First of, we can eliminate MBA’s from tier 2 or tier 3 MBA schools. My understanding is that unlike other degree programs, being from a top-10 MBA program DOES make a huge difference.
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FLU: Back in my corporate days, the company I worked for would heavily invest in EMBAs (Executive MBA) for senior managers, versus hiring newly minted MBAs, except in those cases where those new MBAs came from truly top notch programs (Wharton, Sloan, etc).
The wisdom was that it made more sense to invest in a senior manager already with the company and it was far less expensive (in terms of acquisition, retention, bonuses, etc).
On the west coast, we had folks going to USC, Pepperdine, Stanford, etc and for fairly reasonable amounts of money. I would have to imagine with things going the way they are now, this sort of thinking would be very prevalent.
The other thing I remember about new hire MBAs, was how clueless they generally were. Everything was approached like a case study and, due to their lack of actual experience, many of them had few, if any, management or leadership skills.
