Conventional wisdom says it takes money to make money. But it doesn't always require big sums to obtain the extra education that working professionals need to turbocharge their earning power.

That's because data suggest and experts agree that relatively affordable, well-targeted investments in education can often provide a larger-percentage boost in salary than even the priciest degrees. So "back to school" doesn't have to mean "back to the poorhouse" in pursuit of better pay.

Consider, for instance, the master's of business administration degree. Managers with MBAs from schools ranked in the Top 10, where the mean cost of tuition plus fees and expenses exceeds $198,000, receive a 12 percent average return on investment in terms of increased salary over their first 10 years as MBAs. Meanwhile, professionals who attend lower-ranked (and lower-priced) schools average an 18 percent average return on investment, according to a 2006 survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

The good news continues: Many employees boost their salaries most effectively by mastering new "soft" skills, such as negotiating or earning trust, which don't require fancy degrees to learn, according to Mark Oldman, founder and president of Vault.com, a career-resource website. And for those who do need some new "hard" skills or technical know-how, institutions of higher education are rapidly rolling out new programs that deliver workplace acumen at a fraction of the cost of an MBA.

"Certification programs have proliferated amazingly over the past decade," says Randall Hansen, a marketing professor at Stetson University in Deland, Fla. and founder of Quintessial Careers, a career-development website (www.quintcareers.com). To a prospective employer, "a certification says, 'Hey, I'm not an old dog. I'm out there learning and being certified with the most cutting-edge skills in this industry,' " he says.

To give one's salary a jolt, the MBA still works. The GMAC survey found that graduates from the Top 10 schools raised their annual pay by 56 percent, or a mean amount of $34,500. Graduates from other programs outside the Top 10 saw their pay jump 54 percent, or $28,100.

But cheaper, less time-consuming alternatives are cropping up across the country. For example, Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. has for the past three years offered a "Mini MBA," which after 14 nights in class confers a certificate in one area of managerial specialization (price: $2,495). Last year, Belmont launched a one-week leadership institute, which covers soft skills for executives and includes mentoring for one year (price: about $10,000).

"Companies will pay more for that [institute] than they'll pay toward the MBA," says Patrick Raines, dean of Belmont's Massey Graduate School of Business.

At the School of Management at the University of Texas at Dallas, prospective students choose from among eight MBA tracks (price range: about $20,000 to $65,000) and five master of science in management degrees that are more specialized or industry-specific.

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