Free tool
Is this MBA actually worth it?
Thirty seconds to get the maths on the table. It runs in your browser: the numbers you type never leave this page, and we never store them.
Someone spent half a year deciding whether to do an MBA and got a different answer every time he ran the numbers. He kept missing the same line item: the salary he would not earn during the year or two he was out of work. Tuition is the cost you can see. The forgone salary is the one you can’t, and it is usually the bigger of the two.This calculator does one thing: it puts both costs on the table and tells you how many years it takes to get them back.
Your numbers
Pre-tax, including fixed bonus. This field also sets your opportunity cost.
The whole programme added up, not one year of it.
Enter 0 if you have none. It comes straight off the cost.
Not the dream number. Use a real salary band or the result is fiction.
Not sure what green-collar roles actually pay? See the real bands in the 2026 APAC Green-Collar Salary Report →
What the numbers say
Years to break even
4.2 years
On these numbers you break even in about 4.2 years. By year ten you are S$290,000 ahead of not going.
Net cost divided by the salary lift. It assumes that after that one raise, your pay stays flat.
Total invested
S$210,000
tuition S$120,000 + opportunity cost S$90,000
Tuition, plus the salary you give up to go.
Net cost
S$210,000
Total invested minus the scholarship. This is what actually leaves your pocket.
Salary lift
S$50,000
Expected post-MBA salary minus what you earn now.
10-year net benefit
S$290,000
Salary lift times ten, minus the net cost.
What this calculator leaves out
- No tax. Tuition, salary and lift are all pre-tax figures, so what you actually keep is less.
- No FX conversion. The three currencies are display labels. If you earn in TWD and would be paid in SGD, convert the numbers yourself before entering them.
- No salary guarantee. “Expected post-MBA salary” is an assumption you typed in. The market doesn’t owe it to you.
- Opportunity cost assumes you earn nothing while studying. If you work, intern, or have interest income, your real cost is lower than this.
- Network, optionality, the chance to live a different life: none of it is countable, so none of it is in here. It may be the thing you are actually buying.
This tool exists to open the books, not to talk you into an MBA. Once the numbers are on the table, the decision is still yours.
If you are weighing an MBA for a green-collar career
The expected post-MBA salary is the field people get wrong, because most people fill it with a guess. We went through the public salary guides, official employment reports and job-board data for Singapore and Taiwan, and wrote up what green, sustainability and ESG roles actually pay. Take a number from there, come back, and your payback period stops being a fantasy.
Open the 2026 APAC Green-Collar Salary Report →After the maths
The books you can balance. The story you can’t.
A payback period only answers “is it worth it”. What decides whether you get in, and whether anyone wants you afterwards, is whether you can tell your scattered experience as one line. The green-collar MRI maps your CV against the market gap for free: three minutes to see which parts hold up and which are still empty.
Take the green-collar MRI (free) →No payment, no card, three minutes.