If you’re on a mission to advance or pivot your career, or potentially launch an entrepreneurial endeavor, then pursuing an MBA degree may be a good next step. Beyond a new title, an MBA can provide many benefits—including, often, a significant boost to your salary potential.
Those are among the reasons why an MBA remains the most popular graduate degree in the U.S., drawing applications from thousands of prospective students each year. And the payoff can be quite substantial: Over the course of their lifetime, a person who has completed an MBA can expect to earn $3 million more than someone who only holds a bachelor’s degree, according to figures from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
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“You should be thinking about an MBA for a lifetime—not just the two years and the next job,” says Greg Hanifee, the associate dean of degree programs and operations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “You should be thinking of it as an investment in a culture and in a people, that you have to spend some of your own equity into.”
Newfound skills, networking opportunities, and a global perspective are just some of what you can expect from this advanced degree program. Here are some popular reasons why you should consider getting an MBA.
An MBA teaches business fundamentals—and more
Why do business schools continue to loom large in the graduate education space? Foremost, MBA programs seek to give students a foundation of business fundamentals through courses—or even full-fledged concentrations—in topics like finance, marketing, supply chain management, accounting, and strategy.
Interpersonal, decision-making, and leadership skills are the most important skills for MBA graduates, according to GMAC. And more than 85% of students in graduate management education reported that their degree increased their employability.
Business schools have been increasing their “menu of courses” to allow students flexibility and to complete an MBA with the concentrations and certificates that best interest them, notes Russ Morgan, a professor and the senior dean for full-time MBA programs at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
However, while the skills learned through an MBA will be valuable to future careers, Morgan emphasizes that everything comes back to personal growth and development. “We’re going to enable you to be a lifelong thinker,” he says. “And so the critical-thinking skills are going to translate to maybe complex personal or other situations that you might have.”
While MBA students can expect to become equipped to build a business or solve problems, business school is also about learning how to inspire others, Hanifee adds. “It’s our mantra that inspiration is big, which comes from a combination of being analytically adept—understanding how to deal with data and challenging problems—but also the social skills in order to get people to follow you in order to be able to listen to customers, and help them solve problems,” he says.
Business school offers opportunities for networking
No matter the program, stepping into an MBA program connects you with a network of hundreds to thousands of alumni who have served in the same culture and mindset.
And the benefits of this network even become apparent before graduation. Michael Kirchner, an MBA candidate at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, says the program is an invigorating environment where you can fully immerse yourself with people who are also driven and want to be successful
“I think there’s a massive value added on an MBA from a network perspective and having that break from work to actually think about what you actually want to do and kind-of get off the hamster wheel,” he says.
The opportunities to meet people from around the world has been a highlight, Kirchner notes. About one-third of incoming students at the Anderson School are from outside the U.S.
In addition to students, the faculty and staff in business schools are “incredibly diverse” in terms of nationality, race, ethnicity, thought, religion, and more, according to Morgan. “A lot of times in our lives, we’ll surround ourselves with similar people,” he says. “You’re opting in, when you come to business school, being surrounded by very dissimilar people in a lot of ways.”
There are lifelong benefits to pursuing an MBA
The skills and networks that students develop during an MBA program can last long after graduation. Choosing to pursue an MBA is an investment, not just in terms of money, but because of the time to build these opportunities, Hanifee says.
“One of the indirect benefits of coming to business school are these networks for life,” Morgan says, adding that he’s even officiated two weddings of students who met in the program at Duke. “What I’ve seen after a career in higher education, these students connect so well or they’re here and appreciate each other in a way that they become friends for life.”
Establishing connections during an MBA program is about more than making friends, however. Doing so can also open professional doors for years to come in the future.
“We encourage people to reach out, ask for help from Kellogg, but also ask for help from your fellow alums. And they should answer,” Hanifee says. “What that also means is, if somebody reaches out to me as an alarm, I need to answer the call.”
These types of benefits are among the reasons why nearly nine in 10 MBA graduates say the degree is worth it. And for the right person at the right time, Morgan says an MBA can provide the skills to fundamentally change someone’s life trajectory.
“It can set them up to be successful and happy in the careers that they pursue and it’s a way for them to invest in themselves that allows them to be a better person in terms of not just what they bring to the companies or organizations that they work with, but to all their life,” Morgan says.
Check out all of Fortune’s rankings of degree programs, and learn more about specific career paths.
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About the contributors
Preston Fore is a staff writer at Fortune Recommends, covering education and its intersection with business, technology, and beyond. Preston graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he studied journalism and global studies. His previous work can be found in The Daily Tar Heel and CNN.