The Harvard business Press has published the authoritative, timely, and thought-provoking book ‘Rethinking the MBA’.

The book — authored by Harvard business School professors Srikant M. Datar, David A. Garvin and researcher Patrick Cullen – documents a rising chorus of concerns about business schools, gleaned from extensive interviews with deans and executives’and from a detailed analysis of current curricula and emerging trends in graduate business education.

The authors also provide case studies showing how leading MBA programs have begun reinventing themselves for the better. The book offers concrete ideas as to how business schools can surmount the challenges that come with reinvention, including securing faculty with new skills and experimenting with new pedagogies.

For decades, MBA graduates from top-tier B-Schools set the standard for cutting-edge business knowledge and skills. Now the business world has changed, say the authors of Rethinking the MBA, and MBA programs must change with it. Increasingly, managers and recruiters are questioning conventional business education.

Their concerns? Among other things, MBA programs aren’t giving students the heightened cultural awareness and global perspectives they need. Newly minted MBAs lack essential leadership skills. Creative and critical thinking demand far more attention.

Rich with examples and thoroughly researched, Rethinking the MBA reveals why and how business schools must define a better pathway for the future.

MBAUniverse.com brings to you exclusive excerpts from the book. Today we bring to you the first part of the excerpts from the book:

‘On the one hand, the economic downturn has provided some schools with a temporary respite from the forces buffeting graduate business education. Because MBA programs are often viewed by young people, especially those with few other career options, as a safe harbor for weathering economic storms, business school applications have historically been countercyclical. This crisis is no exception. In its aftermath, applications at the higher-ranked schools rose, although typically in a far more muted fashion than during past recessions, as did the number of takers of the Graduate Management Admissions Test, a likely indicator of future increases in applicants. Mid-ranked schools, meanwhile, have been busy promoting their superior job placements with regional employers and their specializations in energy, brand management, supply-chain management, and human resources as ways of beefing up their applicant pools and class sizes.

These advantages, we believe, while real and possibly significant in the short-run, are likely to be temporary, for most of the other forces unleashed by the economic crisis add to the already long list of concerns and unmet needs cited repeatedly by critics, the trends already underway, and the curricular changes that have been steadily gathering momentum.

Consider, for example, one of the longstanding selling points of leading business schools ‘the access they provide to lucrative, highly selective careers. As chapter 2 notes, students have long come to business school to gain entry to high-paying jobs in investment banking, private equity, and hedge funds. Even before the crisis, our interviewees reported, companies in these fields were starting to shift their hiring away from MBAs. As a result of the economic meltdown, access to these fields has dropped even more dramatically. Many jobs have simply disappeared.

According to one estimate, in the 18-month period ending December 2008, 240,000 people were laid off on Wall Street. Compensation has fallen as well; in some cases, it is now capped by law. To respond to this shrinkage in the financial sector, business schools will have to alter orientations and direction. They will have to attract a new set of recruiters, develop graduates with a different set of skills, and offer a different mix of courses. All are likely to lead to adjustments in business school curricula much like those described in chapters 5 and 6 of this book.

Meanwhile, part-time and executive MBA programs, which fueled much of the growth in business school enrollments in recent years, are currently facing increasing pressure. For many students in these programs, as corporations reduce their support, the economic proposition looks less attractive. business schools are finding that this growth engine, which chapter 2 notes has sustained many programs, especially those in the middle tier, for much of the last decade is beginning to sputter. To attract and retain students, business schools will need to consider changes in curricula that enhance the value of MBA training in ways that are responsive to the criticisms and concerns described in chapter 4.

Increasingly, we believe, business schools are at a crossroads and will have to take a hard look at their value propositions. This was true before the economic crisis, but is even truer in its aftermath. The world has changed, and with it the security that used to come almost automatically with an MBA degree. As a recent report observed: ‘On the nation’s B-School campuses, hope used to spring eternal. No more.’ High-paying jobs are no longer guaranteed to graduates, and the opportunity costs of two years of training’ especially for those who still hold jobs and are not looking to change fields ‘loom ever larger. To remain relevant, business schools will have to rethink many of their most cherished assumptions. They will have to re-examine their curricula and move in new directions.’

Talk to careers advisor and senior figures at leading business schools and they say very similar things. Their recruitment numbers are about level with 2009, they’re cautiously optimistic that the market is improving, but they’re not yet certain.

Business schools are of course not in the habit of advertising declining post-MBA job opportunities, and a number of schools that were approached for this article were reluctant to comment. This has made it difficult to gauge how certain the thaw has been. However Jim Clayton, Director of the Graduate Career Management Center at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University says: “In general, things are about where they were this time last year, although there are more and more organizations beginning to post jobs. Things are warming up, but they’re not hot yet.”

For Jim, it’s too early to be able to tell whether this hiring is going to be sustained or not. The areas in which he can perceive growth in demand are the banks and healthcare. In these industries, he is seeing new healthcare organizations coming on to campus for the first time, while Bank of America has become one of this year’s biggest recruiters, “As we come out of this recession, it may just be that, as Bank of America were one of the first organizations affected, to let people go, they may just be one of the first to bring people back,” he says.

Across the Atlantic, Leon Richards, Manager Recruiter Relationships at Warwick Business School in the UK has a similar view.

“We saw a big reduction on financial services last year,” he says. “But, this year, they seem to be coming back into activity. For example, we have had Barclays on campus for the first time ever. Last year, activity across all industries stayed steady, and the drops in financial services and consulting were offset perhaps by rises in demand from the energy industry and the public sector. This meant everything stayed level. Financial services and consulting dropped away at the beginning of this academic year but have been the first to pick up in 2010.”

Industries in the frame

Other sectors that seem to be increasing hiring needs are strategy consulting, FMCG (fast moving consumer goods), technology and telecoms. This latter sector is of course maturing, and a number of companies are now putting together MBA recruitment programmes whereas before they were hiring less systematically.

“A number of sectors are taking the lead out of the recession, particularly for example technology-driven sectors such as Internet, media, e-commerce, hardware and software manufacturing, and telecoms,” says Jurek Sikorski, Associate Director at London Business School’s Careers Service with responsibility for Business Development (Healthcare and Technology).

Undoubtedly, there has been a lot of churn as business schools have sought out new types of employer to bring onto campus. The impression given is that, if hiring is rising, it is because lots of non-traditional, medium-sized and smaller firms are being tempted onto campus by the prospect of under-employed MBAs and in this way are making up for the drop in demand from more traditional employers.

On top of this, according to Leon Richards at Warwick, these traditional recruiters are naturally much more budget-conscious that they once were. Given that the cost of visiting campuses, running assessment centres and tying up the time of senior management can be as much as £15,000 per hire, in these straightened economic times it has made sense for recruiters to streamline this expense by concentrating on fewer schools, regardless of whether their numbers of recruits are actually up or down.

A similar cost-cutting trend identified at Warwick is for MBA employers to utilise social networking practices. This allows them to establish longer-term relationships with candidates, so putting the talent pool on tap for when they need it and saving money on the costs of traditional recruitment.

Political failure

The MBA recruitment market is not however simply a function of the economic climate; other factors can have an effect. Green energy for example was much touted as the beginning of the recession as an industry that offered a strategic direction for companies to take out of the recession.

“During these difficult times, finding a new driver of our economy is going to be critical,” says Professor Javier Carrillo, Executive Director of the Centre for Eco-Intelligent Management at IE Business School in Madrid in early 2009. “I think that that the environmental challenge will definitely provide a strategic direction to industry.”

Unfortunately the failure of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – the Copenhagen Conference – has left this industry without a way forward.

“In terms of green energy, there was obviously the disappointment associated with the Copenhagen conference in that it didn’t come out with a clear statement of what government needed to do,” says Jurek Sikorski at London Business School (LBS) “This of course would have really spurred the sector as it would have given companies clarity on their future strategic direction.”

Something similar could be said about banking and financial services which is still waiting for politicians to agree on the shape of new national and international regulatory frameworks.

Have MBA, will travel

A final trend is the tendency for today’s MBA recruitment to be orientated towards the emerging markets. Many companies have revised their business plans to target these areas as a source of future growth and this is where they are going to need their people.

“Companies are hiring into Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia,” says Jurek Sikorski at LBS. “Flexibility and mobility are therefore the big requirements for candidates. The MBA resource asset is something that can be moved around. Companies do see things this way and in their requirements they stipulate they don’t only want skills, experience and strong intellectual horsepower but are also looking for flexibility and mobility so that their business can benefit anywhere in the world.”

At Chicago Booth, 592 full-time MBA students enrolled this year, its biggest class and up from 577 students a year ago. At Wharton it is a similar story. In previous years Wharton has enrolled between 800 and 820 students on the first year of its two-year programme; this year the number is 862.

 Other top US schools that have increased the size of their MBA programmes this year include: Harvard, up from 900 to 937;Stanford, from 370 to 384; and Michigan’s Ross school, up from 434 to 500. Further afield, Insead, which has campuses in France and Singapore, plans to increase its intake during the coming year from 900 to 980, making it the largest of any top programme.

via Financial Times

The Wharton Women in Business Conference announces that it will celebrate its 11th anniversary Friday, October 9, 2009 at the Park Hyatt Philadelphia. The student-run conference will feature highly accomplished women including keynote speakers Sallie L. Krawcheck, President, Global Wealth & Investment Management, Bank of America and Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. The Conference will also feature mentoring sessions and recognition of this year’s Kathleen McDonald Distinguished Alumna Award. Registration is available to the public at http://whartonwomen.org/conf2009/.

As a recent CNN.com report recently noted, the percentage of business school female students who has remained flat for roughly two decades at about 30%. Yet this year’s conference occurs at a time when Wharton has reached a new milestone: the largest percentage of female incoming MBA students in the school’s history, 40%. The Wharton Women in Business (WWIB) club, one of Wharton’s most active student organizations, supports Wharton’s large and diverse female population by providing numerous programs that enhance the experience for all women enrolled in the MBA program.   

Women have long come to Wharton to advance knowledge of business issues and thereby make a difference in the world. Notable Wharton alumnae include Goldman Sachs’ first female trading partner Connie K. Duckworth, former Travelocity CEO, Michelle Peluso and legendary U.S. Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, who was appointed by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, becoming the first female presidential cabinet member and the longest-serving Labor Dept. chief ever. Today Wharton’s outreach and support of women includes:

• Founding member of the Forté Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to developing women business leaders
• WWIB Career Fair connecting Wharton women with career opportunities
• Wharton MBA Admissions presentations in major cities targeted specifically to women
• Vast alumni network, within Wharton and via the Trustees Council of Penn Women
• Academic Partner, “10,000 Women,” a Goldman Sachs initiative aimed at affording women entrepreneurs in emerging global markets management education

1- IE Business School/Madrid

2- IMD/Lausanne, Switzerland

3- Cranfield School of Management/Bedford, England

4- Northwestern University (Kellogg)/Evanston, IL

5- Babson College (Olin)/Babson Park, Mass.

6- ESADE/Barcelona

7- INSEAD/Fontainebleau, France

8- IAE/Buenos Aires

9- Miami University (Farmer)/Oxford, Ohio

10- Emory University (Goizueta)/Atlanta

11- Cornell Univ./Ithaca, N.Y.

12- Copenhagen Business School/Copenhagen

13- University of St. Gallen/St. Gallen, Switzerland

14- Durham Business School/Durham, England

15- University of Oxford (Said)/Oxford, England

Read the full story here

2009 has not been a favorable year for Indian social networks. With the terrific growth of Facebook, each of these small time social networks have faced the heat, despite how they had positioned themselves. MingleBox claim to be India’s number one education network connecting students and young professionals. A look at the Alexa ranking shows a trend that is popular across the Indian social network arena – a fall. Have the students and young professions started looking elsewhere for their e-ducational needs?

MingleBox has recently launched a new section for MBA aspirants in the country. Called e-CAT Prep, this is a free resource for people writing CAT; the MBA entrance exam conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management  (IIM) and which is endorsed by several other B-Schools. e-CAT Prep is basically three things – course materials to help you refresh yourself of the various subjects, mock tests that users can attempt and a forum for users to discuss MBA related stuff.

As part of its commitment to students’ career development, Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business in Texas announced that it now provides personal career coaching services to MBA candidates in its Executive MBA programs, which are located in Dallas and Austin, Texas.

“The bottom line is that Baylor cares deeply about every student’s career development and success,” said Kenneth Buckley, Cox-Hawkins Director of Career Management at Baylor. “This is just one more asset we provide that enables our students to be positioned to lead and succeed.”

Baylor has chosen two nationally recognized executive coaching firms as partners in delivering this additional service to its Executive MBA students: World Class Coaches and DBM (Drake Beam Morin). Students are given the option to choose either firm for personal, customized coaching services and career development tools.

www.MBAPOutlook.com

JumboTests.com, a source for gmat practice problemshas been reporting in their blog some of the notable changes occurring in the world of graduate standardized testing.

For one, a recent report shows that 51% of people who take the GMAT examination are outside of the United States. “China, Germany, Canada, Switzerland and the UK all experienced increases” reports Dave Wilson, the present of GMAC (the company responsible for the GMAT). The cause of this change is suspected to be the increasing instability of the global market. MBA Programs have become a haven for many American business students trying to ride out the current economy, and it seems they are becoming attractive internationally as well.

Not only is the GMAT becoming more popular internationally, it is also increasing in popularity overall. JumboTests notes a “7% (increase) over the previous year” which translates into 265,613 more participants. This increase has also increased the popularity of online GMAT practice tests.

While grad school hopefuls are taking the GMAT in droves, top business schools are looking for ways to make sure they’re getting the best students. To do this, many top MBA schools are accepting GRE scores in place of GMAT scores. According to JumboTests, “Harvard Business School announced it would be accepting GRE or GMAT scores from candidates… and other top schools such as Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), Darden (University of Virginia), Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Sloan school of Management (MIT), quickly followed suit.”

Harvard University’s endowment lost 27.3% of its value in its most recent fiscal year, or nearly $11 billion, as tumultuous markets ate away at one of the school’s main sources of funding and forced a number of cutbacks.

In a report issued today, Harvard Management said the school’s endowment was down to $26 billion at June 30, compared to $37 billion the year earlier. As Harvard relies on the endowment for one-third of its annual budget, the losses forced it to slash expenses and lay off 275 people in June.

For the endowment, the losses were a stunning rebuke of investment strategies that in previous years had produced tremendous gains, and made the fund’s managers the envy of the university endowment world. Now though, Harvard Management’s new chief, Jane Mendillo, said she is adopting a number of changes, including hiring new investment managers and revamping how the fund looks for investment ideas.

Importantly one of those changes will include keeping hundreds of millions of in cash on hand to serve as a cushion and prevent, for example, the fund from having to unload assets at fire-sale prices to raise money, which only compounds losses. In her report Mendillo said that a factor in last year’s poor performance was “a lack of ready liquidity in the portfolio to meet our obligations, along with the needs of the university.”

via www.Boston.com