I am back on BExpats with another.

Back in April 2009, I received an admit from an MBA. I live and work in the US. The school is AACSB certified.
http://www.aacsb.edu/

It is almost Fall semester and I need to decide if I should pursue my MBA from here. Thankfully, I can pursue my MBA even if I am in Australia as I had initially requested for the "Online" version. Since I will be doing it part-time, it will not be earlier than 3-4 yrs before I complete it.

The Australian MBA schools like AGSM and MBS are also AACSB accrediated.

The big advantage I have is that I can request them to waive off 3-4 courses as they were common to my Masters program( I already have a MS form the same school)= Save money.

Should I or Should I not?? Will Australian employers ignore a US MBA all-together when I am finally done?

Also, I had applied to Monash University for an MBA but they instead offered the Masters in Business Program.

-scaria197

The MBA school will in itself hold no great importance unless it is top 10 European or US.

What is important is what you get out of the MBA and of course the selectives you choose. (ie relevance to what you do post qualifying).

Large numbers here in Melbourne do an MBA before gaining international experience, so in my opinion what they get out of their course is minimal ie a certificate of merit.

My advice would be go for it but don't expect it to be a gold star on your CV. You will encounter more "local" (chips on shoulders) than "alumini".

Think about "post" australian career path as well. No need to dumb down your MBA for temporary time period.

Geelong Gent,

Thanks for your inputs. The MBA schools I have an admit form is certainly not from a top 10 school.

I see your wisdom and long-term view in suggesting to go ahead with the MBA-but honestly MBA, Move, finding new job will be an overkill especially if I do not find work when I decide to move. We are planning to move around May next year.

thanks again your input.

-scaria197

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (SymbianOS/9.1; U; en-us) AppleWebKit/413 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/413 es61)

Since you already have a related masters from the same school, I'm not sure how much additional value an MBA would add to your credential. If you are interested in the securities business, perhaps consider the CFA? For accounting, go for the CPA I say. Local Australian companies may pay more attention to your local experience than your MBA. However, an MBA qualification may score a few more points with global firms, especially in consulting and financial sector. However, as Geelong said, it needs to be from a very good school. I did mine from AGSM.

My spouse and I recently moved from the US to Australia on Jan 2009, and we both have Masters’ degrees from US (MBA Finance for myself, and Masters in Finance for my spouse, both though not from Ivy league schools), so here is my opinion:

From our experience, AU companies are much more interested in local experience than our US degrees. During my interviews here, employers definitely focused more on our work experience. Also you should check out seek.com.au and you can see a lot of job ads are requiring local AU experience. It took me around 3 months of intensive employment search to secure a full time job here in Sydney. While my spouse took 5 months to get a part-time job. His field is more financial accounting related, and most employers were looking for CPA/CA qualifications which he did not have (He has MBA and around 5 years of professional experience in finance/accounting). So right now he decided to do the CPA and he’s currently doing prerequisite courses to the CPA program. Given our experience, I would suggest for you NOT to do your MBA at the moment, since you also already have a Masters degree and I believe an MBA will not materially improve your employability. My advise is for you to maybe even start looking at seek.com.au and other AU employment websites to see what sort of requirements employers are looking for to your field, like CPA, CFA and you can perhaps explore these qualifications instead to improve your employability here in Australia.

Also since you are moving here in May 2010, which still seems far, you have MANY things to prepare for the big move! such as selling items, packing, exploring where you want to move here in AU etc.... You should also try to visit/spend time with family/friends and also maybe travel more in the US and other places (if you like traveling) before moving to AU because once you get here you’ll be BUSY in terms of settling down! And also airfare is more EXPENSIVE from here back to the US and also to most parts of the world too, so I definitely suggest for you to ENJOY your time there!

Hope this helps! Good luck!

I have a Masters in Telecommunications and now plan to pursue an MBA.

Is it tought getting admits in Australian MBA schools? I have an international profile. 7 yrs IT Work Ex and a GMAT 660. Refree reports should not be a problem.

Thanks,

-scaria197

Hi Scaria,
The two topmost full time MBA programs in AUS are AGSM Sydney and MBS Melbourne. For AGSM average GMAT score is 660 (writing from memory) and average work ex is 7 years. So I think you stand a chance. MBS is also good but AGSM is the only one from AUS to show up in top 40 ranks in Financial Times.

Thanks Husain.

I second that. AGSM is currrently the #1 B-school in Australia. You seem to have the average profile of an AGSM class in terms of work experience and GMAT score.... so, getting in should not be too difficult for you. Keep in mind though its an academically rigorous program and if you do it full-time, you won't have much time left for anything else. You might consider the Executive MBA as well, if you are working. By the way, AGSM has got an excellent placement office.

You will find in the US and UK it is pretty normal to get a Master's part-time or full-time as part of your ongoing development.

In Aus it's not so common to pursue further education.

Going to the US or UK a Master's would be valued. In Aus it isn't.

However, if you definitely want to do an MBA and intend to stay in Aus do an Aus MBA. If not, do US MBA.

I think a US MBA has more kudos in the world but in Aus it's best to get an Aus qual, if you are migrating here.

Monash is good but I don't get the impression the school counts as much as it does at Bachelor level. Because the emphasis is on Bachelor level education then that's what counts. In the UK/US they want to know where you did your MBA and care less about your B.??? Talk to the schools and see what feels right.

Declarations - I have a Brit MBA. I pushed my daughter to do commerce at Melbourne (she is).

Ian

I agree with a lot of the other posts, work experience - local or otherwise counts for a lot more in the Australian market than a second post-grad degree. If you do intend pursuing an MBA - the Melbourne one is in the world top 20, and I think AGSM is up there somewhere as well.
You might also consider that if you study a part-time MBA in Australia, the fees will be tax deductable.

You could also consider a DBA.

UNSW is an excellent MBA on par with MBS and now recently UNI Sydney have entered the market for the high end MBA.

In the last 5 years in Australia post grad education has become paramount.

Thanks for bringing this up. Sydney uni has started "one of its kind in AUS" executive mba program which looks very nice at the onset. It requires around 10 years of industry exp and they provide hands-on exp in different industries across four continents. But they are charging a whopping 100K AUD and the program is very new... so no alumni network as of now .

US CPA can be converted over to Australian CA, providing you have a state practising licence and a certain amount of work experience (see the ICAA website). It may be a better option, if available.