Am I Too Old for an MBA?

Many of Ramapo College’s older applicants ask themselves some variation of the question in the title of this blog. The simplest answer is that a 50-year-old with a recent MBA has a distinct advantage over a 50-year-old without one, all else being equal. While it may not be right for everyone, increasingly an MBA is proving to be a versatile degree in response to the sweeping changes underway in business and society. In this blog we take a closer look at those changes and identify cases where an MBA makes sense later in your career.

Statistics on Older MBAs

The National Council on Aging reported that by 2019, over 40% of Americans over age 55 will still be employed, representing one-quarter of the U.S. workforce. Meanwhile, data from the Committee on Economic Development shows that these older workers excel at tasks requiring careful judgment, commitment to quality, and longevity. Note that those are precisely the areas where younger workers have not excelled.

The average age of incoming MBA students across the country is 28. However, while the average hasn’t changed much over the last 30 years, the age range among enrollees has been getting wider. The reasons are clear – younger workers need skills to succeed in the new age economy and technological advances and global competition are shortening corporate and product life cycles, reducing job security for all. And thanks to advances in healthcare, life expectancy is increasing, allowing older workers to extend their employment within a given profession or to embark on a second or even a third career before retiring.

Age is a factor when calculating the return on your investment (ROI) in an MBA, but if the numbers make sense, get the degree. Many older applicants may judge the value of an MBA based solely on the personal satisfaction that it brings them and the doors it opens regardless of the ROI calculation. Older applicants often express frustration that they put off applying for an MBA, even when it was financially feasible, due to professional and/or personal commitments.

Keeping Up and Branching Out

One of the biggest hurdles for older applicants is wondering whether they still have what it takes to keep up with younger generations of students. In our experience, the determining factor between success and failure in graduate school is commitment, not how long it has been since you last set foot inside a classroom. Whether you’ve been out of school for six years or 25 years, it’s still a challenge to get back into “study mode.”

Ricardo Mier, a business analytics and strategy exec, explained in a piece for LinkedIn “How Getting an MBA After 40 Revitalized My Career.” Mier found that getting an MBA later in life, when he was more mature and knew what he wanted, helped him be a more focused student. He said, “The MBA opened the door to a world of knowledge and widened my fields of interest. Since graduation, I read on average a book per week and vary the topics to cover a diverse number of themes. One week I’ll be reading about how big data has taken marketing to a new level, the next it will be about how corporate culture and innovation helped turn around a struggling enterprise. Before my MBA, I used to focus on being the best at what I did. Now I focus on being the best at what I want to become.”

Free Agent Nation

It’s important to understand how the employment landscape is changing. In the past, companies preferred to fill management positions from within, and it was not uncommon for some workers to stay with the same company until retirement. Today, positions are filled with the best internal or external candidates. In fact, companies may prefer to look outside when they are entering a new market. And some workers are finding it necessary to go back to school just to keep up with advances in their own specialty. In a dynamic economy, the workers who fair best and have the most options tend to have the broadest skillset.

Recent research from IMD suggests that four out of 10 of the market leaders in a number of industries will be displaced by 2020. That’s going to put a lot of older workers back into the mix who will need new skills.

Standing Out and Fitting In

Another concern expressed by older students is whether they will feel uncomfortable in a room full of 20-something year olds. What actually happens is that younger students welcome them with open arms! Older students bring a different perspective and wealth of knowledge and experience that younger students covet. That’s why the cohort model at Ramapo College works so well for the students.

Mier remarked that in his experience, “Being one of the oldest students in my class gave me the opportunity to sit in class with a new generation. Working at a peer level with some of the brightest millennials allowed me to better understand their thought processes. As a result, I am now in a stronger position to collaborate across generations at a professional level and build more effective strategies.”

MBA programs are courting older students with more flexible schedules and hybrid delivery systems. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see the average age of MBA students trending upward in the near future as a result.

Categories: MBA