Can you learn it all without going to business school?

Masters of Business Administration aren’t just significant for business schools and universities. An entire industry has been set up around the notion that you don’t need to go to business school. That everything you need to learn you can be taught through podcasts, YouTube lessons, self-help business books, TED Talks, and a virtually endless array of resources designed to keep you out of a classroom. The people who offer these courses and DIY lessons are usually successful entrepreneurs, some taking the angle that they wasted their money on a MBA, while more still offer a different path for the auto-didactically inclined.

Which is better?

Measuring success is subjective and there are advantages and disadvantages to both. On one hand, the structured learning environment of a business school almost guarantees you’ll have covered the full curriculum at the end of the course, giving you a well-rounded knowledge of the business world. With self-teaching, you learn as you go, and your knowledge is directly influenced by the challenges you’ve faced and the next one in front you. This can leave gaps in your fundamental knowledge that can impact anything new you are trying to learn — like trying to learn about physics without understanding basic maths.

The sense of achievement

Ask any MBA graduate and they’ll tell you that achieving the qualification is a gruelling journey and the sense of achievement at the end is immense. An entrepreneur who builds a successful company will tell you the same thing.

The idea of taking on a challenge and conquering it using your own wits and acumen is the romantic notion that drives the self-teaching industry. That’s not to say it is wrong, but it lacks the back-up plan that a formal MBA will provide. If you start teaching yourself the content of a MBA to help your business idea, regardless of how successful you become, you won’t have the qualification at any point. This is fine if you’re Jeff Bezos and your business idea becomes the biggest of them all, but what happens if your business doesn’t work? Failure is the greatest teacher, but if you have to find a day job, a Masters in Failure doesn’t open many doors.

Conversely, if you head to business school for a formal education, are you simply learning the skills with which every other graduate is trying to be successful? Is there a chance that the structured nature of what you’re learning will extinguish your creativity? There is probably an argument for that, but a MBA course isn’t simply what’s written in the text books. It’s the experience of talking to people in your class. People who have different experiences, are different ages, have individual ambitions, and each contribute to your MBA in their own way.

So, which is better?

Whether you can get all the information yourself is debateable, but either path will have its challenges and disappointments. The key thing to remember, is that these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Listening to MBA podcasts and watching lessons might not replace your business school, but they could enhance your knowledge and give you another perspective. Likewise, never discount the possibility of heading to business school to enhance your career prospects or give your business ideas a push.