My feeling is that if someone won’t hire me because I don’t have an MBA or other advanced degree, I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway. I look for enlightened employers who have open minds and are looking for someone with transferable skills and experience. When I was hiring people myself, I found that skills, experience, and personality were far better predictors of a potential employee’s success than his or her academic credentials. There are exceptions, of course, where being able to list those initials after your name inspires confidence, adds marketing cachet, or helps reinforce the notion that advanced degrees are required for success in life (which is why most university professors have advanced degrees, right? If they didn’t, graduate schools would go out of business.)

Once you’re in the door, most good employers will determine your earnings more on the merits of your skills, experience, and results than whether you have an MBA or other advanced degree.

I now have a good job at the university from which I graduated. Sometimes when I look at my student loan debt I wonder if I should have specialized more, but really I have no regrets. There’s a lot of time for me to further my education if I want to switch gears.