School v. School: Imperial College v. Warwick
Do you want to live in the city or the country? Do you prefer working in the epicenter of finance in Europe or do you enjoy a slightly slower pace of life? Do you want to earn your MBA from Imperial College Business School or Warwick Business School? That’s the question we’re going to answer today in our latest School vs. School series article.
Continue reading…Temple Winners, Wharton Blockchain, and More – Philly News
Summer may be just beginning, but that doesn’t mean class is out for Philadelphia business school news. Here’s this week’s Philly news brief.
Fox School Announces Second Annual IMPACT Award Winners — Fox Newsroom
The Temple University Fox School of Business recognized outstanding staff members at the second-annual IMPACT Awards ceremony late last month, honoring staff who demonstrated the ability to collaborate effectively as groups to deliver impactful service, teaching, and research contributions. The awards are also held with Temple’s School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management.
This year, 16 groups representing the accomplishments of 70 faculty and 86 staff members earned nominations. The three winners were:
- The Fox Global Immersion program
- The Temple University Entrepreneurship Academy (TUEA)
- The Fox Center for Undergraduate Advising.
Winning groups took home glass trophies, customized merchandise to commemorate the achievement, a special group experience, and financial rewards.
To read more about the winners, click here.
Penn Launches Strategic Collaboration with Ripple — Wharton News
The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science recently announced the launch of The Ripple Project: a collaboration with blockchain-based global payments leader Ripple that aims to support academic research, technical development, and innovation in blockchain, cryptocurrency, and distributed ledger technology.
Geoffrey Garrett, Dean of the Wharton School, proclaimed during the announcement that:
“Blockchain represents the fusion of technology and finance spanning schools and disciplines well beyond Wharton. The Ripple Project will transform the way our students and faculty look at blockchain and its potential to change the world. We are thrilled to welcome Ripple’s collaboration as we prepare future leaders who will shape the future of how this dynamic technology is developed to transform fields as diverse as finance, logistics, and healthcare.”
Penn is one of only 17 universities around the world partnering with Ripple and its University Blockchain Research Initiative. Each university has the autonomy to determine its own research topics and areas of focus.
You can read more about this exciting news here.
EMBA vs MBA: Which Is Right for Me? — LeBow News
The LeBow College of Business recently published an article to help prospective MBAs choose between their EMBA and MBA programs. The piece compares and contrasts the Experience Level, Class Style, and Curriculum of both programs.
MetroMBA has ranked LeBow’s EMBA as one of the best in the Philadelphia metro area. Check out how the two degree programs match up here.
School v. School: NYU Stern or Columbia Business School?
What happens when you pit two of the New York metro’s top business school’s against each other in a head-to-head duel of MBA might? It’s a school vs. school showdown, as we compare Columbia Business School to the Stern School of Business. Let’s take a deeper dive! Continue reading…
London Business School Launches More Flexible MBA
An MBA program needs to continuously evolve to stay relevant. That’s why most business schools reevaluate their curricula every few years to ensure that they’re on the cutting edge.
The London Business School recently completed a top to bottom review of its MBA program to determine how it could improve. The school found that while it has a strong employment outlook, conversations with students, alumni and recruiters revealed than an overhaul of the program itself would help to better meet the needs of students and employers.
Why the London Business School Updated Its Curriculum
“There were two drivers,” Gareth Howells, Executive Director of the MBA, MiF and Early Career Programs at LBS, tells us in an interview. “In terms of inputs, we were seeing a diversification in our pipeline of the professional aspirations of our students. Historically, 80-85 percent of our students went into consulting and finance, but what we’ve found is that more candidates are coming to LBS and considering a much more diverse set of companies: tech, not-for-profit, luxury retail, etc.”
The need for this change was also reflected on the employer side. Though LBS still has strong recruiting representation from finance and consulting, Howells reported that Google and Amazon have become two of LBS’ biggest recruiters. In fact, 22 percent of last year’s LBS MBA graduates went into tech-related roles.
These facts made a compelling case for updating the MBA curriculum. “We’re not moving away from finance and consulting, but we feel that there’s a way we could restructure the program to better serve our diverse candidates and recruiters,” Howells explains .
Growing the MBA Program
To start, one of the first things that LBS did to better serve its MBA students was increase the size of its program. In the past, LBS has been considered a relatively small to medium-sized program. Currently, it enrolls about 420 students each year but, starting next year, they’re planning to add about 60 more students.
“Obviously, that will take us into that medium-size,” Howells says. “We felt it was right that the MBA should grow. We want to attract a bigger market share of applications. Since the launch of our updated curriculum, we’ve posted a 12 percent increase in applications, and we’re expecting this class to be our highest quality class yet.”
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
The changes go far deeper than class size. “We wanted to give students the opportunity to customize their learning journey toward the business sector they’re most interested in,” Howells adds. “In addition, we also wanted to make the program more practical. We’re giving our MBA students a wide choice of courses so that they can choose to broaden and deepen their skills how they see fit.”
To keep up with the constantly changing global business environment, LBS reviewed all of its MBA courses, as well as the knowledge and skill sets that they felt were common to all industries—whether working at Google or Goldman Sachs. When they did this, they were able to pare down their core courses to a small set of “sector neutral” topics in areas such as teams, finances, etc. Core coursework now only comprises the first semester of the first year.
Then, by the second half of year one, students can tailor their studies to better fit their sector-specific interests. “This puts students and recruiters in the driver’s seat,” Howells says. “We offer courses on digital transformation, marketing, customer and market insights, value chain management, global economic analysis and more.”
There are also many new courses focused on digital competencies. According to Howells, recruiters said that they needed students who were comfortable with programming, coding and digital transformation. So, LBS developed a suite of courses around this technology—including FinTech—so that LBS MBA graduates are able to navigate the new digitally focused world.
Focusing on Practical Experience
In addition, LBS adjusted its courses to be more practically focused. “Just giving theory isn’t enough,” explains Howells. “Recruiters wanted students to have a more integrated and practical learning experience—pushing the dial from knowing to doing.”
To turn this practical focus into reality, LBS has added an on-the-ground London experience in year one. This new experience capitalizes on the school’s location to allow MBA students to undertake a business project with organizations around the city.
“Leveraging our London location is important,” says Howells. “London is a global finance leader as well as a great location for tech, finance, entrepreneurship and more. A lot of our projects will be drawn from all the sectors and students will be able to target the industry according to what they want to do.”
This experience is followed in year two by the global experiential experience. “Global is in our DNA. Ninety percent of our class is not from the UK,” says Howells. “We have over 70 different nationalities represented in our MBA program.” Recognizing this, LBS takes its MBA students on a global business experience to one of seven different locations around the world to learn in the local environment.
Flexible Scheduling
Flexibility in the length of the program was also important. “We wanted to give students the best possible chance of maximizing their career output,” he says. “So, we decided to offer multiple exit points for the MBA to offer students maximum flexibility.”
Too often, MBA students will complete an internship and be offered an immediate job with the company, and they want to start work sooner. Or, they find a job halfway through their second year and want to get a jump-start. With flexible 15-month, 18-month and 21-month exit points, each MBA student at LBS can choose what works best for them.
And LBS doesn’t make students choose their exit point at the start. They can change their schedule at any time and work with a counselor to determine what classes they need to complete to graduate when they want. “We put the student in the driver seat,” Howells notes. “We tell them what they need to do to achieve the exit time frame they want, but they have control over how they accomplish it.”
So far, the new program is being received well. LBS received more applications for their first class under the new design than in previous years, and Howells only expects that trend to continue.
“No one wants to be put in a box,” he says. “We provide opportunities for students to drive their learning journey. We’re giving them control.”
Data Science Courses Increasingly Find Their Place in MBA Curriculums
Five years ago, MIT Sloan School of Management debuted a new course its professors believed to be the first of its kind. Called “The Analytics Edge,” the course gave students access to large quantities of real data that they could use to hone their analytic skills. “Our focus is on the application and the story, and how to use it in real life,” Allison O’Hair, one of the course’s co-instructors, said as part of a news article on the school’s website at the time. “To our knowledge, this is a new way of teaching … the only class here that teaches analytics through applications. We let students get their hands dirty with real data and applications of analytics.”
Continue reading…
Kellogg EMBA Program Curriculum Expands
According to a press release recently revealed on the Kellogg School of Management on Northwestern University website, the school’s Executive MBA (EMBA) program has experienced beneficial growth over the past couple of years. This growth is marked by rising enrollment and an expanding curriculum. Continue reading…
