UCLA Anderson Coming Out Day, Digital Transformation, and More – Los Angeles News
Celebrate your Friday with MetroMBA and get familiar with the biggest Los Angeles business school stories from the previous week.
Out@Anderson Hosts Coming Out Day Anniversary Panel – UCLA Anderson
On Thursday, October 11, 2018, the UCLA Anderson School of Management marked the 30th anniversary of National Coming Out Day with an event featuring a panel discussion by MBA students, who shared their experience of embracing their LGBTQ+ identities both on campus and beyond.
Out@Anderson hosted the event, which took the form of a Fireside Chat. The organization prides itself upon providing a forum for students, faculty, and staff to gather safely to address issues relevant to themselves and their allies.
Coming out stories served as the jumping off point of discussion among the panelists, and a wide range of topics followed. One student, Diana Perez (MBA ’20) spoke of her time on active duty in the Air Force. “Although there has been significant progress on LBTQ+ issues in recent history, [such as the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’] … there’s still work to be done in the fight for equality,” Perez says in a statement released prior to the event.
Another student, Andrew Waldman, (MBA ’20), spoke of the need for vigilance in fighting for equal rights despite the liberal environment of UCLA’s campus and the city of Los Angeles itself. Discussions of revealing one’s identity at work, engagement with allies, and the nuances of LGBTQ+ experiences rounded out the event.
Digital Transformation and the C-Suite – USC Marshall Business Class Podcast
USC Marshall School of Business Professor of Management and Organization Bob Zukis recently spoke on an episode of the school’s podcast about the need for technologists at the highest levels of business.
Noting such factors as the influence of social media upon the U.S. presidential election (and the administration itself), Zukis warned that the necessary regulations and controls of social technology have not yet caught up with the technologies to the degree that they can generate positive outcomes.
USC Marshall School of Business Professor of Management and Organization Bob Zukis / Photo via marshall.usc.edu
If companies are to engage in true digital transformation, Zukis says, C-Suite leaders must be experts in the field.
“Only 14 percent of boardroom directors have any technology training … and even if someone on the board asks the right questions, they have a very low probability of understanding the answers.”
Director Richard Drobnick of USC Marshall’s International Business Education and Research (IBEAR) MBA program conducted the interview with Professor Zukis, which is available here for download.
Graziadio 50th Anniversary Endowed Scholarship – Pepperdine
Celebrating the business school’s 50th anniversary, Pepperdine’s Graziadio Business School revealed its open pledged drive to the “Graziadio 50th Anniversary Endowed Scholarship.”
In honor of our 50th anniversary, we’ve created a special endowed scholarship to support the next generation of Best for the World Leaders. Join us in creating a better future, and make your gift of $50 or more today: https://t.co/szf1HMzItt#Graziadio50 #B4TWL pic.twitter.com/GjaIfkP8Bb
— Pepperdine Graziadio Business School (@GraziadioSchool) October 10, 2018
Click here for more information on the brand new endowment.
Part-Time MBA Battle: Los Angeles vs. San Diego
When someone decides to pursue an MBA, there are a lot of decisions to make. From choosing between full-time and part-time programs and deciding on the perfect city in which to launch your business career, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration.
For prospective MBA students who want to maintain the momentum of their career—rather than take a break for the degree—and earn all the benefits and job growth of an MBA while preserving flexibility, a part-time MBA program may be perfect. But even when you’ve settled on the type of degree you’d like to receive, choosing where to pursue that degree can be a challenge.
It’s well-known that the Golden State has a number of business centers—even outside of the famous Silicon Valley and San Francisco—and can be the perfect place for someone to earn a degree or start their business career. With excellent part-time MBA programs in business hubs like San Diego and Los Angeles, it can be difficult for students to figure out the city and program that is perfect for them.
San Diego
Although San Francisco is well known around the world as a hub for startups, it was ultimately San Diego that took the top spot on Forbes‘ list of the “Best Cities to Start a Business.” Rated the fifth-best business community in the country, San Diego’s community of entrepreneurs has been growing exponentially in recent years.
Some businesses may be concerned about San Diego’s high real estate prices or high taxes for businesses. Yet, with a comparatively low cost of living—in contrast to New York or San Francisco—the benefits for a business (especially a new one) in San Diego may far outweigh any concerns.
There are three main part-time MBA programs in San Diego: the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego; the California School of Management & Leadership at Alliant University; and the Fowler College of Business Administration at SDSU.
Rady’s part-time MBA, better known as the Flex MBA, is the top-rated part-time program in the metro area. Students can complete the program on two distinct paths: the FlexWeekend track or the FlexEvening track. FlexEvening students attend classes on two nights per week over the course of 30 months, while FlexWeekend students attend classes on Fridays and Saturdays on alternative weekends. Unlike the FlexEvening option, however, this FlexWeekend path can be completed in 24 months, while still offering flexibility around professional work schedules.
At the California School of Management & Leadership, the MBA program requires students to take a full course load but offers the schedule and flexibility of a part-time program. Providing a strong foundation in business, leadership, and analytical skills, Alliant’s program can be taken either on campus in San Diego or completely online. The courses are entirely offered in the evening and all scheduling is done in consideration of working professionals. Even with the incredibly flexible schedule, however, students will take a full course load of two courses per eight-week term and therefore can still complete their degree in just two years. The program also allows students a number of concentrations to further focus their education.
At the Fowler College of Business, the part-time MBA requires students to complete 15 classes (or 45 units) total, but allows students three-to-four years to complete their degree, rather than just one or two. Classes are typically offered during evening hours and allow students to continue in full-time jobs. The program requires 15-21 units of core courses as part of the degree, but also permits students to use their additional elective credits to focus in a concentration such as international business, accounting and more.
Los Angeles
While it might seem like the film industry dominates the LA metro, it is also a vibrant and growing city for business, tech, and entrepreneurship. Between the diversity of the city, which brings together people from around the world, and a population bursting with creativity, it can be a perfect place for people to show off their talents, and that just might be in marketing, sales, or getting a new company off the ground. Many of the most successful companies in the country have had their start in Los Angeles, such as CitySearch (sold to Ticketmaster for $260 million) or LowerMyBills (sold to Experian for $330).
Several part-time MBA programs in Los Angeles include:
- Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management – Claremont Graduate University
- Graziadio School of Business and Management – Pepperdine University
- Marshall School of Business – USC
The Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management offers a part-time MBA program for working professionals which takes roughly two and a half years to complete and includes two sessions over the summer. The part-time program is similar to full-time, offering classes that provide a strong business foundation such as Quantitative Methods and Marketing Management or Managerial Accounting. Students can still be active in the workforce while earning their degree, but if they have time away from their jobs they can also pursue study abroad in countries like China, New Zealand, or the Czech Republic.
The Graziado School at Pepperdine’s part-time MBA is available to students either on-campus, online, or a combination of the two. The program can also be pursued at any of Pepperdine’s four campus locations in the Los Angeles metro area. The program consists of 52 semester units with the opportunity to specialize electives in areas such as Dispute Resolution or Organizational Change.
The part-time MBA at USC’s Marshall School of Business allows students to take classes only in the evenings and weekends, and can be completed in 33 months. The credits are evenly split between elective and core courses with the option of almost 100 elective courses offered ever year. After 12-months of core courses, all part-time students will also take PM.GLOBE, a semester-long macroeconomics class which also includes a 10-day international trip.
Wharton, Stanford Top Forbes’ 2017 Business School Ranking
For the first time ever, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania topped the biennial Forbes list of the best business school’s in the United States.
Coming in second place on the Forbes 2017 rankings, revealed earlier today, was the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which was followed by Harvard Business School, Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business rounding out the top five.
Forbes‘ top 10 U.S. business schools (2017)
Rounding out the top 20 were some familiar MetroMBA favorites, such as Columbia Business School (6th), Chicago Booth (7th), MIT Sloan (8th), UC Berkeley Haas (9th), UCLA Anderson (15th), the McCombs School of Business UT-Austin (17th), and the Mays Business School at Texas A&M (20th).
Just making the final cut on Forbes’ newest list, which includes only 70 schools, was the Fox School of Business at Temple University (60th), Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management (65th), Northeastern’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business (66th), the Kogod School of Business at American University (67th), and the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University.
Method To The Madness
Nearly every major publication that reveals its own respective business school ranking list has its own principle methodology in which it follows. For instance, unlike Forbes, the Financial Times ranking system relies more on alumni survey responses for its final ranking. While Forbes does utilize surveys in its ranking, its primary focus is on how graduates fare on their return on investment.
In the ranking release, Forbes staff writer Kurt Badenhausen notes:
“Our ranking of business schools is based on the return on investment achieved by the class of 2012. We examined more than 100 schools and reached out to 17,500 alumni around the globe. We compared graduates’ earnings in their first five years out of business school to their opportunity cost (two years of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees) to arrive at a five-year MBA gain, which is the basis for the final rank. Schools whose alumni had response rates below 15 percent or a negative return on investment after five years were eliminated.”
In regards to Wharton topping the 2017 list, Badenhausen writes, “These days most Wharton MBA students head to finance or consulting jobs upon graduation (79 percent of the class of 2012), which traditionally are the most lucrative areas for MBAs. The concentration in these sectors pushed Wharton’s current total compensation for the class of 2012 to the highest of any school in the world at $225,000.”
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The exceptional cost of living around Stanford and shockingly low admissions rates (6 percent) contributed to the business school falling off its top spot from the prior year. Stanford GSB graduates, however, were given enormously valuable stock options after earning employment, with a median value of $380,000. Despite the astronomical figures, Stanford GSB grads still saw a dip of around $40,000 in total five-year compensation compared to the Class of 2010. Similarly, HBS grads saw a $28,000 five-year drop compared to the Class of 2010. Wharton 2012 grads, in contrast, gained $18,000 compared to two years prior.
In regards to employment, not much has changed since 2012. McKinsey and Co. was the top employer of the Wharton Class of 2012, hiring over 50 of the school’s 800-plus graduates. Alongside McKinsey were Bain, BCG, and Deloitte, which are still the school’s top employers. However, since then, Amazon has overtaken Goldman Sachs in the Wharton recruitment war.
Thomas Jueng, Seoul native and 2012 Wharton grad, tells Forbes, “Wharton was a great springboard to make a transition geographically and job position-wise with a strong brand name and network as well as providing practical knowledge.”
Read the entire Forbes list of the best U.S. business schools here.
Graziadio Sports Economist Weighs in on Mayweather vs. McGregor Fight
The most-talked about fight of the year (perhaps decade) between popular mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor and world champion boxer Floyd Mayweather garnered an almost unprecedented amount of attention. The fight broke the previous pay-per-view record, pulling in over $400 million, despite millions of reported illegal streams. Though McGregor, the MMA champion, ultimately lasted longer than most might have expected, he lost by technical knockout in the 10th round to the still-undefeated Mayweather.
VFT Solutions, an organization dedicated to determining how many viewers media companies are losing to illegal streaming, showed over 7,000 live streams in social media platforms, with around 100 million viewers. This is a record high for (monitored) illegal streaming of a single live event.
In an article about this piracy, Forbes asked Paul Gift, sports economist at Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business, for his insight. Gift holds a Ph.D. in economics from UCLA, and is a business and analytics writer for the MMA publication Bloody Elbow.
“For certain fans, ‘The Money Fight’ may have seemed in advance to be a competitively-matched clash of boxing and MMA champions,” Gift said. “But for many others, it was more of a spectacle fight, something you might want to see but not necessarily pay for. Add in a higher-than-usual pay-per-view price of $99.99 for HD and there was certainly a strong incentive to find alternative viewing points.”
Though there are multiple organizations capable of monitoring illegal live streams, there is not yet an effective, actionable solution for having illegal streams of short, live events stopped by social media channels.
It is possible certain unique contributing factors yielded a higher volume of illegal streaming of this event. For instance, UFC’s streaming site crashed a couple of hours before the fight even began, so viewers were likely looking for a substitute. The crossover between MMA and boxing audiences might have also led to more illegal streaming. Additionally, the fight was highly publicized, and many illegal streaming sites advertised offering the event.
“Tens Of Millions Watched Mayweather Beat McGregor On Pirate Streams,” was written by fellow Graziadio professor and frequent Forbes contributor Nelson Granados.
Graziadio Professor Talks Uber’s Future, Potential For Female CEO
Dr. Bernice Ledbetter, Practitioner Faculty of Organizational Theory and Management at the Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business and Management, recently wrote a Huffington Post article arguing that Uber would benefit from hiring a female CEO to fill the void left by former CEO Travis Kalanick’s resignation. Ledbetter begins by summarizing some of the internal and public image issues the company has faced of late.
Graziadio Professor Explores Net Neutrality From Both Sides
Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business and Management Professor Nelson Granados recently published an article in Forbes, in which he delved into both sides of the net neutrality argument.
