All Articles Tagged "business school"
Want to Go to Business School? An Alum Makes The Case For Why You Should Choose Howard
via Howard’s Facebook page.
I don’t think anyone can deny the resources and connections you can gain from attending an Ivy League university. Currently, most of the notable figures in business, politics, and finance have an Ivy League background, including our President and First Lady. Most MBA students at the Ivies have their choice of employers, since some of the most prominent firms recruit exclusively at these universities.
Then after landing a job, an Ivy Leaguer can maneuver easily through the business world since he has a network of post-graduate school mates just like himself that are gaining influence in their new-found environments. He also can reach out to graduates from many years past if he needs a favor. Fellow alums are usually willing to oblige solely based on the alma mater they share.
However, one of the attributes that makes this group of schools so exclusive, is that only a chosen few can be admitted. In fact, each year admissions to these schools get tighter and tighter. Harvard is the most stringent, accepting only 5.8 percent of its over 33,531 applicants. Here’s what Rachel Toor, an author, college-admissions counselor and former Duke University admissions officer had to say about the Ivy League acceptance situation: “More people are applying for the same small number of elite colleges than there ever have been. There are a gazillion applications for every spot….Everyone wants to keep their admit rate low because that makes you more selective, which gives you a higher place on the college rankings. People in admissions say they don’t pay attention to rankings, but of course they do.”
So although it’s not impossible to get into these universities, if you’re an average or even above average student you will find it very challenging without any “special” admissions assistance. Wouldn’t it be great if there were a university where you could get some of the same benefits, for about half the cost, and actually have a good chance of being admitted? Well, I’d recommend Howard University. In my opinion, it’s one of the most underrated business schools in the United States, based on the opportunities the school offers. As a graduate from Howard’s business program I cannot deny that I’m biased. However, I’ve had years to examine and scrutinize its benefits as well as its shortcomings.
Simmons College Dean Speaks in Support of All-Women MBA Program
Image: Brand X Pictures
Women still struggle to make it to the top rungs of the corporate ladder. The Simmons College School of Management has one possible solution: an all-women MBA program specifically catered to aspiring female business professionals.
The Boston-based school says its program “delivers essential business and management skills and much more – including an understanding of how gender dynamics shape women’s leadership opportunities, strategies for managing those dynamics to achieve leadership success, and an emphasis on corporate social responsibility.” The program has been around since 1975. (The school does offer other co-ed programs.)
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the dean of the college, Cathy Minehan, discusses the advantages of enrolling in an all-female MBA program. Before getting into academics, Minehan was the chief of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
“Women don’t negotiate the same way that men do,” Minehan tells the Journal. “We teach classic negotiation theory, classic negotiation practice, but we also teach about the situation women will find in [the outside world] and then how to deal with it.”
She also equates the school with HBCUs because both “provide not only a first-class education, but also an environment and culture in which it’s easier to talk about some subjects.”
Minehan doesn’t think that a gender perspective should replace the traditional facts and figures that are taught in business schools, but supports a discussion about the issues tied with sex and gender.
What are your thoughts on an all-female business school education? Or single-sex education in general?
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South African School Ranked Top Global Business School
http://www.getnews.co.za
For those adventurous souls with a thirst for travel, if you’re thinking of completing a business degree abroad, South Africa may just be the place. MoneyWeb reports that the annual UK Financial Times Executive Education rankings listed the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) the top South African and African business school.
“This is a tremendous achievement for GIBS and clearly places us among the best business schools in the world,” GIBS’s dean Nick Binedell said.
“We live by our ethos of aiming to significantly improve the competitive performance of individuals and organisations through business education and this accolade will drive us to continue to improve our programmes even further in line with the ever changing economic landscape.”
The Financial Times’ survey has been ranking schools for 3 years. GIBS has been a top business school globally for nine years.
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How Business Schools Neglect The Working Woman’s Needs
A Forbes article makes an alarming finding: one in three women with MBAs are not working full-time, compared to one in twenty men. Although many of these women desire to return to the workforce full-time, they are unable to do so without major career difficulties. Why? Perhaps, it’s because business schools aren’t structuring their MBA programs to fit the needs of its women students. As the Forbes article points out, Business schools neglect to address the varying life situations students will encounter as they go out into the work force; a significant disadvantage to producing “principled leaders.”
“The last frontier for women’s advancement at work is understanding how men and women re-define roles at home,” Anne Weisberg, the head of Diversity at global financial management firm Blackrock, said to Forbes. Business schools tend to prepare students only as future employees without taking life changes into account. As a result, many women in MBA programs feel that their family and work lives must be overcome, and not managed. Weisberg believes that if business schools were to offer classes on gender and life issues, it would save firms from losing strong employees and stop them from paying heavy transition costs.
In addition, when women graduate and reach the workplace, a study by Leipzig Professor Anne Huff finds that women often volunteer for “maintenance-level roles” like note-taking for example, that may lead to little recognition of their work. But it’s not just the lack of diverse and innovative classes that make business school less effective for women students. MIT Sloan Dean David Schmittlein observes that in top 10 MBA programs, women tend to be younger than men.
“This may lead to a negative perception of their experience in the business school environment,” he said to Forbes.
Schmittlein also notes that research proves women aren’t called on in class as much as men. Even when they are, their peers are less likely to offer feedback to their comments.
Women business students also face a lack of role models. Schmittlein notes that the number of women facultry members is small in business school faculties across the country.
With so many factors at play that hinder women’s success, one thing is clear: in order to better prepare women students, business schools need to restructure their courses and better analyze and address the situations women professionals will face.
When a J-O-B Trumps an MBA
(Businessweek) — After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Nick Such accomplished the near-impossible: He somehow managed to get accepted into the MBA program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which accepts about 6 percent of applicants, a tiny fraction of whom are, like him, fresh out of college. Two years later, as his two-year deferral was coming to an end, he did the near-incomprehensible: He told Stanford thanks, but no thanks. A fledgling entrepreneur, Such had hoped an MBA would be a good way to advance his career. But after forging his own path, he decided to defer his MBA indefinitely and backed out of the Stanford GBS Class of 2013 at the beginning of August. “An MBA would be an incredible experience, open a lot of doors, and probably change me as a person for the better. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that environment,” Such says. “But I came to the decision I’m way too excited about what I’m doing now.”
Pay Increasing for Business School Grads
(Wall Street Journal) — In a sign that companies are recruiting more aggressively, newly minted M.B.A.s’ salaries and bonuses rose last year, according to a new survey of business-school alumni from the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT business-school exam. Students who graduated in 2010 received a median salary of $78,820, up from $66,694 for the class of 2009. Last year’s grads also reported bigger signing bonuses, a median of $13,318, nearly double the previous year. Still, both salaries and bonuses are down from prerecession levels. The rebound speaks to the diversity of companies seeking to employ M.B.A.s, says Dave Wilson, president and chief executive officer of GMAC. ”There are a lot of different players, other than just consulting and finance, in the M.B.A. marketplace,” he says. Energy, clean technology, health care, government and nonprofit companies have all boosted their M.B.A. recruiting, he says. “And they are willing to pay more competitive salaries for an attractive M.B.A.”
The Importance of an MBA Program
Graduates of a good MBA program always have access to the best jobs in the market. It not only makes them stand out but also gives them that edge over many other qualified applicants, Masters of Business Administration or MBA that equips students with the required skills to make crucial business decisions, understandin g the working of major corporations and empowers them to start their own company is among the most highly sought after program in the world. An MBA degree is not just a desirable advantage but an essential qualification in today’s industry.
Renowned business schools are known for churning out the best business leaders and CEOs in the industry. With over millions of degrees being awarded each year, the popularity of the program only seems to be following an upward trend with time. International businesses are also seeking the business expertise and prowess of overseas working professionals and executives. This opens up a gateway to incredible opportunities in different parts of the world. MBA graduates have a broad outlook and they truly understand the concept of globalization. An MBA in finance or marketing provides the required support to help you carry out your responsibilities in acclaimed organizations and accompanies across the globe.
Minority B-School Faculty Growing—Slowly
(Businessweek) — American business schools, much like American businesses, have some catching up to do when it comes to minority hiring. Stymied by a lack of minorities in the PhD pipeline and growing competition for minority faculty, progress in hiring African American, Hispanic American, and Native American faculty at U.S. B-schools has been slow. Bernard J. Milano, president of the PhD Project, an organization based in Montvale, N.J., that aims to increase the diversity of corporate America by increasing the diversity of business school faculty, says just 3.5 percent of B-school faculty and administrators come from such underrepresented minority groups. “When you think about the changing demographics of this country,” Milano says, “that’s tragic.”
CEOs Don’t Need an MBA to Get Rich
(Businessweek) — Ever since the dot-com bust, and particularly after the financial meltdown that began in 2008, all anyone in business schools seems to talk about is whether or not the MBA is still a relevant and practical degree. Do people need MBAs—particularly degrees from elite b-schools—to become successful chief executive officers with hefty paychecks? Exclusive new research suggests the answer is “no”. Bloomberg Businessweek asked compensation consultancy Equilar to analyze the pay disclosures of companies with annual revenue of more than $1 billion and to compile a list of the highest-paid CEOs.Aaron Boyd, head of research at Equilar, reports that more than half of the 50 highest-paid executives on the list lacked MBAs.
For MBA Job Seekers, A New Recruiting Game
(Businessweek) — No longer can students rely on the traditional on-campus recruiting process. More than 40 percent of B-school career services officers saw a decline in on-campus visits this spring, according to the MBA Career Services Council (CSC). And when companies do come to campus, instead of having a dozen positions to fill, they might have two or three. Starting salaries among all MBAs surveyed by Bloomberg Businessweek have dropped nearly 6 percent, from an average of $104,500 in 2008 to $98,400 this year. And students’ plans are changing, with many settling for lesser positions. More than half of those surveyed expressed concern about the job market.
