Trendsetting MBA curriculum changes at Harvard

Harvard Business School gets a lot of press.  HBS is a giant in the field of graduate management education and is a coveted appointment to many aspiring MBAs.  Institutions around the world look to HBS for leadership in the field of management education.  I would literally be amazed if any student of business, graduate or undergraduate, had not read at least one Harvard Business Review case study and/or white paper.  In fact, the case study method for educating business managers was started at Harvard and has subsequently influenced business education across the globe (although, cases have been made against the case study).  Well, change may be afoot once more and Harvard’s class of 2013 will be the first guinea pigs.

In a recent Economist article, HBS’s new FIELD method is profiled.  FIELD stands for Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development (kudos to the marketing geniuses at Harvard to brand experiential learning).  The crux of the new approach is to get business school students out into the world and developing through application the management skills they are learning in school.

To me, the program sounds fantastic (despite being underdeveloped), and I am glad this approach to learning is getting some deserved exposure.  What bothers me about the article is how novel the author seems to think the method is.  HBS did not invent this wheel, though I can already see the historical writing on the wall.  Whatever.  If the world wants to laud Harvard for inspiring educational innovation, then fine.  The most important thing as far as I am concerned is not who did what first, but rather that this is what is done.

My experiences with spearheading experiential learning programs during my MBA education were pivotal.  A week in the field can yield more learning than a semester in the classroom.  If the school you ultimately attend does not offer such opportunities, then create them.  If you need some help on that, send me an email.

We wish you a Merry Christmas

Regardless of how you celebrate the December holidays and the close of another year, Christmas is a wonderful day for everyone to get some rest and enjoy a little quality time with family and friends.

The GMAT isn’t going anywhere and everyone needs a break from it now and then.  So put your books away and turn your mind to other things today.  If you celebrate the holiday as a tradition, then enjoy it as you’ve never enjoyed a Christmas before.  If not, then take advantage of a day of rest and treat yourself to something special.

From all of us here at Kaplan Test Prep, we wish you a very Merry Christmas indeed.

Social MBA

“Social entrepreneurs are not content to merely give a man a fish, or even teach him how to fish; these entrepreneurs won’t stop until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”

–Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka

More and more, graduate business students are entering back into the fray of academia to build knowledge and skill that will help them apply high-level business thinking to impact the world’s most significant problems.  When I was in graduate school, I co-founded our university’s first Net Impact chapter, spearheaded three economic development service trips to New Orleans, LA, and helped create a student organization we called the Social Enterprise Collaborative (which was later folded into the Net Impact initiative).  I was also part of the first offering of a finance special topics course titled ‘Sustainable value creation’ and offered input on the development of the university’s first class on social entrepreneurship (which launched after I left).

The primary takeaway from my experiences in this area is that when one takes the initiative to stand up and say, “I want to go out and do some good, who’s with me?” the response is swift, eager, and loud.  Colleagues, faculty, and administration rally behind the effort and offer unyielding support.  The drive must be continually championed, but there will be an amazing amount of thrust behind your spear.

Not everyone will join in, not everyone will ‘get it.’  Such is the case with any venture.  However, you cannot anticipate what the ripple will become nor who will ride the wave that results.  I encourage you to seek out groups like Net Impact in your university, or found your own if one doesn’t exist.  Critically examine environmental and social issues.  Evaluate what solutions are working and what aren’t.  Look at existing companies and evaluate where they are in the system.  Get a working definition of corporate social responsibility in your head and figure out where you stand.

Think strategically.  Think tactically.  Just be sure you think.

Academic Integrity Matters, Pt 2

In my previous post, “Academic integrity matters, pt 1” I set the stage for an anecdotal story about cheating.  Let’s see what happened…

Armed with only one name, I set out to expose the culprits.  Through some carefully crafted emails and an indiscernible poker face, I rooted out the cheaters in fairly short order.  The university gives its professors full discretion in how to deal with breaches like these.  I chose to not involve the college in the matter; it was important to me to handle the situation “in house” and avoid a permanent blemish on their academic records.  As one who truly values graduate education, I did not want any of these people to have to explain such an albatross in the event they decided to go onto a master’s degree at some point down the road.  At any rate, the culpable students all received zeros for the test and, hopefully, learned a good lesson from the debacle.  As a professor, learning is what I am most concerned about anyway, and not all lessons come with a lecture and slide deck.

While I am satisfied with how I handled the situation as well as the students’ responses, I am still bothered by the fundamentals.  As I brushed away the sands of distortion to reveal the truth of what happened, it became clear to me that none of the guilty twelve had intended to cheat.  In fact, they had to make a concerted cognitive leap to understand (or at least admit) that what they’d done was actually cheating.  In their minds, they were simply being creative, resourceful, and even selfless.

As previously described, the test in question was given online.  This bunch met up in a computer lab to pool their resources in hopes the many would out-perform the individual.  One student opened up his student account and, with the input of everyone else gathered ‘round his flanks, took the quiz.  To quote one student as she explained the series of events: “Since we didn’t get a good score on that attempt, another of us opened his account and we took it again.”

On this second team attempt, after the answers had been clicked, but before the quiz was submitted, they took a screen shot of each question, compiled a document of the entire exam, and emailed it out to everyone present so they could all research the questions before taking the actual test individually.

So how could it be?  How could they not make the clear and easy connection that what they were doing was cheating?  That this behavior could literally get them kicked out of school?

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to answer this question any time soon—not satisfactorily anyway.  However, what I have done is inextricably linked it to information contained in an article I blogged about recently.

In future posts, I will continue to look into the issue of academic integrity, but in my next post I’ll revisit a story of cheating on the GMAT that took place back in 2008.

Academic Integrity Matters, pt 1

I’m frustrated.  As you may know—and in case you don’t—I’m an adjunct professor of management.  I teach grads and undergrads various courses offered by the department of management and it is a job I greatly enjoy.  The Fall quarter of 2011 was an interesting one.  I taught MGT 330: Recruitment and Selection  to a group of thirty-three undergrad b-students.  They were a good group and we had a strong, enjoyable rapport.  Much to my dismay, however, this quarter is marred with a breach of academic integrity.

I structure my courses such that no one graded assignment will make or break you.  To offer only two or three evaluation opportunities (e.g., a mid-term and a final) is, in my estimation, a poor way to architect the grading armature of a class.  Rather, my students have many different ways to earn points throughout the course; dropping the ball on one or two doesn’t spell doom.  Thus, among other graded assignments, my examination schedule incorporates three non-cumulative tests.  Each test (dubbed a “mini-exam”) consists of twenty-five multiple choice, multiple answer, true/false, matching, and/or ordering questions.  Students take mini-exams #1 and #2 online at home under time constraint but with all notes, slide handouts, and textbook material at their fingertips.

When I explain this to students, they are usually pretty excited about an open-note, open-book, no-writing test.  Their tune changes, however, after they take the first one.  What they fail to appreciate is that I happen to be a test expert and I have no trouble making the difficulty level of multiple choice questions swing quite drastically.  One thing the GMAT has taught me is the critical thinking makes all the difference in the world—and notes be damned—if you don’t think critically about my questions you will likely get it wrong.

The third mini-exam was done in class on our last day.  Just as the final two students were making sure they liked all the answers they bubbled in, another of their colleagues came back into the room and asked to speak with me outside.  She went onto explain that she had heard about a group of students that had cheated on the second mini-exam and that the news had particularly bothered her because she had worked so hard on that test.  She said she couldn’t have gone to sleep if she didn’t say something.  “It’s just that not everyone got a fair chance.”

“Actually,” I returned, “everyone did get a fair chance.  Sadly, some chose to make their chance unfair.”

Tune in next time for “Academic integrity matters, part 2.”

Business School Shakeout

What happens when a market is oversupplied?  One outcome is that supply gets cut—in one way or another.  A recent article in The Economist discusses the global competition of MBA programmes (spelling intended) and anticipates a major shakeout of an oversupplied market.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t go a day without seeing, hearing, or otherwise being pitched some ad about some school’s MBA program.  Billboards, newspaper ads, radio spots, search engine pay-per-clicks… anyone can get an MBA at a seemingly endless list of places—both virtual and brick-and-mortar.  But, is one MBA worth the same as another?  Inevitably, no.

We all know that pedigree matters (and I think we all know it matters a little too much).  That is not to say that one cannot receive a very high quality education at institutions not included in a top 30 ranking, but it is to say that an MBA from DeVry is not held with the same regard as an MBA from Dartmouth.

In this Economist article, the magazine posits that with such an influx of MBA programs in a very competitive global marketplace, those mid-ranking b-schools are in for some bloodletting.  Programmatic offerings around the world are increasing rapidly—there are now 13,670 institutions worldwide offering a business degree.  At the same time, the costs of those programs are rising and post-MBA compensation is stagnant.  Now and into the future, b-students will need to distinguish themselves from the pack more and more.  One way to do this is to gun heavily for a spot at a top-ranked institution where brand equity sows huge rewards in the job market.

What are the mid-ranked schools offering quality education to do?  One option offered by The Economist: develop a niche.  What are some others?  What does a flood of MBA degrees mean to the value of the degree to the individual?  Let me know your thoughts…

The Paradox of Hiring

This is an interesting WSJ editorial.  In a state of officially declared 9% domestic unemployment and others stating it’s more like 16-22% in real terms (including those who are underemployed and/or not otherwise measured through formal channels), it is hard to believe that more than half of US companies report difficulties in filling open positions.  How can that be?  With so many out of work, one would assume that the only employment trouble besetting US companies would be creating open positions.  Heck, isn’t that what all the partisan bickering is about?

It has been said that our schools are under-preparing our workforce.  But, the author of “Why companies aren’t getting the employees they need?” blames, well, the companies.  Peter Capelli posits that it is the inflexibility of companies to accept anything less than a mythic “perfect fit” on top of those organizations’ unwillingness to train people as the true causes of recruitment and selection trouble.

I would be surprised if anyone out there has not felt the catch-22 of landing a job: you can’t get a job without experience, but you need a job to get experience.  Who hasn’t known in their guts that they could and would out-perform the expectations of a desired position, while simultaneously knowing full well that no hiring manager will ever take the risk to find out if it’s true?

What’s the answer?  People need jobs and companies need to hire.  How do we fix the mismatch?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576596630897409182.html?mod=wsj_share_in_bot#articleTabs%3Darticle

Give Thanks

The mere fact that you are even entertaining the idea of going to b-school, much less that you will actually get there, is reason enough to give thanks.  Sure, we all stumbled along our own circuitous routes.  For some, that route has been more treacherous than others.  But, in each of our own ways, we’ve navigated our respective paths of life and it has brought us to this point, peering at the mountain of graduate education saying confidently to ourselves, “Yep, I got this.”

I sincerely believe in the potential of all people.  If given the right set of circumstances, every one of us can aspire and achieve great things.  Unfortunately, some of our brothers and sisters are not given such a set of circumstances.  Through the course of happenings and structures that are far outside their realm of control, some people of the world are born into situations that are not charted through the great waters of formal education.

Give thanks for the knowledge you carry around in that healthy brain of yours.  Give thanks for the sense self-efficacy which fuels the words, “I got this.”  Give thanks for having to go through the trouble of studying for and taking the GMAT.  Give thanks for what you’ve got, and give thanks for the opportunity to make the best of it.