had the MBA card tucked away in my back pocket, but I had envisioned a full-time two year program, preferably at some amazing school overseas. Then I began to do the math. Financially, a two-year MBA would be quite a setback. Tuition would run about $80,000 (taking as an example the University of Washington in Seattle). We could probably get by on $80,000 for personal expenses during the two years, including rent. The lost salary from my current job would be substantial. So we're looking at a hit to the bottom line of some hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ouch. Goodbye house. Goodbye savings. Goodbye north Idaho. Hello student loans!
After taking that cold shower of financial reality, the MBA program in Sandpoint started looking much, much better. What really set me on the path back to school was Coldwater Creek's offer to pay 75% of the tuition cost. It turns out money is a great motivator. Plus, classes are scheduled every other Friday and Saturday, so I am only missing two days of work each month.
Of course, this means I'll be insanely busy for the two years of the program. But my hope is that at the end of the experience, I'll have something significant to show for it. Some of my long-term career plans foresee the need to have an advanced degree, and this is a way for me to accomplish that goal without blowing my entire life off course to go back to school.
7 Comments Add your own
1. Derek W | May 24th, 2007 at 6:19 am
I also had to crunch a lot of numbers before making my final decision on an MBA program for this fall. Instead of choosing the school with the highest profile, I had to look for the cheapest "value schools" in areas where we could rely on family for some support.
If all the financial details line up the way I estimate (which never happens), we'll stay out of student debt and our net worth will simply "stall" for the two years. That will largely be thanks to an investment property that we've bought.
Of course, things could go horribly wrong...
2. Ryan | May 24th, 2007 at 10:12 am
I would like to go on here about the blessings of a BYU education--especially at their graduate business school (http://marriottschool.byu.edu/news/rankings.cfm), but I'll refrain for now, as it doesn't seem this option would fit your needs. However, I think the MBA idea is a fantastic one; I know employers usually reward well for employees who get their MBA. If my plans were to work for someone as a business manager, I would definitely get my MBA. What are your long-term plans? Prof? CEO of a multi-trillion dollar company? I'm becoming more and more convinced that self-employment is the way to go; it's one of the few situations where instead of getting paid mostly according to your degrees and rank, you get paid according to your hard work, ingenuity, genius, etc. It is also extremely satisfying to oneself.
Anyway--good luck in the program. When you get done, maybe you can become my CEO :) jk.
3. James | May 24th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
I've always considered that life is too short to have only one career, so a major part of why I want an MBA is so that I can make a career change later in life. My two favorite ideas now are (1) business / computer education in developing countries, or (2) teaching at a university. But I'm afraid both those options pay quite poorly, and at this point in life, money matters. But once I've had my fun in the corporate world I'd really like to make the switch. For now, an MBA will help me climb the proverbial corporate ladder, which in practice means more interesting work and more management responsibility.
A lot of my coworkers talk about working for themselves, but you have to be realistic. I work 45 hours a week for excellent pay, three weeks of vacation, and benefits to my retirement savings and insurance. If I was self-employed, I would be working twice as many hours, no benefits, and no vacation. Yes, some people working for themselves do become wildly successful but it's certainly not the norm among the self-employed people I know. Plus, there is a tremendous load of stress that descends on a person when you know you are solely responsible for bringing in the bacon: doing all your own marketing, taxes, financing, loans, accounting. You have to be a certain type of person to enjoy that kind of stress.
And BTW, I've found that in general I have been rewarded for my hard work and ingenuity, even in the corporate setting. It's certainly not as immediate but it does come.
4. jared | May 30th, 2007 at 5:33 am
by business manager, are you over a specific department, or over all departments - as in the COO, if it is not too personal, I would be interested in what you do as a business manager.
5. James | May 30th, 2007 at 7:52 am
Jared, I work in the inventory planning area at Coldwater Creek. We manage the company's inventory investiment and basically decide where to send product and when, based on how different locations perform at different times of year. I used to work in the actual planning of inventory but now am a "process" manager, meaning that I spend my time trying to figure out how to improve our process or introduce new processes. I work with IT on new systems implementations and also build some systems myself. I find it requires a lot of creativity and constant learning to figure out how to proceed to the next level of efficiency.
6. jared | May 30th, 2007 at 7:55 am
yes, sounds like very intellectually rewarding stuff, my job used to have that fascination, though now it has petered out and the challenge is mostly gone.
are you guys a windows only shop, or do you deal with linux on the IT side?
as I recall, it seemed like your tool of choice was Excel
7. James | May 30th, 2007 at 8:01 am
We are Windows-only. I find that a well-trained Excel user is much more efficient than a user employing a canned planning system. Most retail companies (even the big ones) still use Excel as the basis for inventory planning. The job is too flexible to respond well to a traditional monolithic systems approach.
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