UC Riverside’s business school aims to keep its young Palm Desert program afloat with two new degree programs to attract more students from a larger area, officials announced Monday.

The school will launch a valley-based executive master of business administration degree program in 2009 and a part-time MBA program that students can access remotely in 2010, said David Stewart, dean of the A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Riverside.

The school expects to increase enrollment at the Anderson program at Palm Desert from 12 to 300 by 2013, said Stewart during a presentation Monday to valleywide elected officials gathered in Indian Wells.

“It’s too small … the only option is to grow,” Stewart said. “We have to get more students into the classroom.”

Stewart added that it is too early to speculate whether the Palm Desert campus is in danger of closing. Classes there began in September 2005, and the first MBA class of 10 students graduated last June.

“The challenge in the Coachella Valley is there’s very small demand for the MBA degree in the area,” Stewart said.

However, he added, recruiting students from outside the area could present a great opportunity.

More local MBA graduates could lead to new industries - and higher wages - in the Coachella Valley, Stewart said.

His “desert strategy” unveiled Monday includes recruiting executive MBA candidates from businesses across the Inland Empire - and a vast area between Las Vegas, Phoenix and Mexicali.

Students in the part-time MBA would take classes remotely using “distance-learning” technology. They would travel to Palm Desert every few weeks or so.

The Anderson school also plans to more than double its faculty from 21 to 65 members in the next five years - a challenging goal considering the competition to recruit from a small pool of candidates who have earned doctorate degrees in business, Stewart said.

More : mydesert.com

Cleveland State University again ingenuity for business in the spring of this year, or at least four talented students. Four talented Cleveland State interests Minority MBA students Nance College of Business Administration, the fourth in a national contest sponsored by Key Bank: 2008 Share of minority student MBA Case Competition. 1 In 3rd Place went to Indiana University, Carnegie Mellon and Ohio State University, respectively. One crew member, Martha Muhammad, the House adopted the award for best animation in the national competition.

The contest, which was sponsored by a partnership between Ohio State’s Fisher College of Business Administration and Key Bank, the plant took place in Key Banks, Key Tower, is located in the heart of Cleveland. While the field of home advantage did not play a major role in the success of the group, the CSU, a student in business administration at the capacity for analysis and representation of the real world of the business environment. This year’s competition develops at Key Bank Consumer Banking unit. The bank, which has a sparse presence in the low-density branch, the slow growth of the market, in turn, that the college to formulate short - and long-term approaches to the development of new markets in sales growth in which Key Bank already has a significant presence in the least developed markets where their presence is of a smaller scale.

The team is the CSU against 12 other teams of prestigious high schools of Business Administration, Miami University, Rice University, Cleveland own Case Western Reserve University, and the superiority of the University of Chicago, to name only a few. The four students within the team; Martha Muhammad, Celestine Ilori, Elizabeth Tsai, and Marvin Warner, employs three points of the strategy of competition, offering a proposal for mergers and acquisitions, Key Bank South Western market, membership to employees of the retail trade for on-the-spot - Centre of the bank in stores like Target and Whole Foods, and development of young Key Banks online banking. Elad Granot, Cleveland State Assistant Professor of Marketing, which served as adviser to the group and each of them has, in its various business courses. Hochgesteckten expectations in advance, as the team competition, and most of all accounts lived up to them. “Our team believes Martha had a chance to win that Award (Best Presenter), and we were pleased to discover she did,” said Elizabeth Tsai, that their colleagues in the équipe’s remarkable performance.

Nance College of Business at the Faculty had many reasons to rejoice in March, and an estimate of members of the Faculty and, in particular, as a group more aware of excellence.

“We are proud of the performance of our students in the MBA Case Competition Key Bank. His capacity for analysis of the real problems in the business world and develop effective plans to solve these problems is evident from the results of the competition, “said Robert S. Scherer, Ph. D, Dean of the College of Business Nance.

Congratulations are in order. The success of these talented individuals to the CSU, even a proud service. Whether you are a student or a member of the faculty, a business major or not yet declared, these little bright lights (and maybe future members of the Fortune 500?) At the State University of Cleveland gives the whole campus is one reason to be proud.

At a time when business schools are looking to diversify their applicant pools and to meet expectations from employers for more creative business leaders, growing numbers of institutions across the globe are accepting GRE® General Test scores for admission to graduate business school and MBA studies.

The Graduate Record Examinations® (GRE) General Test has been the gold-standard admissions test for graduate study for nearly 60 years. Recently, growing numbers of colleges and universities have begun using the test for admission to MBA and graduate management programs. The reason? It increases and diversifies the business program applicant pool, according to David Bach, Associate Dean of MBA Programs, Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School, in Madrid, Spain.

“We are extremely proud of the diversity of participants in our programs in terms of their international backgrounds, gender, undergraduate majors, career trajectories and aspirations,” says Bach. “Accepting the GRE supports our efforts to attract high-quality participants from very diverse backgrounds, including students who may not have previously contemplated an MBA.”

In February, IE announced that it would begin accepting GRE test scores for admissions to all its management degree programs, including the MBA. IE is ranked as one of the top ten business schools world-wide by the Financial Times. In recent months, other highly regarded European business schools have decided to accept GRE scores for their graduate business programs. These include Helsinki School of Economics, Barcelona School of Economics, ESADE Business School in Barcelona and the European School of Economics in London and other cities.

Articles about the trend toward using the GRE test, in addition to the GMAT® test, for business school acceptance have appeared in Business Week, the Times of London and Inside Higher Education. Most recently, the GRE business school phenomenon was reported in the Beijing Times.

In a Jan. 8 Inside Higher Education article, Derrick Bolton, Director of MBA Admissions, Stanford Graduate School of Business, suggested that accepting the GRE test in addition to GMAT may help boost the pool of women candidates.

“The GRE test takers are more likely to be women, and more likely to be undergraduates or just a year out, while the GMAT is more popular with those who have been out a few years. … If we are able to fish in both of those pools, how can that hurt us? [There are] definitely some people who would not have applied to the MBA program had we put an additional barrier of requiring the GMAT.”

In June 2006, Stanford began accepting GRE scores to boost diversity in its business school applicant pool. In recent months, the GRE Program has approved applications to receive GRE test scores from Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, University of Michigan Ross School of Business and Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School.

“Accepting GRE scores makes good business sense,” says ETS Associate Vice President David Payne. “Accepting both GRE and GMAT tests will improve the size, diversity and quality of the applicant pool and student body. Clearly, these are the kinds of tangible benefits that business schools value and what the global business community increasingly demands to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.”

“Some people are surprised to learn that the GRE test measures the same basic cognitive skills as the GMAT test,” Payne adds. “In fact, ETS actually developed the GMAT test some years ago, so we are keenly aware that it does not measure business skills. Like the GRE test, it measures knowledge and skills that admissions officials must evaluate when considering applicants for graduate programs.”

More : marketwire.com

MANAMA: A group of 38 MBA students yesterday attended a one-day seminar on Islamic Finance at the Regency Intercontinental Hotel.

KFH-Bahrain received the students from the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia.

The Darden School of Business delegation is touring Bahrain with an aim to gain greater awareness about the kingdom and its financial services activities.

“Initiatives such as this allow the exchange of perceptions and experiences on ways to enhance mutual synergy, bridge communication gap and explore possibilities of collaboration between the Arab and American youth,” said KFH-Bahrain general manager Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat.

The seminar aimed to create discussion between KFH-Bahrain and Darden students, to encourage and share a better understanding of day to day application of Islamic finance.

“We hope to achieve even greater co-operation and communication with Darden School of Business and venture on a number of joint programmes that will enhance the role of Islamic banking in different parts of the world,” Mr Alkhayyat said.

US delegation leader Professor Sherwoon Frey said we chose Bahrain primarily because we consider it to be the gateway to the region. I am sure that this trip will be a significant learning curve for the students on the economic potential of the region.

“We are grateful to KFH-Bahrain for the opportunity to learn more about Islamic finance and the organisation.

“KFH-Bahrain plays an important role in maintaining the business community’s high-quality standards, which serves as the backbone of economic prosperity,” he said.

Within the programme, a number of KFH-Bahrain representative presented certain aspects of Islamic finance and investment that were relevant to the visiting delegation. Representatives from the bank included Osama Alkhaja, Mahmood Al Mahmood and Zeeshan Azhar.

As part of their tour, the American visitors toured Durrat Al Bahrain, the largest water front development in Bahrain.

More : gulf-daily-news.com

There is a growing discontent among serious executives who have joined part-time management programmes in some prominent private business schools.
Many of them say they feel cheated as there is a big gap between the profile of the class that B-schools promise in the prospectus and what it actually turns out to be.
I don’t blame these working executives. They are being victimized by a new phenomenon that appears to be catching on in private B-schools: filling part-time Postgraduate Diploma in Management, or PGDM, courses with lots of fresh graduates.
For B-schools, especially in metros, India’s business schools regulator, the All India Council For Technical Education, or AICTE, typically sanctions seats for the part-time programme when the infrastructure—class rooms, computers—is being underutilized in the evenings or on weekends.
This is meant for executives who attend classes after finishing their office work. And, when a working executive seeks admission for a part-time programme, there are some expectations besides getting a degree. One of the most important tends to be that the peer group would consist of other “students” holding responsible positions in companies. The idea being that, besides the normal networking, this kind of group also helps in the learning process of these part-time management students.
Examining cases or doing projects in a team is a norm at B-schools. If team members are of similar intellectual level and with work experience, they can obviously relate much more easily to one another and, as a result, each participant in the class gains from the synergy.
The maturity level of such class discussions also tends to be a different plane. While there is a mix of experience and students fresh out of graduate programmes in the daytime business programmes as well, the skew is clearly towards fresh graduates and so are expectations of both teachers and students alike.
B-schools conducting part-time programmes are well aware of the desired profile of the students in such courses. Consider how the prospectus of a well known B-school in Delhi clearly specifies the profile of prospective students: “The three-year, part-time postgraduate diploma in management (PGDM) programme is meant for young individuals who are working as middle/junior level executives/officers in public or private sector organizations, but have not had an opportunity to acquire formal management education.”
But, this very school is pushing fresh graduates into this part-time programme.
An executive I know signed up for this school’s programme a few months ago. He was shocked to then discover that about 70% of the class consisted of fresh graduates. And, even among those who were supposed to be working, there were property dealers or retailers who said they were “helping” their fathers in the business. Since he had already paid the hefty first instalment of fee for the programme, this executive was trapped.
This executive isn’t alone. Many students in other private B-schools are similarly trapped as it is not mandatory for a school to disclose the profile of all the students admitted/short-listed before collecting the first instalment of fee. And B-schools can get away with such irresponsible behaviour as there is no real tradition of students taking such institutes to, say a consumer court. (The AICTE did say earlier this month that students can ask for a refund of fee, after a deduction of processing fee of not more than Rs1,000, in case the student withdraws before the beginning of the programme and a proportional refund if a student leaves the college after joining the course, though it is subject to the vacancy being filled by another candidate.)

More : livemint.com

Are the same degree, there are significant differences between the two. EMBA candidates differ from traditional MBA students in that they are generally older, have more work experience (most average between 10 to 18 years experience) and continue to work while studying. This ‘Executive’ perspective allows EMBA candidates to understand business opportunities and solutions from the CEO’s point of view.

The EMBA program develops managers by combining practical skills with key theories in an environment where faculty and students can exchange ideas and challenge one another. The types of students who pursue an EMBA degree already possess a wealth of business experience from an array of backgrounds an aspect that is unique to the EMBA program. Not only do EMBA students expand their knowledge and perspective, they also develop a broad business sense, with courses focusing on analysis, strategy, and leadership. The expertise EMBA students gain is immediately applicable in their organizations as there are many opportunities to work on class projects that involve a student’s business or industry. EMBA students also benefit from each other - the high-level professional network gained in class is often the greatest value an EMBA provides.

Faculty that teach at EMBA programs also tend to be the most experienced and successful a school has to offer. They understand the demands of highly talented students and are able to convey their expertise appropriately. Often the Professors are published in leading business and educational journals from around the world. Many are active consultants in leading organizations and bring that real-world knowledge into the classroom. For more information on the benefits of an EMBA, please see the handbook “What is an Executive MBA?”

More : hn.ihned.cz

New hires wait to hear the fate of their jobs with Bear Stearns as financial hiring in general appears shakier

The stunning collapse and fire sale of investment house Bear Stearns (BSC)—a major employer of business graduates—has added another worry to an already shaky hiring outlook for business grads, college officials say. While major career services organizations haven’t entirely reversed earlier predictions that the hiring market for 2008 grads is going to be strong, reports of recruiters cutting back on the number of job offers and, in some cases, lower starting salaries are beginning to surface.

Reductions are not just happening in the financial-services sector but across the board, from consulting companies to those in various manufacturing sectors, said Tom Kozicki, board president of the MBA Career Services Council, the umbrella group of school career placement officers. The officers are pointing out that most grads are still receiving one or more offers, but these latest cutbacks will mean they will have fewer options to choose from—and less bargaining leverage for salary. “What I’m hearing from people within the major companies who bring on intern classes each year is that they are still doing recruiting, but they are bringing on many fewer interns as compared to last year,” Kozicki said. “It is hypercompetitive anyway, and this just makes it that much more competitive.”

More : businessweek.com

THORSTEN SEEGER cannot remember what colour his team eventually chose as the background to its presentation. But he does recall that it took several hours for the six aspiring business leaders to agree on it.

Just a week into his MBA course at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, Seeger was confronted with a culture clash. The two Europeans in the team would have had a vote to resolve the issue within minutes. The proceedings were drawn out because the others were Chinese and they wanted to find a consensus.

Seeger said he misread the situation. “For them it was less a discussion about the colour of the presentation, and more of a way to get a feel for each other using a topic of low significance,” he said.

“For most of us Westerners, this was not clear at all and we were complaining to each other about the wasted time. Only several months later did I understand.”

Seeger could hardly be accused of insularity. He was born in Germany and travelled extensively throughout Europe during six years as a management consultant before enrolling on the CEIBS course.

But the 18 months he spent studying in Shanghai, showed him that, to work effectively with people from other cultures, you need to have an open mind.

“That understanding helped me to realise that everybody does business in different ways and that you have to respect people and their ways of doing things,” said Seeger.

It is a multicultural awakening that a growing number of MBA graduates are experiencing. Business schools around the world have reported a surge in applications from foreign students in the past five years.

This trend towards global education offers Britons the opportunity to gain internationally recognised qualifications from top business schools not only in America and continental Europe but also in rising economic giants such as India and China. All offer a mixture of theory and practice across the business spectrum, from finance to marketing. Graduates can expect the salary boost that usually comes with an MBA but they also have a greater global perspective.

More : timesonline.co.uk

At first glance, a law degree and a business degree may seem like very different academic achievements. After all, business schools encourage students to identify opportunities and capitalize on their potential, the essence of entrepreneurship, while at its heart the study of law involves research and creative thinking to find answers to legal problems.

When combined, however, the two result in a potent combination of knowledge, experience and skills - a mix that is increasingly popular for Canadian students and employers.

About a dozen Canadian universities offer programs that combine a bachelor of laws degree (LLB) with a master’s degree in business administration (MBA). The programs usually involve four years of study: two years in law, one in business and one year combining the two areas.

More : theglobeandmail.com

Writing about the H-1B program’s abuse brought a deluge of feedback agreeing with last week’s column. It also brought a tiny amount of people claiming we need to expand the program.

The three people who are for expanding the H-1B visa program are those who want cheap labor and don’t see the abuse. One wrote:

I agree with your assessment of the need to promote and encourage a total overhaul of education in this county. We also need to hand each foreign-born master’s graduate in science and engineering a fast-track citizenship application along with their diploma from our universities. Get them to stay and become our productive, skilled workers.

Unfortunately, many H-1Bs are not whiz kids with sterling credentials who proponents like to paint as the “typical H-1B”. Many are just average-skilled H-1Bs being used in questionable and mundane capacities just to reduce payroll.

More : midwestbusiness.com