On the subject of degrees, EXPERIENCE is worth more than a ton of
degrees. Right now, the museum field is littered with MAs, MFAs, PhDs
- BFD! (Big Fat Deal. ;)

What will make you competitive in the long run is what you have DONE,
not what letters you have behind your name. For example, you have two
candidates for a Museum Program Director position both with 10 years
worth of experience. One has only a B.A. but has developed hundreds of
programs from scratch for a wide variety of audiences from children's
Summer camps to major fund-raising events. The other person has an MA
and has mainly worked in smaller museums with local school and general
public programs. Who would you hire? Personally, I'd go with the
person who has done more as opposed to has more education.

If you want to ultimately be a museum director, I'd look at working
for as many diverse museums as possible in a variety of positions. All
museums, regardless of size, have their advantages and disadvantages.
Smaller museums will teach you how to make the most of your budget and
to really get creative about programs, activities and fund-raising.
Larger museums will teach you about bureaurcracy, schmoozing with big
donors, and managing larger scale programs. If you've only got a staff
of 3 people for your museum, you learn how to do everything. If you're
in a large museum with many departments, you learn how to work with
other departments and on teams. All of this experience is useful for
museum professionals regardless of what career path they choose to
take.

After getting at least 5-10 years of experience in a variety of
settings, then you will be in a better position to see what kind of
education you need. Personally, I think traditional MBA is a bit
overkill for a museum professional because we have our own set of
issues that are unique from the corporate world. But the core classes
of accounting, finanace, business planning, marketing, and management
would carry over to the museum world. If you can find a good
non-profit MBA program, I think that would be a better degree to
pursue. And again, I think that unless you have the "real world"
experience coming into an MBA program, you're not going to get as much
out of the program as someone who has the experience to be able to
relate to the coursework.

Another avenue is to look at certification courses in management,
finance, or business planning. Those won't take as long or as much
money as an MBA but will cover a lot of the same material as in an MBA
program.

Personally, I think we need more "business" oriented/MBA types of
people in the museum world but ONLY after they've worked in the museum
field to get a good understanding of what it is like. I've seen too
many museums try to adopt a more corporate model by bringing in an MBA
type from the for-profit business world which did more harm than good.
(Look at the Smithsonian for an example....) Traditional museum types
are going to be resistant to anything "corporate" in the first place
and aren't going to respect anyone coming in from outside the museum
world if they have little to no museum experience as well.

So the long and short of it is after another one of my rambling posts
- instead of focusing on degrees, think more about what you need to
know or have experience with to further your museum career. It might
be that you are at that point in your career that you need to think
about another degree. But most likely, I think you can do better with
trying to get as much experience as possible and keep up with your
education on the side. Then again, you may be at a point in your life
where it makes sense to take off a couple of years and get that degree
or drop back to a part-time job while you take classes towards a
degree.

Deb

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