In an interview with Business Week, Kristine Mackey, associate dean for Evening and Weekend Programs at Chicago Graduate School of Business, offered some suggestions for students on how to decide whether to enroll in a part-time or full-time MBA program. Mackey offered these tips for students considering an MBA program:

If you’re in a job, even though the paycheck feels great but you don’t see how this is ever going to take you anywhere, or for whatever reason you find yourself in an environment that’s unhealthy, you find yourself in an industry that’s like topsy-turvy, going somewhere not positive — for a lot of those people to get off, full-time study is the right way to do it.

I also think full-time study is right for people who want to go into some traditional Wall Street firms, where the way that they bring people into the fold is via the formal, structured, internship recruiting process. And then from that internship, they pick off the people they want to give full-time offers. It’s still relatively common in certain sectors of I-banking.

Mackey suggests that students ask themselves if they’re truly happy in their current position. If they want to get an MBA in order to advance through their current employer, then a pert-time program is probably a better option. On the other hand, if they think that they can find a better, higher-paying position after they have their MBA, they might be better off in a full-time MBA program.