Three Degrees and What They Were Actually Worth

I hold three United States degrees: a Bachelor of Science in Management, a Master of Business Administration, and a Master of Taxation awarded jointly by a college of law and a college of business. That is a significant amount of time and money, and I think it is worth being honest about what it bought — including the parts that did not repay.

The honest summary is that almost none of the value was the content, and a great deal of it was real anyway.

What did not repay

Most of the specific content. Not because it was wrong, but because the useful parts I would have learned by doing the work anyway, and the rest has been revised by fifteen years of practice.

The frameworks in particular have aged least well. They are excellent for passing an examination and for structuring an argument, and they are almost never the thing that decides a real situation. Real situations arrive with missing information, a person who is upset, and a deadline. No matrix survives that.

I would also say, carefully, that a qualification can make you slightly worse at listening for a period. There is a phase after finishing where you are quietly certain you know the shape of the problem before the person has finished describing it. That costs you, and it takes a few years and some embarrassment to grow out of.

What genuinely repaid

Being made to finish things I found dull. This sounds like a small thing. It is the largest one. Business is mostly the unglamorous second half of tasks, and formal study is several years of practice at completing something you have stopped finding interesting.

Learning to be assessed. Handing work to someone whose job is to find what is wrong with it, repeatedly, is unusual training. It makes review survivable later — and how a person handles review is one of the better predictors of whether they will improve.

Vocabulary. Not jargon — the actual shared language of finance, structure and obligation. It lets you have a precise conversation with a lawyer, an accountant or a bank without three rounds of clarification. That has saved me more time than any framework ever did.

The one that surprised me

The Master of Taxation is the qualification I expected to use most narrowly and it turned out to be the most broadly useful, for a reason that has nothing to do with tax.

It was awarded jointly by a college of law and a college of business, and studying a subject from both directions at once does something specific to your thinking. Law asks what is permitted and what the words actually say. Business asks what is worth doing. Those two questions are habitually asked by different people in different rooms, and holding both simultaneously is a genuinely different mode.

I use it constantly and almost never for tax. It is what makes me read a contract for what it says rather than what everyone intends it to say, and it is why I am comfortable in regulated environments where the words matter more than the spirit.

Would I do all three again?

The Bachelor's, yes, without hesitation. It was the foundation and there was no shortcut available.

The MBA, yes, but for different reasons than I chose it. I expected strategy and I got structure — the discipline of finishing, being assessed, and speaking precisely about money. Those were worth the fee. The strategic content I would now describe as a decent starting vocabulary rather than a method.

The Master of Taxation, yes, and I would probably do it earlier. It is the one that most changed how I think rather than what I know.

What education cannot give you

It cannot give you the specific attention that appears when the downside is yours. I have written about that in advising versus carrying a business, and it remains the sharpest line in my own experience.

No course teaches you what it feels like to have committed money you cannot recover, or to be answerable on a Friday for a number you cannot reach. Those change your judgement in a way study does not reach.

So the useful framing is not education against experience. Education gave me the language, the stamina and the ability to be corrected. Experience gave me the judgement about when any of it applies. I would not want to have skipped either, and I notice that the people I find most useful to talk to have both — and are honest about which is which.

What I would tell someone deciding now

People ask whether it is still worth it, usually meaning the MBA, and I think the honest answer depends entirely on what is missing.

If what is missing is credibility to enter a room, a qualification does that efficiently and there is no need to be sentimental about it. Credentials are a shortcut through a filter, and pretending otherwise is a luxury available only to people who already got through.

If what is missing is knowing how business works, a degree is an expensive and indirect way to find out. Two years of being answerable for something teaches it faster and the lesson is more durable. I would not have believed that while I was studying.

And if what is missing is the discipline to finish things, that is the one case where I would say go, without hesitation. It is the least advertised benefit and the one that has repaid me most.

The part that has aged best

Fifteen years on, the thing I still use daily is not knowledge. It is the assumption that any position I hold should be defensible to someone competent who disagrees with me.

That is what formal education actually installs, if it works. Not the content — the expectation that you will be asked to justify yourself and that "it seemed right" will not be accepted. It is why I can be argued out of a position without feeling attacked, and being argued out of positions is how most of my expensive mistakes were avoided.

Whether that is worth the fee is a personal calculation. But it is the honest answer to what three degrees bought, and it is not the answer I expected to be giving.

What I studied versus what I actually use

If I list what I use weekly, almost none of it appears on a syllabus.

I use the ability to read a document precisely. I use the habit of separating what is permitted from what is advisable, which came from studying tax inside a law faculty. I use the vocabulary — being able to talk to a lawyer, an accountant or a bank without three rounds of translation. And I use the expectation that any position I hold should survive a competent person disagreeing with me.

What I do not use is the content. Not because it was wrong, but because it was general, and every real situation arrives specific. The frameworks are a starting vocabulary for a conversation, not a method for reaching an answer, and treating them as the second is a mistake I made for a while after finishing.

Credentials as a filter, stated honestly

There is a version of this argument that says qualifications are theatre and only results matter. I do not believe it, and I think people who say it have usually already passed through the filter and forgotten it was there.

Credentials do real work. They get a message read. They establish that you can be relied upon to finish something difficult over a period of years, which is genuine information about a person. In regulated environments they are frequently the condition of being allowed in the room at all.

What they do not do is tell anyone whether you have judgement, and the mistake is treating the filter as the finish line. I have met people with formidable qualifications and no ability to decide anything, and people with none who I would trust with a business immediately.

So my honest position is that the qualification buys you the meeting and nothing else, and everything after the meeting is decided by whether you have ever had to live with an answer. That is the argument I make in advising versus carrying a business, and my three degrees are the reason I can say it without it sounding like a complaint about education.