Was Earning That Harvard M.B.A. Worth It? (3/3)

"When I first got out, people in Hollywood were like: 'Why did you get your M.B.A.? You would have been better off sitting at someone's desk answering phones,' " he recalled. "But it certainly has been helpful for me now that we're doing bigger deals. It was helpful even before I started my company, putting together financing for projects and closing deals."

Another benefit of an M.B.A. degree, especially from a top-notch school, is the public perception of it — and, by default, its holder — according to a 2005 report by the University of Maryland. The study found that recruiters paid higher salaries to graduates of top-tier business schools compared with those from less prominent ones. "The school's prominence provides legitimacy in the eyes of third parties," said Violina P. Rindova, an associate professor of strategy at the University of Maryland and co-author of the study.

"The real value of an Ivy League business degree is arguably not the education itself, but the screening of intelligence, drive and past accomplishments that the schools do," said Ben Dattner, founding principal of Dattner Consulting in New York. "Just like with undergraduate degrees, if you're smart enough to get into a top-tier school, you're likely to inspire confidence."

MICHELLE MADDEN, 39, a 1994 Harvard Business School graduate who lives in New York and worked at an online media company which she and her partners sold in 2001, agrees. "People tend to give you the benefit of the doubt that you're somewhat intelligent," she said. "They assume that if H.B.S. has done the screening, they don't need to concern themselves with the intelligence screener."

The degree also gave Ms. Madden the confidence to leave the business world several years ago to pursue interests in photography and mountain climbing before resuming work as a consultant. "Today, there's much less of a stigma to taking time off and changing careers," she said. "With the M.B.A., I felt I could do it and return to work without much problem."

Others say that they preferred actually being an entrepreneur to just contemplating becoming one. Jamie Rosen, who quit Harvard Business School in 1995 after getting funding for a software start-up, sold his company in 2004 and founded Memorystone Publishing, a company that produces digital photo albums, a year later.

"The reason I went to B-school was to learn to be an entrepreneur, and here was an opportunity to build a business and get paid for it," said Mr. Rosen, 35, of his decision to leave Harvard. "I'm not necessarily happy that I didn't finish, but I don't regret not going back because I enjoyed what I was doing."

Ms. Malone, one of the subjects of Mr. Richman's documentary, said she never expected to enjoy Harvard as much as she did. "I went in with great skepticism," she said with a laugh. But what Ms. Malone, 38, found at Harvard surprised her — "a pretty friendly, warm, welcoming, nice place."

After Harvard, Ms. Malone spent a year working at the Federal Communications Commission and then helped begin an Internet telephone start-up, which eventually went public. She quit in 1999 to write her first novel, as yet unpublished, before joining Google in June 2004. Like Ms. Madden, Ms. Malone said her degree allowed her to take time off while knowing that it would be easy to get another job.

"It's this big safety net; it's a credential that makes it easier to get a job later," she said. "Maybe life shouldn't be that way, but it is what it is."

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