I, under great pressure from my parents decided to go for one. Through my youth I dreamed of doing some hardcore engineering work, yet me taking a look on the job market made me reconsider (that was right in the middle of credit bubble,) engineering job at that time looked like a great lottery where you pay 80k for 6 years of uncertainty, and 2 in 3 chance to not to get a substantial job in a year. Yet, your studies take much dedication, and leave you no chance to earn properly while you study.
Given all above, we settled on a compromise solution, I were to go for a 2 year intensive BCIT undergrad business course with as much edge in tech as possible, and to which I will get as much study credit transfer possible from Russian PTU and courses I did as an exchange student in Nanyang, Singapore.
In total, it took $60k of living expenses and study fees for 2 years. I was able to work while I study more or less freely, though with arguable legality with my student visa. I found my first job through the company I was interning with. I never went into debt besides $20k I took from my parents at the very end of my studies, when fees were finally closing on to eat through my savings (they never did, but I had just $1.9k by the time I graduated).
In the end, by tech background took me back into tech, and my second job after graduation had close to no business side, aside from what I learned on marketing courses (I was a webmaster for an electronics startup with a lot of liberty in what I put into marketing drivel.)
My thoughts:
1. Some base skills like financial modelling/planning, bookkeeping, doing accounting reports, business law do have genuine value. I regularly see tech managers nearing C-Suite positions who have great trouble when it comes to comprehension of such basics.
2. The further you go, the more ephemeral and metaphysical do your studies get, the thicker the coolaid, the harder they try to persuade you into believing into value of such studies. By the time you get to writing "executive case studies," if you have not realized that, then, with all respect to you you are a lost cause.
3. People who endure and get through, by the time they graduate, have their view of reality warped. No red pill will help them. Even if some do come close to realisation of errors in their ways, and can ask for feedback, it takes extreme effort to persuade them to adopt proper ways. You need to show them that they don't only concede their position on a particular issue, but make them accept that their original reasoning that leads them to their erroneous position is not working.
4. In China, I saw great great many youngster coming back from America after B-School, putting the knowledge they were taught to a level nearing an ultimate religious revelation. My short relationship with TCL's (a Chinese electronics company) product group was like that:
Me - man, this is not a lifestyle brand no matter how you twist it, and it will not be one no matter what the marketing dept. think they can do. You are not becoming a lifestyle brand through any actions of a marketing dept.
Product manager Joe - but this is not how it is supposed to be, a guru of management studies B said this, so we will be doing so. This is the trust our company's supreme leadership puts into progressive Western ways! ...
After the end of the gig, I decided to not to accept their new offers. For the next few months after that, their above standing managers were contacting me. All of them sounded rather surprised with my reasoning for me not willing to work with them. I think, all of them asked me something like "were we really doing something wrong there?"
Given all above, we settled on a compromise solution, I were to go for a 2 year intensive BCIT undergrad business course with as much edge in tech as possible, and to which I will get as much study credit transfer possible from Russian PTU and courses I did as an exchange student in Nanyang, Singapore.
In total, it took $60k of living expenses and study fees for 2 years. I was able to work while I study more or less freely, though with arguable legality with my student visa. I found my first job through the company I was interning with. I never went into debt besides $20k I took from my parents at the very end of my studies, when fees were finally closing on to eat through my savings (they never did, but I had just $1.9k by the time I graduated).
In the end, by tech background took me back into tech, and my second job after graduation had close to no business side, aside from what I learned on marketing courses (I was a webmaster for an electronics startup with a lot of liberty in what I put into marketing drivel.)
My thoughts:
1. Some base skills like financial modelling/planning, bookkeeping, doing accounting reports, business law do have genuine value. I regularly see tech managers nearing C-Suite positions who have great trouble when it comes to comprehension of such basics.
2. The further you go, the more ephemeral and metaphysical do your studies get, the thicker the coolaid, the harder they try to persuade you into believing into value of such studies. By the time you get to writing "executive case studies," if you have not realized that, then, with all respect to you you are a lost cause.
3. People who endure and get through, by the time they graduate, have their view of reality warped. No red pill will help them. Even if some do come close to realisation of errors in their ways, and can ask for feedback, it takes extreme effort to persuade them to adopt proper ways. You need to show them that they don't only concede their position on a particular issue, but make them accept that their original reasoning that leads them to their erroneous position is not working.
4. In China, I saw great great many youngster coming back from America after B-School, putting the knowledge they were taught to a level nearing an ultimate religious revelation. My short relationship with TCL's (a Chinese electronics company) product group was like that:
Me - man, this is not a lifestyle brand no matter how you twist it, and it will not be one no matter what the marketing dept. think they can do. You are not becoming a lifestyle brand through any actions of a marketing dept.
Product manager Joe - but this is not how it is supposed to be, a guru of management studies B said this, so we will be doing so. This is the trust our company's supreme leadership puts into progressive Western ways! ...
After the end of the gig, I decided to not to accept their new offers. For the next few months after that, their above standing managers were contacting me. All of them sounded rather surprised with my reasoning for me not willing to work with them. I think, all of them asked me something like "were we really doing something wrong there?"