Believe in Your Intellectual Net Worth!

Believe in your Intellectual Net Worth!

Why Bodyguards are Naturally High Achievers in Academic Study

By: Dr Mils Hills

You probably wouldn’t expect an academic to see the potential in bodyguards let alone see more in them than many see in themselves. But here I am – a lecturer in a university business faculty and irrepressible social media advocate for making academic study easy - doing just that. My day job is advocating for and working with a wide range of distance learners with (like myself) no prior background in higher education. Supporting this is my hobby of being The Academic Pirate – providing a wide range of totally free podcasts, videos, tips, hints and templates that support my mission of de-mystifying study and helping people fit it around their professional and family lives.

Whether your aspirations are to remain in the industry long term, develop your own company, charity or take a completely different career path: this article aims to boost confidence in your ability to ace ANY academic study – but to encourage you to consider direct access to a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) in particular.

You don’t need a first degree to study for an MBA – and the innate skills and knowledge that equip you to do your day job mean that you are all set up to succeed in academic study. One small caveat. You have to forget almost everything you have ever heard or experienced before as “academic study”. Just as there are many paths to enlightenment – so, too, there are many ways of doing academic study. And I specialise in the path that is signposted ‘Easy’ and ‘Flexible’.

Why People Are Understandably Put Off Higher Education

Excuse me for a moment - I’m going to preach to the choir. Because even the best choirs need the occasional reminder that they are, well, the best. A close protection officer is an intelligent person. They have great judgement, supreme situational awareness skills, weigh up evidence and information, are mindful of their own and the principal or client’s reputation and understand why formal qualifications are badges of honour and licences to practice.

However, many people in the security industry would like to acquire a meaningful qualification outside of those required to operate in the sector. Or they have an ‘unscratched itch’ that they don’t yet have a degree. Or perhaps they have an interest in a non- security field that they would love to explore. Whatever the motivation, it is very likely that anyone would be put off proceeding for a wide range of totally logical reasons. Education is super-confusing. There are multiple levels, different providers state you have to have A levels and then you should do an undergraduate degree. This is slow, expensive and even humiliating. You may find lecturers treat you with disdain, if they communicate at all. Distance learning may be incredibly lonely and you may find it impossible to speak to a human that will be working with you in the enquiry phase, let alone when you’ve paid and are on the books. There is little or no guidance or study skills support other than in feedback on assignments which state that you should have done it differently. This is massively disheartening, to say the least.

I speak on a very regular basis with individuals with exemplary service records in the military, civilian and veteran communities working in security. To a person, they are humble and self-deprecating. They almost always say “I’m not academic,” in an apologetic manner. That’s where I get really energised. There is no single way of ‘being academic’. What people mean is that they have been written off by others as not good enough for academic study. But just because you flunked your exams at school 5, 15, 25 years ago or annoyed an insecure teacher or were a bit of a pain is not actually a diagnosis of being an intellectual failure!

What academics have totally failed to communicate to potential and enrolled learners is that you can produce work of the highest academic standard and still preserve your ‘voice’, style and opinion on the topic(s) in question. This is something I am passionate about.

And, don’t fear the format! Put off by essays – I’ve got a free template which breaks each paragraph into a series of components you need to research and write. Stick them together, polish and ‘top-and-tail’ and you have a full essay. “Scared by referencing?” (Hills 2019 :6) is how you would quote me if I had written that phrase last year. It’s really simple! The only difficult thing is letting go of the massive psychological and cultural barriers we’ve internalised over the years that “Study is Special and Difficult”. False.

Smashing Your Psychological and Cultural Barriers

I’m lucky enough to be involved in recruiting learners almost every week of the year. I never tire of smashing the psychological and cultural barriers I mention above. And most years my MBA cohorts are 100% full of those that don’t have a first degree but do have a lot of military / related experience. So, the next myth to be destroyed: you should start with an undergraduate degree (level 6).

Your professional experience and trade training are seen as equalling and exceeding what a first degree provides a graduate with.

Err, no. Don’t do that unless you want to pick up information in a topic that you are personally interested in unrelated to a future job (e.g. Tudor History) - so a hobby – or because it is somehow needed as part of a pathway to, say, a clinical qualification or something similar (e.g. psychologist). If none of those apply – then the elite, generalist qualification of a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) is the way to go. And, yes, it is a post-graduate qualification – but you don’t need a first degree to study it. Your professional experience and trade training are seen as equalling and exceeding what a first degree provides a graduate with.

An MBA is really useful because you can retain a subject matter specialism (e.g. security or some sub-aspect of it) by exploring, developing or creating new ideas in your assignments and especially the final year dissertation project. This could even be the development of a business plan, model or marketing approach. After graduation, then, depending on the need you can either emphasise the security-specific nature of your learning OR leverage the fact that the MBA is recognised as THE qualification which gives learners the ability to understand businesses comprehensively, across functions and transfer tools and knowledge to help you solve a wide range of real world problems. It is also a much sought-after qualification for many jobs (just search MBA on your favourite job search engine).

An MBA is also transformative for my learners because of the personal confidence that it inspires in the individual. There is no doubt about it, this is a qualification which knocks all others into the shade. Few will opt for direct entry because they do doubt themselves and their abilities – but those who are prepared to venture outside of their comfort zone will reap the rewards. As soon as doing assignments is understood as a process to showcase your abilities to understand both the topic area and the stylistic constraints you need to own to effectively win the highest grade – the confidence grows. And then you are on a par with (or head and shoulders ahead of) competitors for contracts, jobs and so on. There is no doubt that the shock value of close protection officers and others also having ‘MBA’ after their name is valuable. But the personal buzz doesn’t go away. University credits are not given away, they have to be earned – unlike some so-called qualifications that are offered in the shady educational sector. However, there is an important truth to bear in mind.

University Qualifications are Valuable: but not priceless An MBA can cost as much as you have to spend. There are programmes which cost well over £100k. Online, expect to pay between £12k-30k. And many of these demand a first degree as well as all of your money. The MBA Pathway, however, is rather different. You cover all of the core curriculum that you would study at any business school in the world, and graduate from a UK university with a regular MBA degree. However, the Pathway involves UK learners taking the respected BTEC EDEXCEL Extended Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership in year one (£2,625) and an MBA top-up programme in year two (£3,100). This is a route that has been available for well over a decade and hundreds of students a year graduate from my programme alone at the University of Northampton every year. In total, the entire course is delivered 100% online, with full and friendly support at all stages: study skills building, drafting your assignment, review of draft and feedback. The whole pathway embeds my concepts of ‘Conversational Learning’ and ACE: Academic skills, Confident expression and Exploiting time and technology.

Even more interesting, perhaps, is that Minerva Elite (the University of Northampton’s preferred partner) provide the Extended Diploma – based on a business model which was at the core of the MBA dissertation developed by my then student, now Minerva MD and Associate Lecturer at Northampton: Guy Batchelor. As a leading light in the education world for folk in security, our mission and source of delight is enabling the current and future generations of close protection operatives to recognise and leverage their Intellectual Net Worth, to plot a sustainable business future for themselves, to secure competitive advantage in employment and contractual negotiations and boost self-esteem.

Minerva Elite as the BBA’s Academic Partner

Minerva Elite are delighted to be the official Academic Partner of the BBA. BBA members will start to benefit from this unique collaboration in a range of ways – supporting their ongoing professional and personal development and helping make the best possible decisions about how to invest their time and money for the highest return in terms of qualifications. Minerva Elite - and especially in my guise as ‘The Academic Pirate’ are passionate about encouraging as many protection specialists as possible into higher education, and even if we cannot provide you with the solutions you wish to have – we will work with the BBA to transfer skills and confidence to enable you to make informed choices and ace the pathways you select.

Dr Mils Hills is the Head of Knowledge at Minerva Elite and directs the MBA ‘topup’programme at the University of Northampton which follows-on from Minerva’s Level 7 Extended Diploma. Mils has worked with the defence and protection community since 1998 in a range of roles. Find him on LinkedIn and any other social media platform.