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Getting an MBA? Should you bother?

Barb Darrow — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 02:59:06 +0000

The value of an advanced business degree is eroding — at least as measured by the rate of pay increases for recipients, according to new research by the Financial Times. Bottom line is that graduates of the top US programs in the mid 1990s tripled their salaries in five years on average, but grads from the same schools saw half that increase in 2008 and 2009.

That can’t feel good — though I’d wager those salaries are still pretty robust to begin with. But there is growing skepticism about whether a masters degree in business administration pays off the way it once did. This decline in pay hikes comes at a time when students pay 7 percent more per year for their degrees. In 2012, the fees for MBA programs were up 44 percent in real terms compared to 2005.

Whether an MBA is worth the effort and expense is a recurring debate especially among startups that value technology expertise above all else. Some of these companies (Facebook for example) are led by geeks that didn’t stick around for their undergraduate diploma, let alone a graduate degree. The topic cropped up several times at Harvard Business School’s Cyberposium 2012, in November where several startup panelists were asked whether they were hiring MBAs. (One exec with a big data startup said no, and recommended that students pursue tech skills instead. That went over like a lead balloon.)

Harvard Business School was the priciest school — costing $126,000 over two years — but its graduates command the highest pay three years after finishing at about $190,000 per year. Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business was number two. The London Business School was tops in Europe and fourth overall while the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology came in first among Asian schools.

The top ten schools are below but check out the full FT Global MBA survey.

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What happens when students create their own collaboration tools?

Terri Griffith — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 19:03:00 +0000

I teach technology and innovation to working professional MBA students who are changing courses and teams every ten weeks. Collaboration tools are critical to our effectiveness. Over the last two years, my courses have served as testing grounds for two locally-grown, student-designed tools: Acceledge and Piazza. These tools, as well as other student-built offerings, such as Coursekit, are the result of a growing student frustration with “old-school” collaboration.

My students come to class straight from their jobs at a variety Silicon Valley firms large and small. They are required to do team projects, and much of the team work is virtual. They tell me they have the following requirements for collaboration tools:

Privacy. While they are interested in sharing examples from work, they don’t want these examples available publicly.
Threaded/searchable Q&A with the answers coming from both students and faculty.
Ability to share relevant links and files for commentary. Basically Facebook for the classroom.
A simple, clear calendar with readings and due dates available at a glance (in other words, project management tools).

And there’s also my additional requirement: On-line quizzes with a gradebook that supports the U.S. regulations for educational privacy.

While all faculty at my university have access to Angel (a Blackboard course management system), in my classes, I’m happy to beta-test student-built tools, and I find especially interesting the simplicity offered by these solutions. An effective collaboration application is not about how many features the tool has — it’s about getting the task done.

Acceledge

This term I used Acceledge, founded by one of my students, as my main course management tool instead of Angel. It’s a custom-built tool, based on the open-source Moodle learning platform. Its simplicity is what drew me to say “yes” to the trial. Because of the customizations added on top of the Moodle base, the students only saw the features they told me they needed — there was no wiki, and no deep detail around each topic.

Piazza

Pooja Nath, Founder and CEO of Piazza, was still an MBA student at Stanford when she approached me two years ago about trying her Q&A tool. From the Piazza site:

I started Piazza so every student can have that opportunity to learn from her classmates. Whether she’s too shy to ask, whether she’s working alone in her dorm room, or whether her few friends in her class don’t know the answer either.

I want Piazza to be a remedy for students who are not given the intellectual space, freedom, or support to fulfill their educational potential and desire for learning. And I want Piazza to empower instructors to have a positive, personal impact on more students.

Piazza is designed to connect students, TAs, and professors so every student can get help when she needs it — even at 2AM.

Again, the simplicity and student-focus is what made me say “yes” to the trial. The only repeat complaint I’ve had from students is about the quality of some the questions posted by their classmates and the fact that Piazza is not an integral part of the overall course management tool. Both my students and I find huge benefit in the control they have over when and how they see questions.

Coursekit

The University of Pennsylvania is apparently feeling the same push by students to take control of their collaboration space. Coursekit is the result of frustration on the part of Wharton undergraduate Joseph Cohen (cofounder & CEO). From the Coursekit site:

We started Coursekit out of frustration with existing school software.

We’ve re-imagined what a class should look like online. We give instructors and students amazingly designed tools to manage their courses — gradebook, calendaring, file management — and we make it unbelievably easy to interact with one another.

We believe that there’s a lot more to class than lecture. Post links, videos, files. Start discussions. Write a blog post. Ask about an assignment. Classes are meant to be social, but they rarely are. We’re changing that.

There is much to be learned from the priorities of students with multiple courses (projects) functioning in self-managing teams. They aren’t looking for bells and whistles; they are looking to simplify and be effective. We can all learn from these students’ experiences and perspectives: Translate academic team project to basic team work, gradebook to performance appraisal, and you have a web working environment with needs similar to those of most organizations.

Take the students’ perspective for the moment — frankly, we are all students in this quickly-changing environment — how could simplification enhance your projects? What is the minimum viable product for your setting?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Harry Wood

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Study For an MBA While Playing FarmVille

Mathew Ingram — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:01:41 +0000

If you’re a student, you probably find it a pain to have to sign off Facebook — or even just close your browser window — because you have to go and study for an exam. What if you could study for your MBA without even leaving Facebook? That’s the tempting offer from an outfit called the London School of Business and Finance, a private degree-granting institution in England that has launched a free-to-study MBA program as a Facebook application. You have to pay to take the exam at the end in order to get the actual degree, but the studying itself is free of charge.

The school’s introductory video (which is embedded below) notes that most traditional MBA programs cost tens of thousands of dollars just to enroll, but the LSBF says its Facebook app offers the chance to try out the content of its program without having to pay anything. The application features video lectures, interactive case studies — including videos of a “panel of business experts” doing an analysis of the suggested courses of action from the case study — and an online discussion forum where students can debate the various topics discussed. The app also has a “briefcase” section where users can store notes and videos.

Before you get your hopes up about doing a quick MBA in between playing Facebook games, however, we should note that the LSBF program is effectively a teaser for the school’s existing online MBA program and other traditional degree courses (which are accredited through a partnership between the school and the University of Wales). In order to complete the MBA and get certified, students have to sign up for one of the school’s regular online courses (which require a Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts, or five years of work experience), and pay the regular fees — which can cost as much as $20,000 for the school’s full online MBA program — or pay a fee to take an exam related to a specific course within the MBA program.

So are Facebook apps the future of online education? In a sense, all the London school is really doing is taking the traditional correspondence course and moving it into the world of Facebook, which raises some interesting possibilities. We probably wouldn’t want doctors to get certified via a Facebook app, but there are plenty of other disciplines that could probably make the leap quite easily, such as legal or accounting-related degrees. Maybe someone will come up with a game that uses FarmVille or Mafia Wars-style rewards to convince students to study. Let’s just hope no one adds features like “poke your professor.”

Here’s a video introduction to the LSBF app:

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Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Zitona

How to Work The Room 4.0: Getting "Man-Charm"

Larry Chiang — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 08:03:52 +0000

Editor’s Note: This is the latest installment in Larry Chiang’s series on “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School.” (He’s turning it into a book.) What could founders do with “Man-Charm,” you ask? Answers Larry: “Founders can use man-to-man charm to grow their good ol’ boy network because every path can be made easier if you’ve charmed a mentor to pave your way — just ask Johnny Drama.” (Yes, Entourage. Larry recommends Episode 26.) A few readers have bristled at Larry’s admitted male-focus, but take no offense ladies, it’s only because most brokers in “the power network” are still men that Larry focuses on charming them — and, we suspect, that he’s better at this anyway. Larry’s earlier posts in this series include: 9 Things Stanford B-School Won’t Teach You; 9 VCs You’re Gonna Want to Avoid; How to Work the Room; How to Work the Room 3.0: Cyber-schmoozing; Hack Your Startup Credit Rating. By the time Larry’s done here, he will have boiled
down a marquee MBA into 12-post crib sheet.

1) Territorialize but don’t Monopolize the limited resource at the
event — the fairer sex. Tease, but do not “hotbox.”

2) Be a Vacation. (I’ve used this one before, but it’s worth repeating.) Humor and a snipett of self deprecating humor go a long way in building charm. Don’t just be a pleasure to work with, be their vacation. I attended a comedy showcase Rapleaf CEO Auren Hoffman, did and it helps him be a vacation for people when he uses humor.

3) Rebrand Yourself. I’d get nowhere in life if I were Lawrence. But goofy friendly ‘Larry’ is approachable. Larry-licous is over the top but Fergilicious is, cha-chiang!, cash money.

4) Never ask point-blank Yes/No pre-qual questions. It shows a lack of profiling ability. Don’ts: “So are you a member?” or “Did you study at HBS?”
Dos: “Have I seen you @ similar industry events” or “Did you go to school in the boston area?”

5) DDSS. The “DD” stands for “dumb it down.” “SS” is “sandbagging for success.” Sandbag your elevator pitch and sell. Again, incorporate humor. My rule of thumb is that I want to make the message on what I do easy enough for a multi-tasking, C-level ‘hitter’ to recite it back to me, even after he’s had 6 vodka tonics. If you can’t do this, your message stinks.

6) No broken branch friends. Some people you know won’t or can’t introduce you. A broken branch is a person who doesn’t introduce you (ever). I stole this from my side project, theDatingReport.com where some relationships get in a year and you still don’t know who their friends are.

7) Be a Weed. Weeds grow and foster entire impromptu communities. Friendship with you is like a gateway drug. Be the one that gets added via Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, MySpace, Ryze. (I say MySpace twice cuz its the biggest.)

8) Work the Room’s Fringes. a) Wallflowers can be broken branches but could be an “amiable ambush”- another dude looking to charm you.

9) Anoint an Alpha Male. Better than being one, pick out a gamma male, a rising star, and make him alpha. Defer to him when the pack is trying to choose, listen when he’s on a soapbox, let him have first pick and make positive fun of his sandbagging whenever possible.

10) Run the Point. Point guards don’t score (plus who wants to score
in a room full of dudes). Good point guards pass, meaning they set aside
their own agenda (shy, sausage-ing, turtling) and make intros.

11) Invite People to a Post Party. Do the math. The event goes from 7pm to 9pm and they had passed apps. Translation: People are still hungry. Get your host, the VIPs and or your crew to a nearby eatery. Key tip: hosts and organizer won’t eat until 30-40 min after event ends. Or be a Larry Chiang and order Chicago Deep Dish from Patxi’s and just hand it out to keep the night going.

12) Encourage fake thinking. Get a person to think they’re thinking and they love you. Get them to really think and they’ll hate you.
* BONUS MAN CHARM TIP
13) Pin-The-Tail-on-the-Donkey. Nothing rallies a crew of men better than an alpha of the night who IDs a donkey. A donkey is party dufus that is borderline malicious. For example, at last fall’s TechCrunch 40, a VC said to me after I ddss duck9, “How dumb, that will never work”. I pointed three fingers up in the air (entrepreneur gang symbol/ signal) and emoted daggers toward ‘donkey’. Fast forward 20 minutes and there’s a full business card stomp, circle
dance. It was native. Next week I post a Yelp review of said donkey’s VC firm and buy $3,000 of inbound links. Sha-zam! Google search result #3 for firm name is my yelp poke in the eye. Donkey-ify for fun and community building.

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