One Of Wharton’s Most Successful MBA Alums Says His Degree Was ‘A Waste Of Time’

By almost any account, Bill Winters has had a very successful career. After earning his MBA from Wharton in 1988, during the peak of MBA popularity when the degree’s ROI was at its highest, Winters returned to JPMorgan to continue his role in the firm’s graduate trainee program. He climbed the ranks over the next 26 years, ultimately becoming co-CEO of JP Morgan’s investment bank.

For the past decade, Winters has been CEO of Standard Chartered Bank in the United Kingdom, receiving a total compensation package of $14.7 million last year. His net worth has been estimated as high as $336 million.

Did his MBA training at Wharton help to put him on this high-flying trajectory? No, according to Winters. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Winters claims his MBA degree had little to no value. It was, in his own words, “a waste of time.”

VALUE OF AN MBA: NOT MUCH ACCORDING TO THIS CEO

Far more helpful, he suggested, was his 1983 undergraduate degree in international relations from Colgate University, a degree that opened the door to JPMorgan in the first place.

“I studied international relations and history,” he told Bloomberg. “I got an MBA later, but that was a waste of time,”

It is a stunning admission from one of Wharton’s most successful alums. When Winters graduated from the school in 1988, the MBA program was ranked fourth best in Businessweek’s first MBA ranking. The annual tuition was just $15,440, and the typical Wharton MBA started with average pay of $55,183. Today, tuition and fees are $92,820 a year, six times more, while the median salary is $175,000, little more than three times higher.

OUSTED FROM JPMORGAN BY A HARVARD MBA

Because Winters returned to JPMorgan after getting his MBA, it’s highly likely he didn’t even have to pay for it. JPMorgan would have picked up the tab.

It’s not clear why Winters is so down on his MBA degree. The Bloomberg interviewer did not follow up to explore why he thinks so little of his MBA education.

Despite having a successful career, however, Wharton has never publicly acknowledged Winters with any honor or award–not a Distinguished Service Award or the Dean’s Medal. And then there was the temporary setback in his career caused when JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon ousted Winters from his job as co-head of investment banking in 2009. Dimon, one of Harvard Business School’s most successful MBA graduates, removed Winters abruptly by phone.

SKILLS LEARNED DURING HIS HUMANITIES DEGREE MORE USEFUL

Winters did say that the soft skills he learned from majoring in the humanities are more relevant now. “I learned how to think at university, and for the 40 years since I left university, those skills have been degraded, degraded, degraded. They’re coming back now,” Winters said.

The CEO said that with the rise of AI, learning how to think and communicate effectively matters more than ever. “The technical skills are being provided by the machine, or by very competent people in other parts of the world who have really nailed the technical skills at a relatively low cost.”

“I’m going to go back to curiosity and empathy. Really, really understand the audience that you’re dealing with and anticipate those needs beforehand,” he added.

DON’T MISS: THE REAL ROI OF AN MBA: STILL WORTH THE INVESTMENT? or HE WENT FROM MAKING $30K TO $200K — WHY THE MBA IS THE MOST UNDERRATED PATH TO WEALTH