Seth Godin has posted on a printable manifesto circulating around the Internet called The Personal MBA.  Josh Kaufman is a twenty-something brand manager at consumer product powerhouse Proctor & Gamble.  The premise of the document is that aspiring professionals don't need to waste $100K or more on an MBA degree because the critical information they need to be successful is right at their fingertips. 

According to Business Week, the PMBA is simply an online list of reading material and accompanying message boards and is part book club and part online community.  Participants, who are instructed to keep gaining work experience at all costs, go through the the reading list one book at a time and then exchange ideas and learnings on the Web site.

This is just the latest development in an ongoing controversy as to whether the MBA is worthwhile and/or necessary to reach the corner office.  For some careers, like finance and marketing, an MBA is typically still an essential.  But the answer is much more vague for those of us in, let's say, the career development profession.

The rapidly increasing popularity of the PMBA tells me two things.  First, e-learning is hotter than hot and growing more quickly than anyone could have imagined several years ago.  One has to wonder if many graduate programs will even have physical campuses by the year 2010.   Secondly, it seems as though people are finally realizing that most of the success you experience in the corporate world does not come as a result of what you learn in a traditional school environment. 

An MBA of any kind may address topical areas such as accounting and business planning, and even cryptic specifics like Kaufman's cited Black-Scholes option pricing model, but it's only through real-world experience and concerted personal development that you will master skills like gaining cooperation from difficult colleagues, sustaining motivation in the face of trying circumstances, taking calculated risks, and empowering a staff to do their best. 

If you think about it, it's kind of like high school.  What is more useful in your life today?  Knowing how to do a quadratic equation or being able to navigate through a complex social hierarchy?