I believe that well-rounded understanding of management helps all managers do a better job. I also believe that technical employees offer the firm more with advanced degrees in their technical specialization. CEO's many times become concerned that if they reimburse an employee for advanced education, the employee might leave and take the knowledge to a competitor as soon as the degree is completed. While this is possible, there are many ways of putting restrictions on employees to insure the firm gets an adequate period of return on its investment. An example of this comes from a small Christian college in the Southwest United States.
Christian colleges tend to pay professors less than the larger state schools.
Thus, they find it difficult to attract professors with a doctorate degree, and frequently they will instead hire M.B.A.'s to teach business courses. This creates a problem when the accrediting boards measure the proportion of doctorate degrees to master's degrees on the faculty. This particular Christian college hired a bright M.B.A. and offered to have him teach a half-time load and pay full tuition and books plus a travel stipend if he would enroll in a business doctoral program in a state university some fifty miles away. In return for this training, the young M.B.A agreed to teach at the Christian school for a period of not less than five years after he completed the doctoral degree. Since a doctoral degree may take up to five years, at a part-time pace, the school insured itself of ten years' service from the professor.