http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/sports/article.adp?id=20050625193609990003&ncid=NWS00010000000001 INGLEWOOD, Calif. (June 25) - Shaquille O'Neal returned to the Forum on Saturday, not for an NBA game, but to pick up his MBA. The man who once called himself the Big Aristotle was the tallest and most famous of the 2,200 University of Phoenix graduates at the arena. But O'Neal said he was simply getting ready for the real world. "It's just something to have on my resume (for) when I go back into reality," the 7-foot-1 Miami Heat center said before picking up his master's in business administration. "Someday I might have to put down a basketball and have a regular 9-to-5 like everybody else." O'Neal played with the Los Angeles Lakers at the Forum until the team moved to the downtown Staples Center in 1999. Championship banners and the gold-and-purple jerseys of retired stars still hang on the walls. "Sports for me has always been, you know, fairy tale life. And this right here is real life," he said of his degree. "This right here means more." O'Neal left Louisiana State University as a junior in 1992 to turn pro, and made good on a promise to his mother to graduate, earning a bachelor's in business from LSU in 2000. For the University of Phoenix, a national for-profit college that caters to working adults, the Big Graduate did online work, and, before he was traded, attended classes several days a week at a West Los Angeles campus. Fellow students weren't intimidated, he joked. "They would all say, 'You're not like we thought you would be. You're not as smart as we thought that you would be,"' O'Neal said. O'Neal, who left the Lakers following a well-publicized feud with Kobe Bryant, said his job experience came in handy in the classroom. "I used my basketball experience working with different egos, to get everybody to work together," he said. But O'Neal likes to be in charge. He previously took courses at a police academy and said he'll aim for another degree, in criminal justice. He hopes to eventually work as a sheriff or police chief and said he met some people in those top positions with advanced degrees. "I wanted to have the same type of knowledge that they had," he said. O'Neal worked with classmates to design mock sneaker and cell phone companies, though he already had more than a little experience in the business world from product endorsements, his own clothing line and forays into movies and music. The degree, he said, "solidifies that I'm a businessman." The Big Executive is ready to take on Bill Gates and Donald Trump. "I could always go and have a conversation with Mr. Gates or Mr. Trump. But now that I have this," he said, "I can really have a conversation with them on the same level that they have their conversations."
I still have trouble understanding how anyone can not like Shaq, especially since he's no longer a Laker...
I hated him when he was a Laker. Since he's left LA, my opinion of him has changed a lot, thought I'm not really sure why. Maybe it was the way the media painted him while he was there, or the fact that I just absolutely hate the Lakers, but I like him now that he's in Miami.
MBA's in business are really not that hard to get (depending on the institution). I know alot of people with questionable intelligence with Master's degrees.
I respect anybody that has like $200 mil in the bank and still goes out there to get his MBA. It was a waste of money to get it, but hey, he has something to show that he finished school, along with his multimillion dollar checks he gets every year.
1) the "B" in MBA stands for Business (i.e all MBAs are in Business) 2) its is time consuming 3) it was not a was a waste of money for him... considering all the rich athletes who go into business after retirement, maybe he wants to make sure the money stays in the Shaq family for more than one generation. 4) I'll bet U of Phx will have him on all the literature now 5) I am not transferring out of the UH program just cause Shaq did the degree online
60 Minutes just did a piece on online universities. I guess not all are "degrees for your cash" but I'm not hiring someone with one of those things.
This is the point. Anybody as loaded as him could lounge around doing nothing for the rest of their lives. He's out there trying to get degrees and joining police academies. How can you not respect the dude a little for that?
I agree. Also, this is the one such University which commands some sort of respect. I would definitely hire someone who has taken time to get a degree, in addition to a full time job. It's definitely hard. I've taken a year out of University to do some work and save cash, but I still do several evening courses. It's not the easiest thing to come back tired from a hard day at work only to do another 3 hours of lectures plus essays and exam studying. I definitely give people that try and improve their situations a lot of respect. There are a lot of people who simply can't afford to go and do a full time degree course. Shaq seems at least to be a person that is trying to better himself. He might seem like an idiot sometimes, but how many people with his money would make an effort to do anything else afterwards? Let alone preparing for life after his career during it.
Pfft, It's like Elvis picking up another badge. Ego baby ego, If Shaq wanted to, he could have MBA's mowing his lawn.
I don't know about the 'respect' part. Let's put it this way: Having a master's degree from the University of Pheonix will not assist getting you into a doctoral program at institutions like U of H, UT, etc... As a matter of fact they don't even consider them, if that tells you anything. Look, getting a graduate degree is not meant to be easy. If it were easy, convenient, and quick, then anybody and everybody would do it. There are no shortcuts in life. And if you think you've found one, even one we rationalize as simply a 'non-traditional' way of doing something, we'll quickly find out than when the rubber hits the proverbial road folks just don't look at our accomplishment the same. Bottom line: Folks who are hiring us in the real world do not put anywhere near the same stock into a 'University of Pheonix' degree as they would a degree from, say, Texas Tech [or insert the name of any 'brick and mortar' school here]. That being said, Shaq isn't going to hang his hat on this as a resume bumper for the purposes of trying to go out and get a job. For the purpose of feeling more accomplished academically, he deserves congratulations.
University of Phoenix is like any other tech school. Less than 5% of the people who graduate from these places actually secure a stable job with a decent income. In other words its a bs school for a bs degree.
I think you are overestimating my respect comment. I didn't mean it like that at all. I fully understand a full time degree course at an established university is worth more than a degree from the University of Phoenix or any such programme. All I meant was that anyone who does so in addition to a full time job, be it to add something (even if small) to a resume and help them get a somewhat better job or to simply add to their knowledge commands respect. And by respect I didn't mean that, I meant in terms of all these "online" Universities that give you degrees based on nothing at all.
