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GWU School of Business

GW MBA Follies – 2013

May 5, 2013

in GWU School of Business,Jokes,MBA experience,Post-MBA

Last week I went to the GW MBA Follies. This was my first ever Follies and I was really curious to see what it was all about. During my MBA years I either did not even know about specific dates when the Follies was performed or would not go under the feeling of guilt of wasting a night for entertainment when it could be better used to work on my MBA homework assignments

This year, however, I was well-informed about the upcoming Follies date. Thanks to the GW MBAA announcements and repeated postings on the Facebook group for part-time MBA students at GWSB, of which I am still a member, my curiosity was piqued up and well-sustained. As I said at the beginning, this was the very first time I would go to see Follies. So for me it was like checking out the box on my list of things to try at least once. It was also one of those things that I missed during my MBA time proper and would like to do to complement my overall MBA experience.

To be honest, I had some idea of what the Follies were like. Before going to this year’s show, I looked up a few videos of MBA Follies from other business schools, and videos of GW MBA Follies from previous years on YouTube. It was moreover interesting to see how this year GW MBA version stacks up.

I had fun and quite a bit of laughs. Since the show was produced exclusively by the full-time Global MBA students (and mostly 2-nd years), some of the jokes were more of the “inside jokes” to which the audience at large reacted with great enthusiasm, but they were lost on me. Most of the Follies, however, had more universal appeal for business school students at large: of course, lots of swiping on the GW MBA falling rankings and the hiring prospects for the students. But this seems to be a recurring theme for GW MBA Follies. I was a bit surprised by quite extensive use of expletives in one or two episodes, but this is just a matter of personal preference, I guess.

Though I overall liked this years Follies, for some reason I think that Follies 2012 were a bit more creative and funnier. It may be just because I knew more students participating in the Follies from my elective classes last year.

You can watch a complete set of videos from this year’s GW MBA Follies on YouTube. And since I already checked out the box for attending live Follies on my check list, that’s what I am going to do in the future as well – watch online . You can start doing just that by watching one of the episodes from this year’s GW MBA Follies with Dean Doug Guthrie.

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French Labor Market and Corporate Social Responsibility

March 17, 2013

in Corporate Social Responsibility,GWU School of Business,International Business,MBA experience,Study Abroad,Sustainability

It was exactly a year ago that I went to Audencia Nantes School of Management, France for a week-long study abroad program offered by GWSB MBA. It was a very eventful week for me, and probably one of the brightest highlights of my whole MBA experience. The course that I took there was on Corporate Social Responsibility -CSR, in France, and more generally in Europe. The classes were taught by Audencia professors and we also had a few visits to local businesses where we learned about their specific implementation of CSR.

While the class lectures were on a more general CSR policies and practices, there was one recurring theme in all presentations at the local businesses that was extremely peculiar to me. Whenever the management were talking about CSR at their company, invariably they were talking a lot about management-employees relationship and what the management had done in order to keep their workforce happy and content. It was obvious that this one aspect of the CSR is the most important focal point of companies’ CSR efforts. Also, at every business that we visited they were talking how effective their CSR was, and as a proof at every single business they mentioned how long their company had been going without the workers going on strike. Coming from the US job market and hearing about the strikes and the pride the companies take in being able to avert those was quite unusual.

This was a stark contrast to the CSR emphasis in the US-based businesses, where the focus is more often on the community impact at large, not just the labor, including environmental issues, sustainability, and charity.

Analyzing this narrowly-focused CSR efforts at French companies, one could not help but think about the cost to the businesses and its ultimate effect on the international competitiveness. However, given the subject of the course I took in Audencia, this issue never received appropriate coverage in our classes. There were, of course, some cursory references to the cost of up-keeping the CSR programs, but not in the context of international competition.

A few weeks ago, I read this article Are the French Really that Lazy? It was touching on all these specific aspects of high labor costs and how difficult it is to conduct business in France, especially for someone with a US brand of business management experience. Even though the title of the article is quite provocative, it touches upon some very real hurdles for Multinational Corporations who want to run business in France. The article immediately brought to my memory the last year’s CSR course in Audencia. It was like finally getting a chance to see another side of the coin.

Personally, the most striking part for me in the article was about the power of the trade unions who can dictate their will and manipulate businesses. From the classes I knew that most of that CSR in French companies is regulated by the government requirements, and influenced by the unions, but the article is specifically focusing on the role of the unions.

Now I think that all those presentations and references to the success of the CSR programs that we heard at the company visits in Nantes were dictated not as much by the pride of the management in being proactive in their CSR efforts, but by a pure fear of the unions. Not a good recipe for genuine CSR programs.

Just to give you another point of view on the issue of French “laziness” here is an article from over two years ago that gives a kind of rebuttal to the above referenced article – Are the French a bunch of lazy slackers? Obviously, this article comes from the French source.

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Going Global: MBA Students in Ghana

March 13, 2013

in Entrepreneurship,Guest Post,GWU School of Business,International Business,MBA experience,Study Abroad,Sustainability,Travel

Written by Kristin Schulz, class 2014 part-time MBA student at GWSB; Residential Programs Manager at Clean Currents. Passionate advocate and evangelist for renewable energy and business sustainability.

One of the great things about the part-time MBA program at GW is the flexible course offerings that make it possible to sit classes into an already packed full-time work schedule. Luckily, study abroad courses were not left out of the equation either.

GWSB offers 10-day programs that allow professionals to get the hands-on experience and international exposure of studying abroad. I have just completed my last assignment for the program I participated in this January – International Entrepreneurship and Business Growth Strategies in Developing Countries. I spent a grand total of 14 days in Ghana, West Africa combining some travel of my own with the structured course in Accra, the country’s capital city.

The program helped me gain incredible insight into what it takes to establish and run a business in an emerging market. I am especially glad that I chose to participate earlier on in my MBA schedule. This experience has inspired and motivated me to work hard to gain all the valuable business skills I will need in order to pursue a future career in emerging markets. My area of interest is the private renewable energy sector so I know that nothing would have replaced the learning opportunity of seeing Ghana’s energy infrastructure first hand.

Ghana is one of the most developed and stable countries in Africa where the majority of the population enjoys access to all the modern conveniences one would expect, including electricity. Although Ghana has abundant power sources (their hydroelectric facility generates the majority of the electricity supplied not only in Ghana, but throughout West Africa) the national electricity grid continues to experience inefficiencies. I learned that this has both positive and negative implications for their residential solar industry.

On the down side: There is no motivation to be energy efficient due to the lack of any meter-reading system. A flat monthly energy charge is determined for each building when it’s first inspected. This amount will not change from month to month despite acquisition of new appliances over time unless the utility is notified. Since there is no enforcement of penalties for not advising the utility, it’s no surprise that no one reports installing more lights, charging new cell phones, purchasing a refrigerator etc. The power outages make sense since the country is demanding more power than the utility even realizes!
On the up side: Frequent outages have motivated residents to explore off-grid solar options for their homes. Currently there are over a dozen successful Ghanaian solar companies dedicated to residential solar installation. The initial upfront cost, while reasonable by US standards, is still a major barrier because the average rate for a one-year loan in Ghana comes with 48% interest! But that’s a whole other story…

Given the country’s annual sun exposure, large-scale solar was a logical consideration in the initial plans to expand the country’s energy generation. But when oil was discovered off the coast in 2007 a national solar project took the back-seat in lieu of establishing off-shore oil refineries. Solar is still in Ghana’s future and it looks like that may be sooner than later due to a partnership with Blue Energy of the UK to build The Nzema Project (http://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/solar-farm-ghana-be-africas-biggest.html) which could generate enough power for 100,000 homes annually!

Ghana is not only ideally situated for solar, but also for offshore wind. It is exciting to see a developing country like Ghana willing to explore their diverse energy resources and open to embracing new clean energy technology. It will be interesting to see what resources are prioritized in the expansion of their energy portfolio.

Aside from the knowledge I gained during this short program, I was also able to take some time to experience the friendly people, vibrant culture, spicy food, and gorgeous geography of the country. Some of my unique adventures included learning the bobobo dance, trying fufu and goat stew, getting around via tro-tro, attempting to balance a water bowl on my head and mastering the handshake snap.

I simply can’t say enough about how much this experience meant to me both professionally and personally. I strongly encourage everyone to participate in a short-term study abroad experience while pursuing a MBA!

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MBA Student Loan – Days of Reckoning

March 3, 2013

in GWU School of Business,MBA experience,Post-MBA

In my post-MBA time there have been a few milestones directly connected to my MBA. First was the Graduation Gala that I described briefly in my blog. Then, of course, were the Commencement weekend ceremonies back in May: GWSB Commencement and GWU Commencement. Sometime in July I received my MBA diploma by mail. This was all the glitzy parts that capped three years of grueling time crunch and sleep deprivation.

But as we, adults, know all so well, there is a pay time for everything . For me it came on January 3-d this year when my first required payment on my MBA student loan was due. I will share some highlights of my student loan borrowing and paying history, so that prospective students could get some idea about the financial repercussions of getting MBA through part-time mode.

Of course, everyone’s situation is different in regards to how they pay or finance their MBA education. I know at least one classmate whose parents paid for the whole program. Quite a few others were receiving some tuition assistance from their current employees. Usually it was up to equivalent of six credits per semester. Many of us, however, paid/financed our whole way through the school on our own. This was the case for me, with a little caveat. I received a merit-based scholarship from GWSB for a total of six credits (equivalent of around $7200) that was applied to my first year of program.

So here is a rough breakdown of my financial situation with paying for MBA. GWSB requires 52.5 credits for graduation. The average cost per credit over three years was about $1,280 (it started at at $1,208 in 2009/10 school year and increased every year thereafter). Therefore the total cost of tuition was about $67,200. With $7,200 scholarship factored in, my tuition only was about $60K to cover on my own. This does not include other incidental costs, such as textbooks, business cases, course packs (~$2500); supplies, including laptop, which I purchased specifically for school (~$1500); commute and parking costs (~$1000); additional costs for study abroad in France, such as flight, hotel, meals, etc. (~$2000).

So the total cost of my MBA was about $74K, of which I had to pay/finance about $67K. My goal at the start of the program was to minimize the amount of the student loan as much as I could. Therefore, all the incidentals I paid as I went, out of pocket, throughout the school. With that I had only to finance my tuition of $60k.

But I did not want to take any additional private student loans besides my government-backed Stafford loan. As a graduate student I was eligible to borrow up to $20,500 each year. In my first year, thanks to a GWSB scholarship, I borrowed only $11K. In second and third year respectively I borrowed $20.5 and $20K. That brought me up to a total borrowed amount of $51.5 K. The difference of about $9K in three years for tuition I also paid as I went, out of pocket.

If I left it as it was I would end up paying $587 in monthly installments, starting in January 2013, for the next 10 years at a fixed rate of 6.8%. But I really I did not like the idea of paying more than $500/month. So throughout my school years, and especially in time after graduation before my loan was capitalized in November, I was making payments on my loan, even though I was not legally required, whenever I had a chance. The goal was to bring the monthly payments under $500 once the required payments kick in. My effort paid off and at the time the loan was capitalized and finalized for the next 10 years I had only $43K left to pay off with monthly payments of $498. Given all my other financial obligations, it is quite manageable. I actually plan to make some extra payments towards my principal when I have a chance, to minimize the amount of total interest on the loan and reduce the payment period to around eight years, instead of ten.

So that was my breakdown of MBA costs and MBA student loan repayment. As your situation may differ slightly or significantly, you can make adjustments to your calculations, but it gives you a good ball-park figure about the costs and the ways to pay for it.

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MBA Done – Heading Back to School

February 27, 2013

I just really cannot let it go. I am becoming a GWSB fixture of sorts – a proverbial perpetual student, except I am not doing it to get another formal degree, but to pursue some of the interests through the classes I did not have time to take during my MBA tenure. In my post [...]

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