The answer is a resounding maybe.

. Engineers in the field and current MBA-candidates say that it all depends on the individual and their career aspirations. For me, the decision to pursue an MBA stemmed from a desire to tackle larger and more abstract strategic problems instead of the structured engineering type problems I was accustomed to, says Charlie Briston, a MBA student at Georgia Tech. The strong analytical capability that engineers possess is highly valued in the business world, but it is imperative that you also understand the other, more qualitative, aspects. These qualitative skills are what engineers stereotypically lack; we like black and white answers, but in the business world, its not typically that simple. Making the decision to get an advanced engineering degree or an MBA means taking a hard look at personal goals. In a world without resource constraints, an MBA compliments most any other degree or set of degrees an individual obtains, says Sean McClenaghan of CHB Capital and a GT alumnus. However, the reality is most individuals feel like they are time or resource constrained and can only afford one advanced degree. In that situation, the answer to the question regarding whether engineers should obtain an MBA versus an advanced engineering degree is it depends.

Getting an MBA to supplement a persons undergraduate engineering education certainly makes sense to engineers considering starting their own business or doing consulting. They are the ones most likely to benefit from the MBA, says Allen Ecker, GT alumnus and retired vice president of Scientific Atlanta. If you are going to start your own business, you better understand the fundamentals of business as well as the technical and engineering side. You can be great at finding a solution, but that solution must be workable from the business side. Ed Rogers, a corporate strategy manager with UPS echoes those sentiments, "An M.S. in an engineering discipline is the best bet for engineers on technical, scientific or academic career tracks. But engineers with management, consulting or entrepreneurship aspirations would probably benefit more from an MBA. Randy Steele, an engineer working on his MBA degree, knew that his career path at Siemens needed more business-based knowledge. My rationale for going back to get my MBA was based on several factors at Siemens. I've stepped farther from the technical fields and more into the business side of things, says Steele. My new role has developed to incorporate things like project management, forecasting, cost estimation, and proposal development and taken a step away from the nuts and bolts. While not every company discusses blade design, flowrates, or bearing

clearances, nearly everyone sets and meets budgets, has profit and sales goals and manages projects. In that sense, business is a lot like math, it's a language that is common across all industries.

However, not everyone agrees that the MBA is a necessity for engineers to succeed in business. "Here in Silicon Valley, MS/PhD-level engineers, with and without MBA degrees, are very common on the management teams of new technology companies. Graduate degree choices are driven, in part, by what you want your core skill set to be and how you will use it to distinguish yourself in the business world early on in your career, says Deb Kilpatrick, GT alumnus and Vice President of Market Development at CardioDX, Inc. "In my own experience, a PhD program provided me with a strong technical foundation for solving complex problems across multiple domains. This, along with a lot of "on the job" learning, has enabled me to migrate from the R&D side into commercial management roles without an MBA. However, the reverse migration is not so prevalent. Across the board, MBA students and practicing engineers seem to agree that each person should work in the field before making the decision. My advice would be to first go out and work for a couple of years and decide then what you want or need to do, suggests Larry Jacobs, associate dean in the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. That is the same advice that the Career Services office at Georgia Tech gives. Unless they have a strong desire for an advanced degree or know that they need it to get the type of job they want upon graduation, I recommend that our students get several years of work experience beyond graduation prior to pursuing an advanced degree. This helps them to make an informed decision regarding graduate school and, if desirable, the type of graduate program they wish to pursue, advises Marge Dussich, associate director of Techs Career Services. Taking time to work is seen as a necessity for many hiring managers. Whether its an MBA or engineering specialty, an engineering graduate should not hurry to jump into a career. Use this time to learn as much as you can, says Mike Polak, GT alumnus, of Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah. Is the role of an engineer changing with industrial companies who have to implelement new practices and new technology so that in the future the MBA will be a necessity? Engineers often become the primary manager of change with an organization, adds Ron Nash of InterWest Partners and a GT alumnus. What is changing today is the fact that technology is a pervasive component in

most industries. The business leader now has the additional challenge of getting the most leverage out of their proprietary technology as well using technology adroitly to support most all of their business processes. The best way to develop an understanding of broad classes of technology is to obtain an undergraduate degree in engineering.

A study of CEOs today will reveal many more of them with engineering degrees than was the case only a couple of decades ago. It is an oddity, but practically a fact, that you can get this technology and business education in only one way - an undergraduate degree in engineering followed by a masters degree in business. The reverse order does not work, says Nash. An engineering degree opens up possibilities for advanced degrees in many disciplines, business being only one of them. I have heard an engineering degree described as "the liberal arts degree for a technological age. There is a lot of truth to that.While some believe that the MBA gives engineers a broad grounding that is missing from their technical degrees, Jacobs disagrees. Engineering does give you a broad education; gives you great exposure to underpinnings or framework of how things are done. Getting an MBA depends on what you want to do. I am a big proponent of a BS/MS five year program to give someone a more technical ability. For those that ended up in the perfect area of focus as a result of their undergraduate degree choice, they should consider themselves lucky, says McClenaghan. They should seriously consider an advanced degree in their technical field. Again, at this point, do what will differentiate you the most in an ever increasingly competitive job market in a way that aligns you with your goals and desires. Why is an MBA after engineering so valuable? We asked Grenoble MBA student Chaitanya Potabattula, who is on that journey now. As a child, Indian national Potabattula dreamed of becoming a commercial airline pilot, but as an adult he got into IT as a software engineer at InfoSys. So then what brought Potabattula to Grenoble for an MBA? What I wanted to do was cultivate more of the functional side of a business; I wanted to know, Why are we implementing a system? Potabattula said. As an engineer who is now learning more about company strategy and management, Potabattula is learning to attack issues from multiple angles.

If you present the same problem to an engineer and an MBA, both of them look at two different things, Potabattula said. An engineer only looks at the data and the MBA looks at it in a higher perspective; he catches different things. No approach is wrong, the technical or the functional approach. This ability to utilize both technical and business skills to provide solutions is a valuable asset: engineering undergraduates with an MBA are quickly snatched up in the workforce, an Intel talent recruiter told BusinessBecause. As far as work after graduation is concerned, Potabattula said he is looking for opportunities in management consulting in Europe. But he has his eye on one country in particular: My first choice would be Germany, Potabattula said. I dont know why but I am in love with Germany. Maybe its the German beer and sausages. He said he fell in love with Germany during business trips with InfoSys, but of course he would love to work anywhere in Europe after graduation. I am very interested in Europe, especially central Europe, Potabattula said. Everyone has been to the US, but experience in Europe is not that common. There is so much history and legacy. Out of all the b-schools in Europe, though, going to Grenoble was a fairly easy decision for Potabattula to make. He said he was attracted to the opportunity to work across industries - his class mates have experience in the music and biotechnology industries - and across borders. On the Grenoble MBA we've collaborated with different students across the world, Potabattula said. I have worked with students from Austria and Singapore, across time zones and with peoples different work cultures and attitudes. Thats something which I really like about the school.

MUMBAI: Every year lakhs of Indian students apply for admission to engineering colleges. And a large majority of graduating engineers apply for admission to business schools. It is as if the realities of yesteryears, when medical and engineering careers used to be the top two priorities, has not entirely rubbed off but has been slightly modified. With more and more engineering graduates turning towards managerial careers, it is no wonder that some of the top Bschools, such as IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Calcutta, have more than 90% MBA students with engineering backgrounds. What is the reason for the same? Are engineers not excited about a technical career anymore, or is it the demand of the workplace that drives them towards management careers? Vijay Mhaskar, Vice President, Information Management Group, Symantec elaborates the job market situation. "With increased pace of innovation and global competition, technical talent in India has been groomed to meet the requirements of global coordination and collaboration.

The demand for managing large scale projects required technical talent to take on the role of project managers. This eventually led to the need for management skills and people were hired for their technical knowledge coupled with management skills. The Indian software industry, for instance, has witnessed a tremendous evolution - from piece-meal development to complete product ownership." While engineers have shown an increasing preference for managerial roles, at the same time the need for technical expertise has not diminished. In fact, it has increase further as countries, including India, are realising the importance of developing innovative engineering solutions indigenously. For this reason, engineering talent must not completely be devoted to managerial positions. "The industry requires both technical and management talent. In order to encourage engineers to follow their passion for technology through a career on the technology side an eco-system needs to be established. From the colleges where engineers learn, to the software firms where they put learning to practice, should provide guidance that moving to the management track is not a default option. With great compensation in technical profiles, engineers can pursue careers without giving up their passion for technology," adds Mhaskar. The other side of this debate is that engineers who turn into managers and leaders in organisations need not completely give up their technical creativities. Often, it can be a mix of both. A high ranking manager can also be a technology expert. This is the exact basis of Symantec's Techtracs programme, in which they encourage and build upon technical talent of engineers. In this programme, they have very senior positions for Distinguished Engineers and Fellows, apart from Senior Technical Directors. Mentoring and guidance, whether for a managerial or a technology based career, is a critical success component. An engineer, who is capable of giving an organisation or a country the next breakthrough in technology or in an architectural design, should not be wasted on a pure management role. At the same time, one cannot follow a deterrent approach where you stop them from completely moving to management. Instead, it should come more as an encouragement to pursue engineering roles. Higher designations and pay packages is only one side of the coin. Engineers will only be truly engineers when they are in it for the love of it.

As recently as the late 1990s, there were only five or six joint M.D./M.B.A degree programs at the nations universities, said Dr. Maria Y. Chandler, a pediatrician with an M.B.A. who is an associate clinical professor in the

medical and business schools at the University of California, Irvine. Now there are 65, she said. Mark V. Pauly, a longtime leader of the health care management program at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, said, A light bulb went off and they realize that health care is a business. Dr. James S. Kuo, 47, said he was a third-year medical student at Penn when he decided to go to business school, too. After receiving his M.D. and master of business administration degrees, he jumped to a Wall Street job with a large health care venture capital firm. Dr. Kuo went on to manage several heath care funds and later led several small health care companies. Now he is chief executive of Adeona Pharmaceuticals, a company based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that is developing innovative medicines for the treatment of serious diseases of the central nervous system. He is also nonexecutive chairman of MSK Pharma, a private company in La Jolla, Calif., that is led by his wife, Dr. Geraldine P. Kuo. She is a specialist in muscular-skeletal medicine at the Veterans Affairs health care system in San Diego. In her work, she came across a medical need and an innovation to solve that need, he said.

One of the latest universities to consider a combined program is Creighton, a Jesuit university in Omaha, which plans to begin offering a joint degree next summer. Anthony R. Hendrickson, dean of Creightons school of business, said the program would be flexible, based on each students academic and business experience and personal goals. He said total tuition would be $191,688, including four years of medical school and a year of business studies. At Duke, the total cost of tuition for medical school and a year and a half of business studies is $235,244. Creighton, like many universities with business schools, also offers part-time courses for physicians alongside its classic short courses for executives of all types. Statistics about the joint programs are sparse, said Dr. Chandler, who is president of the Association of M.D./M.B.A. Programs. But she estimated there were as many as 500 students total in the programs. Some, like Tufts and Texas Tech, offer the combined program in four years, she said, and many programs offer special aid packages. All physicians need some kind of business training, she said. For example, some physicians with large research grants dont know how to manage the money. As for the nations troubled health system, we are not running the business side very well," Dr. Chandler said. Part of the problem is we dont have physicians

sufficiently involved. They have a fuller insight about what is needed. Cue the theme music from Jaws, said Professor Pauly, of Wharton. Entrepreneurs have to know how to navigate with the desire of payers to hold down prices and control uses in health care. He added: They have to know how to please pointyheaded bureaucrats. This is going to be one of the survival skills in the future in health care. Not all physician entrepreneurs come from the joint programs, of course. There are also business school graduates like Dr. Wendye Robbins, a fourth-generation doctor, who did her undergraduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned her M.D. at the Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Now she is president and chief executive of Limerick BioPharma, a small start-up in South San Francisco that works on transplant-associated metabolic diseases, specifically Type 2 diabetes. She founded Limerick with business partners in 2005. With strong grades and support from the head of her medical faculty, she said, she was accepted as an intern at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and then for a postgraduate residency at Johns Hopkins University. Then she was hired as an anesthesiologist and pain doctor at the University of California, San Francisco. Through her husband, who has a business degree from Wharton, she

met venture capitalists. They offered to fund the stuff coming out of my lab, she said. She left academics and started her first company, NeurogesX, which commercializes pain medicines. After five years, she left the company and took a teaching job at Stanford because, she said, she wanted to stay in touch with students and patients. Her advice to entrepreneurs-in-waiting: Take a risk, step into the unknown. Dont be afraid to fail. Ive made plenty of mistakes and had plenty of disappointments. Dr. Barry R. Silbaugh, chief executive of the American College of Physician Executives, a professional society that provides medical education courses and career counseling, said more start-ups were being run by doctors. Most of its 10,000 members work in hospitals and insurance companies as chief medical officers and medical directors. Many others are focused on adapting technology to health care, not just electronic medical records, he added. The use of social media is of great interest to many younger physicians, and so is health care analytics, which is the study of data and information to help predict patterns of chronic illness. Physicians are bright people, said Dr. John E. Prescott, chief academic officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, a trade group in Washington that represents more than 150 medical colleges. They want to

make a difference. Some do it one patient at a time. Others see a bigger impact in business applications. We are in a challenging environment for physicians to practice in, he added. Some are looking for ways to modify it or to leave it. Most want to modify it. Dr. Lisa Beth Ferstenberg teaches entrepreneurship on a grant from the National Science Foundation at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. After graduating from McGills medical school, a residency at Mount Sinai Hospital and studies at New York Universitys Bellevue Hospital Center, she had a succession of pharmaceutical industry jobs. Her students start every class session by practicing their pitches to sources of financing, like venture capitalists. She tells students: No one will fund you if they dont understand what you just said. In the hospital world, Dr. Silbaugh said, many hospital boards are asking for physician candidates, a reversal from a few years ago when nondoctors were preferred. Physicians bring a unique perspective, said Dr. Prescott. They understand patients and their needs. They also look at ways to improve overall effectiveness and efficiency. In the medical device industry, for example, physicians are the customers and can provide valuable insights to improve products, said Aaron K. Chatterji, who teaches strategy at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke. He returned to the university in August after working for 16

months in Washington as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Chatterji said his course on commercializing medical devices typically drew significant numbers of physicians, some in M.D./M.B.A. programs, and many biomedical engineers, along with other business students. Dr. Prescott quoted a saying he hears quite often these days: Healing is an art, medicine is a profession, health care is a business.
What is the mission of the MD/MBA Program? The program's mission is to develop outstanding physician leaders, skilled in both medicine and management, to take positions of influence through which they will contribute substantially to the health and well-being of individuals and society. Why should I consider the program? The MD/MBA joint degree is for individuals whose ambitions will be fulfilled at the intersection of medicine and business: for example, in hospital administration, medical device entrepreneurship, health and public policy, and more. What are the typical career objectives of students? Students in the MD/MBA program combine a passion for practicing medicine with a growing desire to expand their interests into new ventures to conduct research, manage hospitals, shape public policy, launch health care-related entrepreneurial ventures, balance medical needs with economic realities, reduce costs to patients while increasing quality, and apply engineering to medicine to produce the best medical devices. How is the degree curriculum structured?

See the curriculum timeline above.

When nervous dental patients make their first visit to Dr. Sree Koka, chair of dental specialties at the Mayo Clinic, they may feel calmer after watching his video on YouTube. It answers many of their questions: Is the doctor male or female? Does he speak English? Is he nice? In the video, Dr. Koka introduces himself, cracks a few jokes and suggests what patients should think about for their first appointment. He created the spot while attending MITs Executive MBA program where he learned the benefits of focusing on personal relationships, not just technical expertise. "I've come to realize that unless that relationship is good," Dr. Koka said, "almost nothing I do technically is going to work well. It's not just about the teeth but everything the teeth represent: patients' quality of life, social esteem, self-confidence, pain, comfort, and their smile." Dr. Koka is one of a surprising number of senior-level physicians and health care professionals seeking an executive MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management in part because of the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and other changes in the health marketplace. For the first time, students from the health care field make up nearly one in five students in the programs class of 2014, more than from any other industry. Also, more are practicing physicians, including three surgeons, two oncologists, and an anesthesiologist. Whether preparing for new or bigger management roles or seeking to improve their practices, they see the executive MBA as a path toward improving the patient experience.

Executive MBAs are part-time programs aimed at working professionals and managers. At MIT's 22month program, for example, classes meet generally on weekends and evenings. Business training for doctors has been growing steadily since the late 1990s when UC Irvine became one of the first medical schools to offer a joint MD/MBA program, as well as a health care-specific executive MBA. Now more than 50 percent of medical schools offer the joint degree, said Dr. Maria Chandler, head of Irvines program and president of the Association of MD MBA Programs. The number of practicing physicians taking Irvine's health-care executive MBA program has shot up in the past two years, from 35 percent to more than 50 percent of the incoming class. Still, a mere 5 percent of doctors enroll in Irvine's general executive MBA program. That makes MIT's 19 percent quite striking.

Dr. Richard Baum, chief of interventional radiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said he was eager to study "the science of business" and not get a health care-specific executive MBA He wanted to learn bread-and-butter stuff, like how to pay for a hospital with bonds and government subsidies. But he also wanted to learn new ways of thinking from outside health care. When studying for the degree, he said, "You're not just sitting in a room full of doctors, but with manufacturers and shipbuilders." That is true of an increasing number of physicians, said Jonathan Lehrich, director of MIT Sloan's executive program. "Many physicians working in medical centers," Lehrich said, "feel like prisoners of the hospital administration. They're tired of being told, 'Well, you're the physician. You just go off and practice and we'll make all the decisions.' " Dr. Suma Thomas is a cardiologist who attended MIT while practicing at the Lahey Hospital and Medical Center in Burlington. When working with associations dedicated to improving patient care, she said she realized that "doctors don't have the tools to improve our health care system." She took finance courses that taught her to read a balance sheet as well as classes in leadership and communications. In her new position as vice chairman of strategy and operations for the Heart and Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Suma wants to use her new training "to help make the quality of health care best everywhere in the nation." The doctors who have earned their executive MBA through MIT are putting their new skills to work in a variety of ways. Dr. Koka, who will become executive director of the Foundation for Oral Rehabilitation in Zurich in August, focused on "soft science" courses such as strategic management and innovation and entrepreneurship to gain insights that he used while leading the staff in a new clinic for complex cases at Mayo. For Dr. Ivan Salgo, senior director of Global Cardiology at Philips Ultrasound in Andover, the draw was learning how to analyze "big data," the effort to extract meaning from massive sets of data. Dr. Salgo, a cardiothoracic anesthesiologist in the medical device industry for the past 10 years, saw a changed health care system. It's no longer enough to create a useful device, he said. Medical device companies, insurers, and patients now demand results. "So now it's not about getting paid for the antibiotic for your cold," he said, "but for curing your cold." Using data analysis skills he mastered at MIT, Dr. Salgo created a new way to predict cardiac outcomes. By measuring blood pumped out of the heart, blood flow, and tissue motion, he was able to better evaluate the risk of different cardiac treatments, helping doctors at Philips to better advise patients. His project won an award from the American College of Cardiology this year. "Doctors can be changed by the system or be part of the change," said Dr. Salgo. They can continue to be advocates for the patient and for good care, he said. But they can't leave everything else to legislators and administrators. "Physicians with business training can help lead the change," he declares.