March 28, 2024

An MBA Is Not Enough

Barbara Miracle | 3/1/1996
With its grand crystal chandelier and photos of the city's business elite lining the walls, the Tampa Club reeks of money and success. What better setting for the University of Florida's briefing on its Executive MBA program, aimed at ambitious managers who covet the wealth and power they believe a Master's of Business Administration will give them.

"I think a Florida MBA gives you a skewed advantage," says Jerry Rodriguez hopefully. The 29-year-old electrical engineering graduate of the U.S. Military Academy in West Point says he's interested in an MBA from UF because, "There's a lot of influence of Florida grads in the business community."

A systems engineer with Booz Allen & Hamilton in Tampa, Rodriguez was typical of the three dozen prospective MBA students at the January briefing. Nattily dressed men and women in their 20s or 30s (though a few looked well past 50), they cited "career advancement and personal growth" and "more stature in management" as reasons for seeking an MBA.

MBAs are back in vogue after a lull in interest in the early '90s. But with a difference. Unlike the roaring '80s when an MBA typically was a sure ticket to the executive suite, now the degree is just one part of a total employee package sought by companies in Florida and nationwide. "An MBA is kind of a minimum requirement these days in a Fortune 300 company," says Rick Walsh, senior vice president of Orlando-based Darden Restaurants.

To succeed in a tight job market, MBAs need something extra, such as special skills or a sterling academic record. Susan Hunton, a recent MBA grad from the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College, cites a job-hunting truism: "You were aware that you couldn't go out and say 'here's my degree,' and get a corner office."

What It Takes
"A pharmacy MBA would be quite a positive," quips Gerry Hoeppner, spokesman for Eckerd Corp., the Clearwater-based drug store chain. As it turns out, the University of Florida has just such a degree. Indeed, specializations and dual degrees are becoming more common and help guarantee interest by employers.

The appeal of combining technical expertise with MBA credentials has prompted a number of Florida schools to develop special programs. The University of Miami grants a dual MBA/MS in industrial engineering and an MBA/MS in international business that requires basic command of a second language and includes a paid international internship for a semester. A new MBA/MS in biotechnology joins dual MBA programs in pharmacy, law and health sciences at the University of Florida. Florida State University also offers a joint JD/MBA program as well as an MBA with a certificate in health services administration that requires additional coursework. For practicing doctors, the University of South Florida in Tampa has a 21-month MBA for Physicians program, requiring six two-week on-campus sessions and a "mini-residency" under an experienced physician executive. At Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida Institute of Technology offers a similar program for physicians.

Florida A & M University's innovative 5-year BS-MBA program teaches leadership, communication and team skills in addition to core subjects. Three semester-long internships are required, each in a different industry in a different part of the nation or world. Dean Sybil Mobley, a hands-on practitioner who serves on five corporate boards, originally designed Florida A & M's program more than two decades ago and at age 70 remains in firm control of every detail at the School of Business & Industry. She aggressively recruits the nation's top black students for both the 5-year and a separate 1-year MBA. "Students are immersed in the corporate culture," says Mobley. "They're involved in business experiences from day one."

Because employers typically want MBAs with work experience, many nationally ranked MBA programs insist on at least two or three years of employment for admission. FSU has followed suit, now requiring two years of full-time work experience for admission to the MBA program. The change is paying off in higher wage offers to graduates. "Our starting salaries went up $10,000 a year," says Dale L. Williamson, director of MBA Career Opportunities at FSU.

Executive MBA programs that cater to working professionals with weekend and evening classes are flourishing, both on university campuses and at corporate work sites. "Experienced people are looking to leverage up their careers," says Roland Ruble, assistant dean of Rollins' Crummer School.

Where The Jobs Are
Reflecting the lost luster of middle management jobs, most bigger companies do not aggressively recruit B-school grads as they once did. "Companies no longer come to campus once a year and hire 10 or 20 people," says Ruble. He adds, "The Big 6 still hire that way, along with consulting firms like McKinsey & Co. and Booz Allen." Indeed, consulting firms and the Big 6 accounting firms - Coopers & Lybrand, KPMG Peat Marwick, Ernst & Young, Price Waterhouse, Deloitte & Touche and Arthur Andersen - are perhaps the most active recruiters of MBAs for management consulting, finance, accounting and management information science (MIS) positions. "Our bread and butter is the master's and bachelor's business students from Florida universities," says Mike Blount, a partner in Arthur Andersen's Tampa office.

With a 3.85 grade point average and a combined MBA/bachelor's degree in industrial engineering from UF, Chris Powell, 24, was heavily recruited by Ernst & Young, Procter & Gamble, Intel and Bankers Insurance, among others. He accepted a job with Arthur Andersen Business Consulting in Tampa, working with young, entrepreneurial companies. Powell, who is married and has a son, also was lured by the chance to do consulting without the non-stop travel required by many firms.

Florida's big public companies, on the other hand, hire MBAs sporadically. Barnett Banks President Allen Lastinger, Jr., who received his MBA from UF in 1971, says the bank recruits only a half dozen or so MBAs a year for specialty jobs in internal consulting and management systems, computing, customer-demographic analysis, finance and investment. T. O'Neal Douglas, chairman and CEO of Jacksonville-based American Heritage Life Insurance Co., says, "We don't hire a lot of MBAs directly." He notes, though, that the company sends managers to executive MBA programs. "If someone has an MBA, it certainly enhances their opportunities."

Increasingly, Florida's small and medium-sized companies are where the jobs are for MBAs. Companies going public as well as fast-growing private ventures hire MBAs for general management, marketing and finance.

Seeking Out Employers
These days, MBA students don't wait for corporate recruiters to make on-campus visits. Instead, they pursue interviews with some of the 50 to 100 companies that attend forums in major U.S. cities sponsored by a dozen or so universities. FSU and Rollins, for example, belong to a consortium of 15 universities that hosts 1-day recruitment events in both Atlanta and New York City each year.

Schools and students use mentor programs (matching a business professional with an MBA student), internships and campus visits to establish solid contacts with companies that may or may not do on-campus interviews. The model of executive networking is Florida A & M's Dean Mobley, who aggressively courts corporate America, continually inviting CEOs and other managers of top U.S. and international companies to conduct classes, present case studies and meet on campus with students at formal and informal events. The result is an amazing 100% placement rate for Florida A & M's B-school grads.

At FSU, the MBA Career Opportunities Office began posting some resumes on the school's World Wide Web site on the Internet last year. Williamson, director of the office, says so far it's been difficult to track the success of online resumes, but she's convinced the technology will be used more and more to market students.

How competitive are Florida MBAs?

New MBAs from Florida schools at in-state companies generally command $40,000 to $50,000, significantly less than the six-figure salaries of some new MBAs from Harvard, Columbia and the University of Michigan. Out-of-state salaries for Florida graduates often are higher.

Overall, Florida's business schools don't get much national respect. The University of Florida, the only Florida MBA program ranked in the often-cited March 1995 U.S. News & World Report study, came in at number 33. In Business Week's most recent top 20 B-school ranking in 1994, no Florida program made the list.

That didn't bother Brett Bowman, another West Pointer who majored in engineering and works at the Plano, Texas, headquarters of Electronic Data Systems (EDS), the computer-services company founded by Ross Perot.

Bowman is a Perry, Fla., native who returned home to get his MBA in 1995 from Florida State University. "It's a decent school. It may not be an A school. It may not be a B school." But adding in Bowman's engineering credentials, it was good enough.

Tags: Florida Small Business, Politics & Law, Business Florida

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