The world renowned Cranfield School of Management in the UK will present a scholarship to any member of the three leading IFAC accountancy bodies in Sri Lanka, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the Institute of Chartered Accountants Sri Lanka (ICASL) or the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants Sri Lanka Branch (CIMA). Full Time MBA Programme Director Sean Rickard who informed Sri Lanka of the scholarship said, “We hope the scholarship attracts candidates who will benefit from this initiative and that, with the help of the accounting bodies in Sri Lanka, it will raise Cranfield’s profile. We are extremely grateful for the support of the institutes in this. We will be reviewing the success of the programme after two years.”

ACCA Sri Lanka’s Immediate Past President, Dilshan Rodrigo, himself an alumni of the Cranfield School of Management extends his best wishes to all candidates and says, “I hope most sincerely that this initiative will signal the birth of a new generation of professional skilled managers who will add value to the corporate boardrooms of Sri Lanka.” Stating that this is truly a world class MBA ranked consistently as one of the top MBAs in Europe, he adds, “This one year full time programme is ideally suited for members in middle and senior management positions with ambitious career goals.” Rodrigo, who has continued to maintain ties with Cranfield, further reinforced the relationship once he became President of ACCA Sri Lanka, sourcing resource speakers for the ACCA National Conferences in the last two years. “Two people who played significant roles in mooting this scholarship from the Cranfield end are the former Director of the MBA Programme Professor Leo Murray who was the Keynote Speaker at our conference in 2006 and has a soft spot for Sri Lankans and Sri Sriskanthan, a Sri Lankan faculty member on the MBA programme.”

Cranfield has produced a distinguished honour roll of MBA alumni from Sri Lanka over the last two decades including Managing Director of Hatton National Bank Rajendra Theagarajah, Senior Vice President of WNS Arul Sivagananathan and Group Financial Controller of Stretchline Hasantha de Silva. Members of ICASL, ACCA and CIMA must apply directly to Cranfield School of Management, for which instructions are available on the Cranfield website ww.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/mba/, marking the application ‘Sri Lanka Scholarship’.

More : dailymirror.lk

B-school trends come and go, but one that seems to have legs is the creation of specialized MBA programs, particularly by second-tier schools. The schools find them useful for attracting students and cementing their brand identities at a time when competition among schools for the best students is intense. In recent years, they’ve becoming increasingly common (BusinessWeek.com, 7/19/07) even at high-profile schools. Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, and the Wharton School now offer specialized MBAs, majors, or dual degree programs in areas like real estate, sports management, biosciences, electronic commerce, and health care.

But is a specialized program always a good choice for an MBA student?

Not necessarily. While established programs have placement records on par with those of their general MBAs, many newer programs have not yet established the kind of recruiting relationships that guarantee students high-paying jobs at graduation. And graduates always run the risk of getting hamstrung by their specialties later in their careers, when an industry downturn forces them to look outside their specialties for opportunities.
Chart Your Own Path

Some who have gone through the specialized programs say they are best for those with a firm idea of their future goals, and who are keen to chart their own path. “I knew what I wanted to do,” said Carrie Stern Rathod, who received her MBA from Wisconsin’s Brand ‐ Product Management Center in 2005 and now works for Procter & Gamble (PG), which recruits regularly from the program. “There’s a range of people for whom this program is ideal. If you have an entrepreneurial bent but are not sure you’re ready to take the leap yet, the program might be right.” But, she added, “I think it would be tough if you wanted to go into consulting or something like that.”

For students who aren’t comfortable breaking away from the pack or seeking out professional contacts in unconventional ways, a specialized MBA might not be the best choice. This is especially true at less well-known schools, where big companies often don’t recruit. Students in these programs agree that making industry connections can require a lot of initiative from the student. “If you have a very specific company in mind, you might need to be a trailblazer in making relationships with those companies,” says Rathod.

More : businessweek.com

A survey of 759 graduating MBAs from 11 top U.S. business schools revealed that a company’s corporate social responsibility performance is a major factor when they select whom to work for, reports BusinessGreen.

The graduates expect to make an annual salary of $103,650 from their first employer, but 97 percent said they would be willing to sacrifice up to $15,000 to work for a company with an exemplary environmental performance, ethical business conduct and good employee and stakeholder relations.

The survey was conducted by David Montgomery of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Catherine Ramus of the University of California Santa Barbara. They used an anonymous online survey to limit bias in the survey.

Source : itbusinessedge.com

University at Albany-SUNY students in the evening and weekend MBA programs are in Budapest this week as they visit seven companies there and immerse themselves in Hungarian business, history and culture.

The School of Business entourage includes two dozen students, retired Dean Paul Leonard, and several faculty and staff. New School of Business Dean Donald Siegel popped in for a visit last weekend.

In the evenings, the future MBAs take an international business class with Professor Yasha Crnkovic.

The QS World MBA Tour, the world’s leading series of career and education events, will organize a one-day fair for aspiring MBAs in the capital tomorrow.

The MBA fair will be held at the Hyatt Regency (Ring Road) in New Delhi tomorrow between 2 pm and 6 pm.

More than 30 B-Schools from across the globe including Toronto -Rotman, IE Business School, Bond, Cornell-Nanyang, Ashridge Business School, Hult, U21 Global, Durham and ESMT will participate in the MBA fair.

The London School of Business & Finance, the only UK based institution to offer dual programmes combining an internationally recognised MBA or MIB with ACCA, CIM, CIMA or CFA qualifications, will also be a part of the MBA fair.

Participants of the QS World MBA Tour, which will visit 50 cities in 32 countries this year, include 17 of the top 20 US business schools and all of the leading European business schools.

The fair will provide students a chance to interact with the leading international business schools and short-list the best option available to them.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, Managing Director of QS told NNE, “It is the perfect chance to make an impression face-to-face with the very people reading your application forms, and that is invaluable to gain an edge in this tough field. The QS World MBA Tour provides the best step in the application process, the opportunity to ask intelligent, tailored questions on topics like personal fit, career opportunities, school specializations and financial aid.”

More : indiaedunews.net

Google has an innovative and totally off the book working environment, that is catching up with the 21st century youth at an incredible speed. Google promises what many have found missing from the rest of corporate America. Inspite of Google’s nefariously grueling selection process, thousands of MBA graduates appear each year for interviews. For 2007, Google had hired hundreds of MBA graduates. According to Yvonne Agyei (Google Director of Global University Programs), MBA graduates are particularly attracted to Google because they really get a lot of responsibility right at the outset. MBAs are looking for the opportunity to make an impact.

Even with Google’s increasing popularity, management consulting and financial services that were considered to be the launch pads for MBAs are still in demand, with 20% participants wiling to work in consulting and 19% in financial services. Even, government intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense are fast becoming a viable option for the MBA graduates. For 2008, CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) ranked no.37, whereas it was on no.74 last year. Meanwhile, the FBI is in 47th place, up from 89 last year. And among women MBAs, the Department of Defense - Missiles and Weapons Division ranks No. 99.

More : searchnewz.com

You’re getting your MBA, and you’re looking for a job – but where? Goldman Sachs (GS), J.P. Morgan? Not according to the most recent crop of MBA students. They, like everyone else, want to work for Google, according to a survey from market research firm Universum published on Fortune.com.

Of the 5,769 students surveyed, a startling 23.65% said they wanted to work for the search giant. Consulting firm McKinsey & Company (15.84%) took the second spot and Goldman Sachs (13.68%) was third. One other tech firm eked its way into the top 5 – Apple (AAPL) was fourth with 13.68%.

More : alleyinsider.com

If applications for MBAs, until recently the most sought after post-graduation course, have fallen by one-third this year, blame it on the economy. Education experts say the demand for management studies is counter-cyclical-more students want to join the programme when the economy is in a slump and unemployment is on the rise. But when the economy is booming, most students tend to find job placements more easily.

“IT professionals and engineers are snapped up by industry, so many students do not require an MBA. When the job market shrinks, it leads to insecurity among graduates who take up management to add value to their CVs,” said A K Sengupta, director of SIES, a city-based management college.

Sixty per cent of those who appear for the Common Entrance Test (CET) already hold jobs and, with the economy doing well, don’t feel the need to take a sabbatical for two years to pursue an MBA, Sengupta noted. The fall in the number of students appearing for the CET has been drastic-only 21,000 took the test this year compared to 32,000 in 2003. The high fees for such courses is another problem for potential students after private management colleges hiked their fees to Rs 94,000 last year. Although the governmentappointed Shikshan Shulka Samiti has brought down the fees to Rs 40,000 this year, the committee’s decision came much after the CET exams.

Director of Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies R K Jadhav said that one of the reasons for the decline in the number of applications was that for the first time a new online system for admissions was introduced.

“There was no personal touch andmany students felt inhibited about applying.”Afew other authorities point out that students had to face numerous glitches while submitting applications.