An MBA Can Cost $100,000 a Year. Buyers Want More Than a Credential

An MBA can cost more than $100,000 a year, while fewer than 6% of entrepreneurs held one in 2023, according to Entrepreneur’s contributing analysis. The numbers frame a practical test for buyers: find a usable network, strategic judgment and leadership skills, not merely a prestigious résumé line.

Entrepreneur’s analysis also reports that the share of entrepreneurs holding an MBA rose 45% since 2010. The contributor built Jotform as a bootstrapped business without an MBA and has no regrets about teaching himself. He has recently fielded aspiring founders’ questions, especially about AI, and says the answer depends on what they hope to gain.

What does an MBA actually buy?

The analysis says business-school experts broadly agree on the first advantage: an MBA provides a built-in network that online tutorials cannot reproduce. Cohorts supply ambitious peers; faculty, guest lecturers and alumni supply additional contacts.

Those relationships can provide advice, a warm introduction or feedback on a founder’s latest idea. The useful asset is access, not the directory itself. Founders still must choose whom to call and what to ask.

Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management has a global alumni network that spans 65,000 people across more than 15 industries. Students can draw on that reach for advice, warm introductions and feedback. The Jotform founder’s warning carries the practical weight: “That said, a network is only what you make of it.”

Connections cool when founders ignore them, and an impressive directory fails if its holder never makes the call. An MBA can open the door; it cannot maintain the relationship for the graduate. This distinction separates access from usable capital.

The contributor built Jotform’s network the old-fashioned way, using meetups, former colleagues and alumni from his alma mater. The process was more painstaking, but it gave him the resources he needed. That experience supports the analysis’s conclusion that an MBA is one route to a network, not the only route.

Why prestige and runway fall short

Entrepreneur identifies three common attractions: a degree from a top university as validation, investors taking the founder more seriously and two years to think before a real business creates pressure. None of those motives guarantees progress toward building the company, even when tuition reaches $100,000 or more each year. The analysis also notes that some schools are currently cutting fees to attract more students, but price alone does not answer the return question.

The contributor was a coder when he started, and he lacked even basic knowledge of leadership, accounting and marketing. Bootstrapping Jotform kept his mistakes relatively small, while slow growth gave him time to refine his leadership. A different path might have led him to seek more training earlier.

That experience produces the analysis’s central caveat, not a rejection of degree programs: “The fact is that nothing can really ever prepare you for starting your own business. An MBA can, however, help lay the groundwork.” The distinction matters for founders calculating whether a structured environment offers useful preparation or simply delays real-world exposure.

AI changes the cost-benefit calculation

The contributor says AI would have made his 2006 startup learning curve less steep, even though he would still have bootstrapped Jotform and learned by doing. AI can now close many skills gaps, while entrepreneurs can still build networks from scratch. That weakens one traditional argument for an MBA while leaving the case for certain human capabilities intact.

Good business schools, according to the contributor, now teach strategic thinking and the soft skills that successful leadership demands. Case discussions force students to defend a position out loud while peers push back. Group projects teach them to manage disagreement. The contributor argues AI cannot teach those skills, even as it closes many skills gaps. Those leadership muscles matter more now, he says.

The practical test for a founder is straightforward: identify why you want an MBA and what you hope to gain. It makes the most sense when the network and structured leadership practice address a real bottleneck. A founder with a strong network, enough runway and a preference for learning by doing can build the same assets outside school, though the path may take longer and demand more persistence.

Going forward, the MBA’s value should rest less on signaling and more on whether graduates actively use the people and judgment-building opportunities they paid for. AI may lower the cost of acquiring know-how, but it leaves the need to make consequential decisions with other people intact. For founders weighing six-figure tuition, that is the variable that decides whether the degree is an asset or an expensive credential.