Why I Chose a Two-Year Supply Chain Master's Over an MBA in 2013

In 2013, after a year working in merchandising and supply chain at a manufacturing facility in Pakistan, I chose a Master of Supply Chain & Logistics Management at RMIT University over an MBA. The MBA was the more obvious move for someone coming out of engineering. I turned it down for a narrower, more specialist path, and it's the decision I'd make again.

The gap I thought I saw

I finished my engineering degree in 2012 and spent the next year on the floor of a manufacturing facility that didn't even have a formally named supply chain department. Looking back, most of what I was doing was supply chain and merchandising work, just without the title. That year convinced me of something I still believe: supply chain and procurement are usually the easiest targets for improvement in a business, and yet they traditionally sit behind sales and core engineering in terms of attention. I could see a shift starting — businesses beginning to treat supply chain as a discipline worth optimising rather than a cost centre to ignore. I wanted to specialise in the thing I thought was about to matter more, not the thing that was already fashionable.

An MBA, as far as I could tell from my research at the time, was built for people heading toward generalist leadership roles, not specialists. That's a reasonable path. It just wasn't mine.

Germany was the original plan

Before Australia was ever on the table, my best friend and I spent months planning a move to Germany. English-taught master's programs there were genuinely affordable, and we researched it seriously for a long stretch. The problem was specific: supply chain wasn't taught as a discrete subject at the programs we found. There was project management, there was general business — but not the specialisation I was actually looking for. An older brother's friend mentioned RMIT and Australian universities almost in passing, and that single conversation is the reason I ended up looking at Australia at all.

Why RMIT, specifically

Two things made the decision for me, and neither was prestige.

First, as an international student, I needed a two-year program to qualify for a student visa. At the time, RMIT and University of New South Wales were the only two universities offering a two-year Master of Supply Chain & Logistics Management. University of Melbourne had a strong course, but it ran for one year — which meant it didn't qualify for the visa pathway I needed. That single structural detail removed an otherwise strong option from consideration entirely.

Second, RMIT's course overlapped with its MBA program for a few units, which meant I could get specialist depth in supply chain while still picking up general management exposure and networking with MBA students. I also liked that the course was cheaper per year than Melbourne or UNSW, even though the two-year length meant I spent more overall. RMIT had a strong alumni network already established in Australian logistics and supply chain, a newly built, purpose-built business building, and a genuinely central Melbourne location — which mattered more than it sounds, because it meant living in the city rather than commuting in from a university suburb.

The part I got wrong

I'll be honest about the naive bit: at the time, I believed a US MBA carried more weight globally than an Australian one, and I told myself I'd do an MBA later once I'd built some local experience, if I still wanted one. Looking back now, that belief wasn't well informed. Australian MBAs are taught to a comparable standard and open comparable doors to US ones — I just didn't know that yet in 2013.

What I'd tell someone weighing this today

Don't pick a degree because it's the default next step after engineering. Pick the one that matches the specific gap you think you can fill, and check the structural details — course length, visa eligibility, cost spread over the full program — before you check the university's name recognition. The MBA was never wrong. It just wasn't answering the question I was actually asking.