High-priced MBA degrees not always a must

Conventional wisdom says it takes money to make money. But it does not always require big sums to obtain the extra education that working professionals need to turbocharge their earning power.

That is because data suggest and experts agree that relatively affordable, well-targeted investments in education can often provide a larger-percentage boost in salary than even the priciest degrees. So 'back to school' does not have to mean 'back to the poorhouse' in pursuit of better pay.

Consider, for instance, the master's of business administration degree. Managers with MBAs from schools ranked in the top 10, where the mean cost of tuition plus fees and expenses exceeds $198,000, receive a 12 per cent average return on investment in terms of increased salary over their first 10 years.

Meanwhile, professionals who attend lower-ranked (and lower-priced) schools average an 18 per cent average return on investment, according to a 2006 survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

Many employees boost their salaries most effectively by mastering new 'soft' skills, such as negotiating or earning trust, which do not require fancy degrees to learn, according to Mark Oldman, founder and president of Vault.com, a career-resource website.

And for those who do need some new 'hard' skills or technical know-how, institutions of higher education are rapidly rolling out new programmes that deliver workplace acumen at a fraction of a MBA's cost.

"Certification programmes have proliferated amazingly over the past decade," says Randall Hansen, a marketing professor at Stetson University in Deland, Florida. To a prospective employer, "a certification says, 'Hey, I'm not an old dog. I'm out there learning and being certified with the most cutting-edge skills in this industry,'" he says.

To give one's salary a jolt, the MBA still works. The GMAC survey found that graduates from the top 10 schools raised their annual pay by 56 per cent, or a mean amount of $34,500. Other graduates saw their pay jump 54 per cent, or $28,100.

However, professional education on the cheap may come with trade-offs. Professionals who forgo an MBA, for instance, may sometimes wish they had one down the line.