The research done for this dissertation looks closely at the relationship developed between employer and employee when the employee decides to pursue an MBA (Master of Business Administration) degree. Graduates from Avila University were surveyed as part of this project and they were primarily employees of local Kansas City companies who were going to school at night and attending school part-time. Often, the company was paying for the education, which set up a situation of interest for employer/employee relationships. If the company pays, who really owns the degree? Does the employee/graduate owe it to the firm that provided funding to stay with that firm after graduation or should the employee, armed with better education credentials, move on to a better position at another firm? To answer these questions, two important theoretical constructs were measured---organizational commitment and the psychological contract. Organizational commitment is a measure of loyalty to the organization and psychological contracts are mutual agreements made between two parties. Data were collected by mailing surveys to 780 graduates of the Avila University MBA program. The net response rate from this mailing was approximately 26% and the respondent sample fairly represented the population of Avila graduates over the 24 year time period.{09}Descriptive and inferential statistics were employed to analyze the resulting data. The results showed higher levels of career satisfaction associated with both higher levels of organizational commitment and a greater sense of psychological contract fulfillment. As far as predicting job loyalty among the Avila MBA graduates, the respondents who felt their MBA degree was important were more likely to have moved on to another job. No significant relationship was found between job loyalty and tuition reimbursement.
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