The value of the joint degree — two years of toggling an MBA and MA in Education
During Admit Weekend — before I even enrolled in the program— I saw the value of the joint degree. After two days of schmoozing at the b-school, I sat down with an education professor and two other incoming MA/MBA students. We met in a dingy room in CERAS and shared our motivations for pursuing the joint degree. One classmate told the story of how education had made all the difference between his path and that of his brother, who had dropped out of school the very same day that my classmate graduated from college. I immediately felt connected to our little band of joint degrees — people who got it, who were driven by similar passions, and who were more comfortable in dusty Ed School classrooms than large GSB auditoriums with copious free snacks delivered every 30 minutes.
I hypothesized that the GSE would feed my soul while the GSB filled my mind. I wanted to experience the two schools’ different modes of teaching and learning simultaneously. I also hoped that the MA Education would keep me honest, surrounding me with people with a shared purpose and mission, lest the GSB classes start filling my brain with dollar signs or other such b-school brainwashing. (I had not witnessed such a thing, but knowing nothing about business school, I figured it could be a risk.)
The joint degree has lived up to these hopes, but it played out in ways more nuanced than I could have imagined. The GSE has fed my soul, but the GSB has too — in their own distinct ways. Business school-style soul searching has been, for the most part, all about me: What is my leadership style? My 5-year vision? How can I be more confident, and yet more vulnerable? On the whole, this has been an incredible gift. My relationships are certainly better for it, and I think my leadership ability is too. But sometimes the self-centeredness irks me. In our Managing Growing Enterprises class, for example, one guest speaker made the point that we should not underestimate ourselves, given the drive, character and intellect that got us here. He concluded, “Realize that relative to the rest of the world, you’re fricking amazing.” I get his underlying message, but on a visceral level, I find this us-them dichotomy quite troubling.
This is where the GSE counterbalance comes into play. Rather than digging deep on me (and why I’m so great), my best GSE courses have pushed me to see from others’ perspectives and think about how to help others reach their potential. This is partly due to course content (e.g. learning about cultural “funds of knowledge” and the school-to-prison pipeline), and partly because of my classmates’ experiences. My GSE or cross-listed classes seem to have more first-generation students and Native Americans and graduates of the nation’s poorest schools — or at least the classes bring these voices to the fore more often than in my GSB classes. Thus, my MA Education soul journey has been truly understanding others’ stories. Drawing from their experiences is especially important for me, since I have not personally lived through deep injustices and thus need others’ fire to keep me motivated in the often exasperating field of education reform. My GSE experience has a strong action-orientation; as one guest speaker in Gay Hoagland’s class said, “I want to use what’s been put in me!”
Originally I thought of the joint degree as downside protection — a means to keep me at least somewhat plugged into and loyal to education while I pursued my MBA. But the upside has been so much more. I am now fired up! About income inequality and curriculum ideologies and social-emotional learning and the complexities of measuring impact and so much more. I have been infused with the energy and curiosity and dogged dedication of inspirational classmates, like Alina and Ashley who just launched MindRight, a nonprofit that helps youth recover from trauma, and by a rockstar group of professors: Dan Katzir, BJ Fogg, Paul Brest, Denise Pope, Gay Hoagland, Eric Bettinger, Nicole Ardoin, Susan Colby. Wow.
Finally, the benefits of learning from the GSB and GSE styles simultaneously have far exceeded my expectations. The joint degree pushed me to think about management issues with multiple hats on — for me, the two most common being CEO of an outdoor trips start-up (which I pretended to be during two quarters of Start-up Garage) and leader of an education nonprofit. I would often ask myself: which leadership styles transcend organization type, and which are context dependent? I also loved the juxtaposition of my coursework: hearing from school principals on Monday nights in Gay Hoagland’s class and then debating the education talent pipeline in Keith Hennessey’s Fiscal Policy class on Tuesday morning. Or concurrently studying Income Inequality in an economics class, listening to stories about growing up in poverty in Susan Colby’s Diverse Leadership class, and deciding whether to fire a minimum wage employee in Managing Growing Enterprises.
In short, the joint degree has kept my mind racing and my heart full for the past two years. I predict that my future jobs in business will pull from what I learned in the MA Education, and my jobs in education will pull from my MBA (vice versa too, of course) — and probably in more nuanced ways than I can imagine now.
P.S. A few tips I wish I knew as a first-year MA/MBA offered in this post.
