One-year MBA or Two-year?

Recently, i was talking generally with my manager and we some how started talking about MBA. He has an MBA from India. When we were talking about international MBA, he was very much supportive of one-year MBAs, but not of a two-year course. His logic: What one gets from an MBA is contacts and tools. Contacts: You will never be able to mingle and interact with so many people togather with such closeness, once you are out on the business floor. Tools: B-school will teach you different tools to tackle various business scenario, but every scenario is unique. You may usually find some tool or the other helpful in analyzing you scenario, but you gain the best knowledge from your own experiences. When you work yourself and you crack it on the floor, that's the Aha! experience. Even if you were unlucky and didnot succeed, you will get a lot many insights, which will help you attack other issues. So, he says one should attend one-year MBA courses, which will help you get the contacts and the tools. Moreover, most of the course work which is taught in 2 years can be fit into 1 year course. B-schools admit the top of the tops, so the students can handle the rigor of a compact one-year course. You will learn a lot more if you work for the next 1 year (which you will spend at school, if you study in a 2-year course). B-schools should admit students with sufficient experience and the applicants should be sure of what they want to do going forward. Also, if you atend a one-year course you will on one hand save one year's admission fee and on the hand earn money money.

I argued with him that it will be difficult for the applicants who want to switch career to have a comprehensive idea of their new career in a one-year course. Moreover, many students are not even sure of what job they want to do. So, they learn a lot about different career paths and job functions in their first year. Then, in second year they are lot more confident in deciding their career path.

Also, If the person doesnot have sufficient experience and he is stuck in a job/position where he cannot grow much, then it makes sense to go to a b-school. In this case, he needs to have a solid understanding of all the major business areas which are essential to lead a successful company/team. Moreover, most of the b-schools which offer One-year MBA cources( read European schools) require considerable international application. So, it will be difficult for a person with say 2-3 years of experience to enter a b-school. So, in my mind, for a person with sufficient experience, going for an advanced degree will be more useful than going for an MBA.

On the money part, i agreed with him. It's really difficult for a person from middle class family of a developing country to spend so much.