The future of our work

The University of St. Gallen started its own MBA programme only in 2005. It may be one of Europe’s youngest programmes, but it is also one of its most successful MBA start-ups. Meanwhile, the St. Gallen MBA is being listed as number 23 in Europe in the FT’s Global Ranking 2012 and counted as number 13 worldwide for accelerated MBA programmes in the Wall Street Journal in 2009.

Six Harvard MBAs have started a new business to help new applicants get into the prestige business school. They have persuaded classmates to donate their successful application essays to sell them on to applicants. Essay writing is often the most challenging task for MBA applicants and one where students regularly turn to essay services and admission consultants. The new business model wants to allow applicants to view successful essays. The company works on creating a database over time that will allow potential students to search based on criteria as career experience, age, and whether international or domestic applicants handed in the essays.

Typically, business students enter graduate school with a first degree and about five years of work experience, meaning they are generally in their late 20s –an age where change is still part of the lifestyle. People in their 40s and older on the other hand are rather settled in their careers and work at a level where additional skills don’t necessarily guarantee substantial plus on the payback.

The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will be reshaped from June onwards. The GMAT is a computer-adaptive standardized test in mathematics and English language to measure students’ aptitude to enter and succeed in a business school. The test is widely used by business schools for choosing applicants.

Business schools are encouraging students these days to become active users on LinkedIn from the moment they start their MBA programme. Some business schools have even incorporated using the networking site into their workshops.

Full-time MBA programmes are still the most popular choice for students, but part-time, online, executive and distance-learning MBAs are catching up fast according to the QS TopMBA.com Applicant Survey 2011.

The offer for MBA courses in Germany grew constantly over the last years, the number of providers became considerably high. The bigger the choice, the harder it is for one to choose.

MBA education is an increasingly popular choice of education for Asian students. In 2011 over 85,000 Asians took the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) – the entry exam for most business schools. Compared to only four years earlier this is an increase of almost 50 per cent. Most of this growth can be attributed to Chinese citizens.

When Jeannette Purcell demands to “rip up the existing MBA and start afresh” as she just did at the Financial Times, it is no small matter. She used to be the Chief Executive of the Association of MBAs (AMBA) from 2003 to 2010 – and a successful one, judging by the comment of Sir Paul Judge, President of the Association of MBAs: “Under her leadership the Association rapidly developed and established its international profile and reputation as the authority on MBA education and the most respected accreditation agency for MBA courses.”

Over six days last week all of our 32 full-time St. Gallen MBAs were put through a tough 70 minute oral exam, in front of a jury including a professor from a peer MBA programme, two private sector employers, and myself. What follows are my initial reactions to this innovation in the St. Gallen MBA programme–the views of others involved are being canvassed. But first some more background.

You might have been wondering where we have been hiding. Well, since the Electives phase started in late February, we are pretty much all over the place. The beauty of Electives is that you get to make your own schedule.

The Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) will be reshaped from June onwards. The GMAT is a computer-adaptive standardized test in mathematics and English language to measure students’ aptitude to enter and succeed in a business school. The test is widely used by business schools for choosing applicants .

Henley was the first business school in Germany to ever offer an MBA programme. In 1989, it ran its first class, managed through its associate organisation “Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Weiterbildung” (gfw) in Munich, a private supplier of management education. This partnership ended in 2010, and Henley was left to fight for German students on its own.

A university education is becoming less and less affordable for students in 40 countries around the world, according to the report “Global Changes in Tuition Fee Policies and Student Assistance” by the Canadian consulting group Higher Education Strategy Associates.

Yet another media publication has ranked business schools. U.S. News focuses solely on the U.S. and only surveys American business schools. Nevertheless, the main results still resemble most of the other major rankings. The U.S.News Business School Ranking 2012 places Harvard and Stanford as the top business schools.

Employers have their favourite business schools, MBA students their favourite employers. Looking at some of the most recent surveys we have compiled the all time favourites.

Gone are the days, where there were only a handful of good business schools to choose from. Today, there is a plethora of B-schools on the international market, offering everything from full time, part time, online, distance, accelerated and executive programmes.

The Indian Institute of Management in Shillong, or IIM-S has launched a one-year executive postgraduate programme (also known as PGPEx) in international business in cooperation with the Ocean University of China in Qingdao. The goal is to develop truly international leaders with an emphasis on working with multicultural teams. The focus of the programme is on emerging economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

Welcome back to another edition of Stacy Blackman’s B-School Buzz, where we share the latest and greatest from the MBA blogosphere. This week, our Buzz bloggers share their waitlist woes, offer feedback on the admissions process from the other side of the hump, and point out the benefits that come with accompanying your spouse on the journey through b-school.

B-school trends come and go, but one that seems to prevail is the creation of specialized MBA programmes. The schools seem to find them useful for attracting students and cementing their brand identities at a time when competition among schools for the best students is intense. But the growing popularity of specialized master’s programmes has not diminished interest in general MBA programmes, reports the Graduate Management Admission Council.

New MBA specialization: Digital Marketing
NYU Stern announced a new MBA specialization in Digital Marketing. The new programme aims to educate students about guiding organizations in a digital world. Students can focus their studies on a mix of marketing and information systems (IS) courses.

E-learning is on the rise. Online universities constantly strive to perfect their e-learning content by supporting it with current examples, analogies, case studies or problem analysis. Virtual learning, however, takes completely new turns by intern-ships turning to the internet as well.

The excited buzz is almost tangible at an information session given by London Busi-ness School (LBS) in Sydney. About 70 potential students – mostly from Australia, New Zealand and Asia - share the room with 25 alumni from all over the world who just happen to be in Sydney on this hot summer night in the southern hemisphere. The potential students came to this conference room in the Four Seasons Hotel “to check out options” or to “learn how to compare different schools” and because “in the current economic situation an MBA seems to be the best step for me”. The alumni have shown up to share their own experience at LBS with their potential successors in the classroom and to help promote the school they once attended.

China cracks down on partnerships with foreign universities that aim at teaching business or accounting degrees, reports the “Australian Financial Review”, citing the website of the Chinese Ministry of Education. Chinese authorities rejected 116 applications for joint programs from universities from a number of countries. Programs teaching business, accounting and marketing were most frequently rejected, since they seem to fail to meet the major areas of national development defined by the Beijing government. The current focus of the Chinese authorities is obviously on degrees in engineering, IT, biomedicine and logistics at the moment - or at least programs in these fields were often approved.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School’s MBA program came in at 28th in the Financial Times 2012 ranking of the global top 100 full-time MBA programs. CUHK’s MBA program was also cited as number two in the Greater China Region for ‘salary percentage increase’. CUHK is now another Chinese school out there amongst the international top suppliers of business education. But how does a Chinese business school train leaders who will have to follow the mainstream official policies issued in Beijing – while success in business and life is often defined by people who break the rules? MBA Channel discussed this question and others with Prof. Michael Ferguson, Associate Professor of Accounting at CUHK and cur-rently serving as the Associate Dean and Director for the MBA Programs.