My MBA is not useful to me

This is the story of a recent MBA graduate as told to Francis Kahihu

Six months ago, I graduated with an MBA from one of the leading local universities.  It was all excitement as family and friends congregated to celebrate my achievement.  It had been a great race characterized by both high and low moments. 

At certain points, in the journey, I contemplated quitting because of the challenges I encountered.  I, however, got the encouragement from my colleagues and friends to push on and my efforts have now been rewarded.  But the reward seems to have been short-lived. 

Since I submitted my MBA certificate to my employer, higher level tasks are being thrown my way.  My immediate supervisor tells me that since I am now qualified as an MBA, I should be in a position to help with most of the tasks other staff are unable to resolve.  I feel overwhelmed and wonder why I am unable to undertake tasks that my superiors think I can manage.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have come to realize the cause of my concerns.  I am truly half baked.  As much as I went through the MBA programme, I am not sure I got more than just the certificate from the university.  Tell me, how can I claim that I went through a learning process when we had over 200 students in one MBA class?  I never had a none-to-one chat with the lecturer due to the pressure that the class size exerted on both the students and the lecturers.

The university seemed to have put more emphasis on the teaching and very little on the expected learning.  Lecturers expected that by dictating notes in front of class and telling ‘Akuku Danger’ stories, somehow, learning should have been happening that would have transformed us from amateurs to blue chip executives.

That objective may not have been achieved.  I remember my lecturers more for the stories and the assignments they gave us and rarely for any substantive issues they helped us resolve.  When I think about the engagements I had with my colleagues in class, I feel like it was a hit and run relationship.  I remember with nostalgia the relationships I had with college mates when I was undertaking undergraduate degree and wonder how come I don’t have similar memories of my MBA classmates.
The few times I had engagements with them was when we were working on the ‘harambee’ assignments.  Each person worked on a section of the assignment and only met to compile the final output to the lecturer.

With this level of preparation, I now realize that I ended up with an MBA certificate but did not really learn anything useful in the real world.  Whenever I indicate that I have an MBA, people around me expect more than I can deliver and this tends to affect my image and self-esteem.  Sometimes I wonder whether I should remove all references to the MBA from my CV since I feel I am not up to the task associated with the degree.

I however hope that my brief testimony might be an inspiration to anyone currently undertaking an MBA course to really think about what they expect to achieve from the course rather than the final certificate.

Article extracted from the Saturday Magazine, 4th December 2010.