According to the Wall Street Journal, full-time MBA programs are on the decline and online programs are on the rise. This as categorically a good thing.

The MBA is an academic qualification that signals you have been trained in a body of knowledge in how business is conducted and managed: microeconomics; accounting; business law; human individual and group behavior; finance; supply chains, manufacturing, and distribution; information technology and information security; and social and environmental responsibility. The last two are fairly new to the standard MBA curriculum. You likely also received specialized training in something, such as accounting or international business. Mine was finance specifically banking and financial markets.

The curriculum is not unique to the MBA, but applies also to an undergraduate business degree. According to the AACSB, who accredits business schools, the graduate degree is distinguished by training in the following areas:

• Leading in organizational situations
• Managing in a diverse global context
• Thinking creatively
• Making sound decisions and exercising good judgment under uncertainty
• Integrating knowledge across fields

Full-time MBA programs are targeted toward young college graduates. You can argue that they are too inexperienced to actually benefit from an MBA. They don’t know what they don’t know. When they arrive in the workplace, they arrive overconfident in their ability to actually perform in a specific role and can make good decisions. Their greatest weakness is the inability to actually assess the amount of uncertainty involved in a decision and the limitations of their ability to lead in a specific organizational context. In short, they are what we in my workplace call “MBA Weenies” arrogant noobs whose decision-making is formulaic–for example, making decisions based on accounting costs and not factoring in opportunity costs.

Another aspect of the MBA, which is cited in the article, is the belief in the magic “network” that the full-time MBA is supposed to provide. First, the concept of “network” is treating people as means, not ends in themselves. The instrumental use of classmates and alumni is a moral failing. Second, that network isn’t going to necessarily be all that useful when all your classmates are the same age and just starting out in a career. Alumni networks may be more valuable, but it is more related to prestige of the qualification than anything else. A Wharton School MBA is valuable, because it is a Wharton School MBA, not anything specific to the curriculum, which is mostly standardized across business schools. Prestige is expensive and may not return the investment. I can tell you that as a hiring manager in IT and a hiring manager in marketing, I didn’t care what school anyone went to. I valued job specific skills and/or the ability to learn, the ability to fit into our specific corporate culture, and communication skills–spoken and written–in that order.

If full-time MBA programs are declining in favor of part-time, executive, and distance programs, catering to people who are mid-career, this is a good thing. The students entering the program have some experience on which to draw, and a sense of what skills they need to improve. When I know a mid-career professional is considering getting an MBA, I invariably tell them the same advice I received: study what you don’t know. Business school is broad education, not deep, so studying what you already know just means that the schoolwork will be easy, but you won’t get the most out of the program.

As to the vaunted “network,” the network is more valuable when it is composed of experienced mid-career people (Directors, VPs) than it is with a bunch of junior people. Furthermore, it doesn’t necessarily require in person contact. I got my MBA at University of Nebraska online. It is considered one of the best online MBAs in the US. It was a program that attracted a lot Army and Air Force officers (mostly 1LT and CAPT ranks), who were looking for either job specific skills–for example, they work in logistics and supply–or a credential to help get a job after the military. I was older than many of my fellow students, who were usually about 30, whereas I was about 10-12 years older. Technology has helped with maintaining relationships. Social networking has allowed me to maintain a network of impressive fellow students who would be good to work with in the future.

Another aspect that was not touched on at all in the article is the benefit to using contingent faculty, which is who gets stuck teaching those night and weekend classes in part-time programs. Tenured faculty may not have had much business experience, since getting the PhD meant deferring work and spending 6-8 years in graduate school. Or they have left business for academia decades prior. Certain aspects of business education requires experience: entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, and logistics/supply chain. Things involving math, like finance; clear professional standards of practice, like accounting; and applied psychology, like organizational development, are easily taught by those who mastered the academic/regulatory literature but lack experience. On the other hand, things like product management (making decisions on product features, new product introductions, and pricing decisions under uncertainty) in marketing, how to sell things, launching new ventures, and managing global supply chains all require real world experience to be effective as an instructor. Contingent faculty is a way to get instructors with that real world experience. They can impart lessons learned in the real world.

The article highlights the attrition that MBA programs have suffered due to the introduction of specialized degrees. This is also a good thing. For example, work in banking and financial markets is highly specialized and computer-centric. MBAs may be good for some things, like selling securities and evaluating deals, but the domination of the industry by computerized quantitative analysis means that you need much more math and programming skills than an MBA provides. Indeed, it has been hypothesized that thee rise of quantitative finance was tied to the cancellation of the Superconducting Supercollider, which put lots of STEM PhDs on the job market, who ended up on Wall Street at banks and hedge funds.

So let’s get those 21 and 22-year-olds out on the job market and then back into school in their 30s and 40s for management education, rather than into a finishing school. There is a place for full-time MBA programs to allow students without degrees in business to get the skills needed for the job market, but for students who major in business, communications, economics, engineering, computer science, or accounting, they should not be entering business school, thinking they are going to learn what is needed to succeed in business (it is utterly redundant for a business major, and just gilding the lily with a required credential for advancement), or entry into a guild called a “network.” For that English or History major, it is really valuable training that, to quote Strother Martin’s character in Cool Hand Luke, “gets your mind right.” But full-time MBAs should not be how the bulk of business education gets delivered. The so-called non-traditional MBA programs offer much more value.