As the name implies, MBA teaches business administration, or managing business. It gives you 30,000 ft overview of the entire business value chain, and then you

As the name implies, MBA teaches business administration, or managing business. It gives you 30,000 ft overview of the entire business value chain, and then you zoom in on each individual component separately, knowing where it fits in the whole picture. To have a business means to have revenue, so you you have to sell stuff (sales). You also have to figure out how to sell stuff better to more people for more money (marketing). To sell something you have to have something, product or service, so you have to build it/design it (product/service development/R&D), and then make it in large quantities (manufacturing/operations). To manufacture it you have to get things from which you will make your products (inbound logistics). When you're ready to sell you need to physically deliver things you're selling (outbound logistics). These are your primary business functions. There's also support functions. Many businesses employ people, and they need to be managed, you need to find and hire good people, you have to make sure they don't slack off, do what they're supposed to do and don't do what they're NOT supposed to do, and don't cause any issues for the business etc (that's human resources). You have to make sure the business follows all appropriate regulations (that's Legal). You have to know how much money you're spending and making, not an easy task as large businesses have hundreds/thousands projects and activities going on at the same time (that's your accounting). You can also find out how you can optimize your financial resources and get the most bang for you buck (finance). There's obviously a small group of people running the whole thing and deciding on the strategy and then coming up with plans to implement it (Executive function). So in MBA you review all of these functions in detail so that you know the best practices, what to do and what not to do, bunch of examples (case studies) from various companies etc etc. That's all there is to it. The idea is that once you understand the whole picture you can then move up the chain to management or even to Executive function so that you can run the whole thing. There's also books like "Portable MBA" where all this knowledge is put in one book in a condensed manner, and you will probably learn just as much from it as you would from a class, in the same way you can get through all the coursework on CS major and (kinda) learn most of it. EDIT: Ironically I forgot to mention another somewhat important support function called Information Technology. :)