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Earning an MBA Part Time While Working Full Time

There are various reasons why so many people choose not to take their higher education to the next level and earn a graduate degree. Many of these reasons are valid and make it seemingly impossible to do so. It’s very common for people considering this next step to already be employed full time. The idea of committing the necessary amount of time to furthering one’s education while continuing their current, often chaotic work schedule can easily seem overly daunting. Juggling work, school, and life itself is not, by any means, a simple task. Alongside this juggling act, the cost of most graduate programs can prove to be too much of a financial burden to shoulder. These are definitely some of the more common concerns with furthering one’s education, but do they outweigh the benefits?

Earning a graduate degree is an important benefit in today’s competitive job market. As mentioned earlier, many people looking into entering a graduate program currently work. Although there are opportunities for advancement aside from obtaining such degrees, a graduate degree will open up doors that would otherwise remain closed. There are many positions within a company, such as leadership roles, that are simply available only to those that hold a graduate degree. A graduate degree also increases the opportunity to change careers or even switch industries by making you a more desirable candidate. On a final note, you will most likely notice that your pay check will increase alongside your level of education.

Now that you’ve heard some of the positives and negatives of furthering your higher education, are you starting to see that the benefits outweigh the difficulties? Perhaps you are not. Perhaps the first paragraph of this article had already left too sour of a taste in your mouth. If so, open your mind for a minute to the sweet potential of earning your MBA through a part time MBA program. Part time MBA programs offer solutions to the common concerns that accompany furthering your higher education. Most importantly, such programs are much more convenient and much less expensive than their full time counterparts.

As far as convenience goes, part time MBA programs usually offer online and hybrid programs. These formats do not require students to attend on-campus classes regularly, and sometimes students aren’t even required to attend at all. Online classes might occur as infrequently as once a week. These aspects of part time MBA programs allow students the much-needed flexibility to continue working full time. Although the work-school juggling act is by no means eliminated, the flexibility of such formats makes it a lot more feasible. Now that the possibility of successfully fitting these programs into your schedule is much more apparent, the more financially pressing issue is at hand: cost. A part time MBA program is usually much more affordable than full time programs and ultimately much less of a financial burden.

How do you feel about the benefits and difficulties of furthering your higher education now? Do the benefits of a part time MBA program outweigh the difficulties now that its convenience and affordability reduce such difficulties? The answers to these questions are obviously yours, but so is the knowledge of it being possible.

by William Ian Arbuthnott