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It will broaden your horizons.

While you can make decent money rehabbing/flipping, it's unlikely you'd make enough to get "rich" (at least based on my definition of rich).Holding rentals is a great way to build long-term wealth and passive income, so if your time horizon is a decade or two (or three) out, and if you have the cash/credit/income to accumulate some properties, buy-and-hold is probably a great strategy.And as Chris said, combining the two is a great way to go -- using rehabbing to generate income and then plow that income into rentals.

Do you really believe that's the case given the time horizon you're considering?

Rentals are longer term investments so if you go that route make sure you have an operating agreement in writing, have similar expectations on investment horizon, both parties are okay applying for and being personally liable for the mortgage, etc.Fair on a rental property will vary but at the least you should get a ~7 to 10% management fee on-going, a $3 to 6k GC fee (GC would charge a 15 to 20% mark-up if you outsourced) and maybe even a lower cash contribution to still have a 50/50 equity split ( if your numbers are right your partner is getting 50% of your immediate equity gain of $35k).It sounds like you have cash ($50k to buy) and the experience to rehab.

Reliability of performance and low maintenance costs on the horizon, plus they get to pick out things they want.  

Our second property is on the horizon....we have a couple of properties we are currently interested in and we are sitting on an offer we placed on a short sale a couple of months ago. 

REITs have the longest investment time horizon and deepest pockets.

If your time horizon to be working a W-2 job was longer, the payoff of an MBA would make more sense to me.Also, I would not underestimate the amount of effort that a demanding grad program will require. 

Another idea would be with foreclosures on the horizon, you look into preforeclosures or people who are behind on their payments.