According to ans article over on MBAPrograms.org, the average cost of a two year MBA is $80,000, which is more than the average annual salary of a graduate. But is it worth it? Especially when this recent article by Robert Kaplan on The Hollow Science points out that US MBAs have too much training on the coastline of business and not enough on the mainland. Too much discussion, and analysis, on the capital markets where companies and investors meet (and on the associations between the prices of traded equities, debt, and financial instruments and the information in company disclosures, corporate governance practices, and financial analysts’ reports and not enough on emerging best practices in asset valuation and risk management in well-managed financial institutions.

And if this isn’t enough to deter you, some US companies (and one US bank in particular) have already stopped hiring U.S. business school graduates because, in Kaplan’s words, they don’t have the requisite skills to value and assess the risks of complex, infrequently traded assets, for staters.

So is that US MBA, which might get you black-balled, really worth $80,000?