All Posts Tagged With: "mba"
McGill privatizes MBA program
Tuition fees to rise to $29,500
The Master’s of Business Administration program at McGill University will be moving to a completely self-funded model this fall, effectively privatizing the program. McGill had announced in September its intentions to transition a related program, the executive MBA, to a self-funded model. Both programs will forfeit public funding and increase tuition to $29,500 per year, up from just over $3,200. Tuition for most students at McGill is set at just over $1,100.
In January, the provincial government threatened to decrease McGill’s operating grant if it went ahead with its plans for the executive MBA. Education Minister Michelle Courchesne has said that the university didn’t seek the government’s permission to increase fees.
According to the Desautels Faculty of Management, the two MBA programs were running a deficit of about $10,000 per student, which has required other faculties to heavily subsidize them.
Studytime self-nudges
Avoid distractions and stay healthy
It’s crunch time for me and my classmates at SBS. Time to master finance, economics, marketing, strategy, decision science (aka statistics) and financial reporting in a week before exams start to hit one after the other. It makes for days of full, focused study, one after the other.
I know through this that I need to make progress through the material while maintaining my health (a huge thing in Oxford, where people come from around the world to engage in a particularly intense life), and not dropping the most important non-school stuff. I also know that I’m not naturally good at this, without a little help. So I help myself, with compensating nudges. Some examples:
- I’ve created a little colour-coded spreadsheet, so I get the satisfaction of changing tasks to green as they are done (ex: Finance, problem set 1, Marketing practice exam…). This almost makes finishing an accounting problem set fun. Almost.
- I keep healthy food within arm’s reach, so I can reach for the banana chips when hungry, instead of another avocado melt. Same thing with the multivitamins.
- I’ve been rotating through environments. My 600+ year old college library is a good one, with little but dusty books and the sound of oil trickling through the heaters. No internet either. It’s pretty hard to get distracted in there.
- Ive nailed the music soundtrack. Only 9 songs from Bonobo, Phoenix, Cinematic Orchestra and Zero 7. It plays in rotation for hours in the background. I suspect if these songs now came on in the car at home, I’ll start instinctively working through the capital asset pricing model on the window fog. If I’m too tired for this mix, I jack it up with Daft Punk or Alexisonfire. That gets things done. This has now approached Pavlovian response whenever one of the songs comes on.
- In order to keep growing the First Drop community as we move towards launch (one of the few things that can’t wait for exams), I’ve made sure the Facebook Group is number two on my firefox toolbar. Thus I instinctively click it when procrastinating, checking group progress and adding articles, where I once neglected it. By being the second toolbar link, it has become top of mind, where it needs to be.
My friend has gone a step further, locking up his laptop and installing himself on the other side of town. Good stuff.
None of this is new. We all set up little systems to help us subconsciously shift behaviour. What are your tricks?
Welcome to the world of Harry Potter
Oxford matriculation is an event unlike any other
It has been nearly 18 months since I first decided to head to Oxford to do an MBA. Since then, I’ve graduated from one Harry Potterish institution, and worked hard to get to another for different reasons. I’ve tried to fund it by asking 30,000 people (and eventually given the money to two fantastic nonprofits) and asking the bank (more dependable, but much less fun). I’ve started one organization, and one Ethiopian office for another. I’ve taken tests and prepared applications. Obtained visas and passports, plane tickets and preparation material.
The road to Oxford to undertake this MBA has been a long and eventful one. Finally, yesterday, my arrival was embodied by matriculation, the process of formally joining the university. Starting at our constituent colleges (mine is Oriel), we wound our way through the crowds and narrow streets to the Sheldonian Theatre where, assembled over 270 degrees and two levels and dressed in gowned subfusc, we were greeted by the Vice Chancellor in both Latin and English.
But not before the rambunctious freshers decided to give the wave. I was entertained by the sight of a couple thousand new students throwing their hands up in sequence in this 350 year old theatre, as the attendants looked on disaproovingly. I joined in, of course. After the ceremony, we filed out, down wooden seats and creaking spiral wooden staricases and into the town.
There’s an odd feeling one gets upon leaving the induction ceremony for an 800-year-old institution, dressed in black gown and white bow tie, bathed in the early afternoon sunshine. There’s a small amount of pride, thankfully countered by a humility in the face of its history. There’s satisfaction in having finally made it to Oxford, with the realization of the opportunity that awaits. There’s a slight disbelief with the whole scenario, and gratitude for being able to be here, now, doing an MBA at Oxford.
This will be an interesting year. By all accounts, it will be incredibly intense. As Oxford is, the year will be sometimes surreal, sometimes a haze, sometimes sheltered from the real world, sometimes triumphant, sometimes euphoric. There’s a lot to it: life in an Oxford college, the MBA itself, the new networks, the opportunities bred by the experience. Throughout I’ll try to describe it as well as possible, be enthusiastic when appropriate and critical when necessary. I look forward to sharing it with you.
Where the business jobs are
Tough times don’t have to mean tough luck for M.B.A. grads, especially in Canada
A funny thing happened to Jordan Sugar this spring, as he prepared to finish his M.B.A. degree at York University’s Schulich School of Business: he got a job. And not just any job—he got one in banking.
For Sugar, who was hired by BMO to work on its trading desk, that was something of a surprise. After all, classroom chatter around Schulich about job prospects had been every bit as depressing as the economic tragedy playing out on the front pages of newspapers. “Some graduates from 1999, 2000, 2001 came in to talk to my class about graduating amid the dot-com burst and I thought, ‘My God, I couldn’t imagine finding a job in that climate,’ ” recalls Sugar. “Then I saw Lehman Bros. go under and I thought, ‘Uh-oh.’ ”
If last year’s fall of global financial titans—traditional destinations for a big chunk of graduates—seemed to make M.B.A. job prospects disappear overnight, the ensuing global recession made the outlook even more grim. At least outside of Canada. Here, the picture has turned out to be far different. The country’s banking system has held up well, avoiding the need for the large-scale bailouts seen elsewhere. That strength has translated into a sustained job market for M.B.A.s: while American business schools report a drop of as much as 50 per cent in financial sector hiring, Canadian business schools say hiring levels remain strong, though down slightly from last year’s above-normal figures.
That means recent graduates like Sugar, who thought the dream of a banking job sank along with Bear Stearns, are finding that opportunities remain, especially for the most aggressive and talented graduates. “In all the doom and gloom, you want to hear some counter-stories out there, and Canada may be one of them,” says Joseph Palumbo, executive director of the Career Development Centre at York’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto.
It’s not all sunny, of course. Hiring by consultancies such as McKinsey, Deloitte & Touche and Boston Consulting Group has either dropped or remained flat—their clients tightened consulting budgets as the economy faltered. All in all, Canadian business schools report that hiring numbers so far have fallen between two and 15 per cent this year compared with 2008, when hiring was up about 10 per cent over 2007. Though firm stats will emerge this fall, schools say current hiring levels appear to be on par with those seen in 2005.
And while on the whole their performance so far in finding jobs for grads has Canadian business schools cheering, concern remains that the fretting by business schools south of the border might head their way. “The real losses in the financial sector, in New York and in London and throughout the rest of the world, have created a climate of fear that we’re acutely aware of here, even though the data in Canada does not indicate a downturn on any significant scale,” says Jeff Muzzerall, director of the Corporate Connections Centre at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
Canadian MBAs laugh all the way to the bank
American MBA students graduate into gloom and contraction, but Financial Times says Canadian banks are still hiring
According to The New York Times, MBA students “graduating this year know they are less likely to get a job offer in investment banking.” For a lot of them, the most prestigious, best-paying job — investment banking — is no longer on the table. MBAs, says the Times, are “looking beyond Wall Street.”
But the story for Canadian MBA grads looking for jobs in banking and investment is completely different. Canada and its banks are in a unique position. Financial crisis? Bank failures? Hasn’t happened here; hasn’t affected hiring. Or so says an in-depth look at the job market for Canadian MBAs, from The Financial Times.
Many MBA students preparing to graduate this year have been labelled unlucky for finishing their degrees just in time to enter a depressed job market.
But for those who chose Canadian business schools the prospects of landing work are more optimistic.
So far Canada has largely bucked the trend that has seen hiring levels worldwide plummet this year, especially in the financial sector. Overall job numbers are down, but Canada’s biggest banks are hiring and its financial sector has not seen its job market falter like that of the US.
In the US, business schools report as much as a 50 per cent drop in financial sector hiring, in part due to the disappearance of groups such as Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. However, in Canada, banks describe the current climate as a growth opportunity and are busy plucking top talent from international competitors.
The Jack Welch MBA
Questions about new online degree backed by controversial “Manager of the Century”
The Economist magazine’s Business.view blog has some fun with Jack Welch’s new MBA program, which the legendary/controversial CEO (he was once named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune, but the company he ran, GE, has been a shareholder graveyard for most of this decade) will be offering online in partnership with Chancellor University.
So what exactly will you learn at the Jack Welch Management Institute? According to our friends at The Economist, it sounds like what’s on offer will be the standard MBA boilerplate. And Welch was, for good or ill (there are strong arguments for both those positions) never a just-going-through-the-motions-and-waiting-for-my-options-to-vest CEO. So why not offer a truly different MBA, one with the ambitions of Jack Welch? The writer speculates about what a real Jack Welch MBA would look like….
For a start, in keeping with the no-BS style of a man whose autobiography is called “Jack: Straight From The Gut”, your columnist suspects there would be no place for the sort of bleeding-heart “MBA Oath”, pledging to serve society rather than maximise profits, that Harvard Business School graduates have taken en masse this summer. After all, Mr Welch is credited with launching the shareholder-value maximisation movement with a speech in 1981 on “Growing Fast in a Slow-Growth Economy”. What Mr Welch cared about was quality—hence his embrace of the Six Sigma programme for total-quality management.
….
Equally unmissable would be the class on “Making Your Numbers”. Under Mr Welch, GE’s accounting was so creative it could be hung on the wall of the Museum of Modern Art (although it was all within legal bounds). Frequent use was made of off-balance-sheet vehicles, on a greater scale even than Enron. The firm’s huge, opaque financial arm, GE Capital, was used as a top-up fund in case profits in the rest of the business fell below the consistent growth promised by Mr Welch. Over the 80 or so quarters he was in charge, GE’s profits grew so consistently they were almost a straight line. Those were the days.
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Is GE’s poor performance since Mr Welch left a reflection of how good a job he did, and how hard he has been to replace? Or is it his legacy? What an excellent topic for a case-study discussion for the first batch of students taking the Jack Welch MBA.
Business grads: We’ll pay you to not come to work… yet
A twist on downsizing in investment banking
Recent university grad looking to get into investment banking? One I-bank will pay you to go and take a sabbatical year — before you even start work.
That’s the word from Credit Suisse, a Swiss bank that, like every other player on Wall Street, is feeling the pain of the recession. So it’s temporarily laying off employees who haven’t even done their first day of work yet. According to an article from Bloomberg yesterday (the best link I could find was here; click and scroll down a bit), 20 per cent of CS’s next class of investment bank analysts have accepted a US$40,000 offer to defer their employment start date until July, 2010. The offer was made to U.S. college graduates recruited to the bank, who would have started this summer.
The news is one more example of the poor job environment facing aspiring bankers. But CS’s long term view is surprisingly confident. After all, CS isn’t eliminating these not-yet-employees. It’s asking them to wait a year — by which time it presumably expects that its services and their skills will be more in demand. Instead of burning the proverbial furniture to heat the building, it’s trying to hang on to the most talented young recruits, assuming that it will soon need them. As the cliche goes, only time will tell.
