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

In business, it’s the early bird that rakes in the moolah. Taking cue from the age-old proverb, two MBA students have turned entrepreneurs even before graduating.

H.R. Sampreet and Saurav Dhiman, second-year students of the Vinod Gupta School of Management at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, have launched their own company, Enfount Business Solutions. Their maiden venture is Bulkdeals.co.in, a Bangalore-based online retail window specialising in institutional and organisational buying of laptops, desktops and other electronic items.

“Across campuses, students form groups to buy computers so retailers give them a discount,” said Sampreet. “But this happens locally and in an unorganised manner,” he explained.

The duo saw a business opportunity in this campus trend and created an online platform that is a one-stop-shop for bulk deals of laptops and desktops of all brands.

“Here, students can register and get great deals directly from the brands,” Sampreet said. “We estimate this to be a Rs 200-400 crore market. The brands, too, were looking for a single window to reach out to the student community. We had the business model and wanted to hit the market early, so we started even before graduating,” he added.

The company is partnering with almost all top brands such as Dell, LG, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and HCL.

The website had over 1,000 visitors in the first three days of its launch and already has more than 300 members and over 20 registered colleges, including all the IITs.

When asked how they plan to balance studies with running a business, Saurav said: “It is all about time management. Our business requires just two or three hours a day, which we can easily put in.”

More : telegraphindia.com

Once again students from the School of Business & Economics MBA programme will be taking up the challenge of competing in the 2008 Cranfield Regatta, an international sailing event which is designed to allow MBA students and alumni from all over Europe to meet their counterparts from other business schools. The regatta will take place around Port Solent and Cowes on the last weekend in July and Exeter’s eight-strong crew are working hard in the hope of a high placing for the University. The crew is made up of part-time and full-time MBA students and alumni who have a broad range of sailing skills and experience but are dedicated to doing their best for Exeter. This year’s crew consists of current students Nadia Nikolova, Simon Baird, Nagyb Shah, Stuart Harris, Richard Dawson and alumni Jonny Malcolm, Mark Roberts and Wade Tipton. The race will consist of four head to head races with the various business school teams taking part. The team has is being sponsored by Vospers South West Motor Dealership, Jam Creative, The Birmingham Assay Office and House of Marbles.

More : atom.ex.ac.uk

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

A Keokuk, Iowa USA firm announces the opening of a free online degree school search. The Free search is a milestone which owner Keith Londrie II wanted to accomplish in 2008. The search can be accessed at http://best-online-degree-schools.com and is available to any prospective online student.

The website has only been online approximately 2 weeks, and we are up to 201 searches per day and have increased capacity to handle hundreds of thousands of searches per day. Reaching the goal of 200 searches was completed in just 2 weeks. The secondary goal is to reach 100,000 searches by the end of 2008.

Keith Londrie says “With the amount of promotion we are doing for this free search service for online degrees, we should reach the goal of 100,000 searches by the end of 2008″.

The orange search box stands out vividly when you get to the site and look for where to do your search. The database of schools is the largest I have seen. You are virtually guaranteed to find a school that meets your expectations.

Keith Londrie said, “With the price of gasoline going up so much it is important to cut costs anywhere possible. The most logical place to start is with college transportation. Choose to learn online and save money while doing it”.

Source : webwire.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.

Leading business process outsourcing (BPO) firm Genpact has roped in professors from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow to give its employees lessons in management skills and improving productivity.

Through electronically enabled interactive sessions, workers at Genpact’s operation hubs in Delhi, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Jaipur will learn the finer nuances of management, soft skills and strategic planning from senior professors of the business school.

This is an e-certificate programme in general management (e-CPGM) and there are 119 participants, most of whom have worked for one to three years.

“The objective of this programme is to develop managerial capabilities among people who are at the early stages of their career to enable them to effectively undertake managerial responsibilities,” said Ajay Singh, course director of IIM Lucknow.

The programme is divided into 12 modules. Keeping in mind the requirements of the industry, the modules are designed to create managerial and leadership competence among the professionals. There are 120 hours of e-enabled interactive sessions.

Singh said the programme was being run from IIM Lucknow’s Noida campus, which was being developed as a centre of excellence in the area of executive education.

The India headquartered Genpact operates service delivery centres in India, China, Hungary, Mexico, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain and the US.

AS A PhD student at Oxford University, Cleo Choong spent most of her waking hours at the lab, researching ways to help heal damaged bones with biodegradable material.

When she returned to Singapore, the bioengineering graduate wanted to market her work, but didn’t know where to start.

‘I was lacking skills in areas like finance and management,’ said Dr Choong, 29.

So, she enrolled in the executive MBA programme at at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in July 2007.

Dr Choong represents a new breed of student that the university’s Nanyang Business School is trying to attract.

Spring Singapore chairman Philip Yeo, who helms the school’s advisory board, said that many fresh graduates in science and engineering had a strong technical grounding.

However, they lacked equally important skills in other areas, such as training, managing and retaining staff, for example.

‘We want future technical people to become CEOs of start-ups,’ he said, calling MBA training a necessity, not a luxury.

More : straitstimes.com

The recruitment company Adecco has started cooperating with Copenhagen Business School (CBS) which is to result in the MBA students remaining in Denmark after their graduation, writes Børsen Business Daily.

“According to CBS many of the MBA students would like to work in Denmark. However, the tendency is that a majority returns to their own countries because it is difficult for them to be integrated on the labour market. Therefore it is important that we do everything we can to integrate them during their student period so that afterwards companies will be prepared to take them on,” says Adecco’s Marketing Director Nikolaj Henum.

This is to happen through coaching and career consultancy during their education.

“We cannot guarantee anything but we will do our utmost to find work for the 35 students,” he says, emphasising that Adecco has a strong network within Danish business life and will therefore have a good entry for the students to the labour market.

When the first MBA group in the alliance will finish in August, Adecco will start to get the students in contact with the companies. Their profiles will be placed on Adecco.dk just as they will get in contact with relevant companies. Moreover, a special entry will be launched with a database of the 35 MBA students.

More : copcap.com

Samford University’s Brock School of Business is changing the schedule of its evening MBA program.

The graduate program - taken often by working professionals - is being revamped into two semesters that are nine weeks each with a 10-week summer semester, the school reported Thursday.

The program used to have five, nine-week terms in a year.

Under the new schedule, each course will meet for a two-hour class each week, giving students more time to study and learn the material, school officials said.

“We have retained the flexibility and convenience for working professionals through the option of attending one evening a week,” said Larry Harper, director of Graduate and Executive Education Programs at the Brock School of Business in a news release. “In addition, students can complete the degree in as little as 12 months by attending full-time or 22 months by attending part-time.”

The new curriculum covers all business functions and is designed to offer a more complete general management experience. Students also learn to exercise ethical business practices.

“Managers need comprehensive skills and sound values in order to achieve the disparate goals of their investors, customers, employees and the public at large,” said Beck A. Taylor, dean of the Brock School of Business. “At the Brock School, our charge is to help current and aspiring managers to discover solutions that meet these goals.”

The evening MBA program is the oldest in the state of Alabama and takes applications year round. Students can enter the program in January, June and August.

More : bizjournals.com