Masters in Business Administration -

Now, it may be just as lucrative to study on your own rather than go to a formal MBA program.

What many of these grads don't understand is that you could study how to be a hedge fund manager 19 hours a day, but if you're doing it simply for the money, you may be able to fake a report card, but not real life.

There are some very good MBA programs that exist. Though, for each one that does, there are 15 recent grads attending because they don't want to do work that they feel may be beneath them upon graduating college.

No longer is a MBA a shortcut to the corner office. It is what you do with it. You can compound this problem with the fact that recent college graduates don't have enough experience in the real world (though many believe they may) to decipher the good from the aloof, unrealistic and out of touch MBA programs some colleges put forward.

Since I started my executive search firm, the most outrageous, outlandish salary requests I have witnessed have not come from "middle-managers" nor did they come from recent college grads. They come from students graduating with their MBAs (not who had work experience in-between, but by grads going straight in).

In Closing:

As repeated throughout this article, post-grad studies such as those in law, nursing, and business management can signal intense interest in a field, true talent and drive, and of course can herald long-term contentment and success.

But during the Great Recession, the uptick in popularity of post-grad fields of study only heralds larger groups of student debt holders, while those who would have gone on to be the dedicated nurse practitioners, the talented and detail-oriented lawyers, and the insightful and novelly thinking MBAs would have risen to the top of their classes in any economy.

The worst mistake you can make as a recent or upcoming bachelor's graduate in this economy is to delay your entry into the real world by pursuing a graduate degree you don't know how you might use. Decisive drive beats unnecessary letters after your name any day.