Education

Over the years I’ve been asked, multiple times, did I really need all three degrees to be an executive? Well, yes and no. Here’s how I answer that question. I got the first degree for greed, the second degree for advancement, and the third degree for myself. Allow me to explain.

When I first left high school, I worked as a “programmer tech”. I sat right next to full-fledged programmers, doing the same work ---- but I made half of what they did. Why? They had a degree and I didn’t. So greed became my motivation to go to college and get the bachelors degree.

After working for several years, I was promoted into management. I started looking around me to see if I could determine what I needed to do in order to make it to middle management. It was becoming clearer, at that time, that an MBA had become the minimum “ticket to entry”. Since I wanted those promotions, back to school I went.

After having been an executive for several years, I found that I had a “burning question”. What does it take to be successful as an executive? After some fits and starts, I came to realize that the best way for me to at least try to answer this question was via the structure of a doctoral program. So to research my burning question, I was back to school yet again.

So having said all of that, is a degree required to be an executive? My firm belief is “yes”. Oh I know, you will find many examples of executives that have succeeded without the benefit of a degree. But I believe that if you are an aspiring executive, in most cases, you will need at least a bachelors, if not a masters degree in order to make it to the executive ranks. Do you need a PhD? Not in most cases. The exception being, of course, some technical fields.

So if I have to have a degree, what kind of degree should I get? Well, it depends (don’t you just love those non-specific answers?!). One way to answer this question is to follow the money in your chosen industry. Where are the high-paying jobs? In the aerospace industry, the highest-paying jobs are, first, engineering and second, manufacturing. I was fortunate enough to have a boss that took a chance on me and moved me into manufacturing as a factory director. (I was a finance wonk. Imagine the guts that move took -- on both of our parts.) But I would have never been able to move to the engineering department. Why? I didn’t have the technical background. All of the line directors in engineering came from an engineering background. So, if I really wanted to follow the money in this industry, I should have gotten my bachelors in engineering, instead of finance.

Another way to answer this question is to look at the industry requirements. Clearly, if you want to head up, say, a hospital, you will likely need a medical degree. Or if you want to be a college dean, you will need a PhD. In other words, don’t fixate on the specific job that you want (for example, doctor or teacher -- although that is important), take a look up and down the value chain of the industry that interests you and see what the requirements are. Then tailor your education around that.

So……. Did I really need all 3 degrees? Nope. Am I glad that I went ahead with them? You bet!

Cheers!