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Business School News

GWU School of Business – Ascent in Economist MBA Ranking 2011

October 14, 2011

Last time I had a post on George Washington University School of Business rise in Financial Times MBA ranking there was a lot of fanfare going around the school. I think I received at least 3 or 4 emails within a couple of days from different sections of the business school and university heralding the good news. This time I have not heard from the school yet. I hope there is some cork-popping and cheering going around in the background, it just did not trickle down to us yet.

At any rate, GWSB made a climb, albeit moderate, in the Economist ranking of full-time MBA programs. From 2010 the GWU School of Business rose 5 places from 73 to 68 in global ranking. Among the US-based schools only, it holds position 41 out of 59 schools presented in the ranking. Also, an important caveat, last year was the first time that Economist ever included GWSB in its ranking. This means that the school has made a steady progress in this particular ranking for two consecutive years. Having admitted that all rankings are imperfect, still the one from Economist is one of the more reputable in the world, and for the US it comes right on the tails of the “BIG 3″ names in MBA ranking business: Businessweek, US News and World Report, Financial Times.

All the rankings have slightly or not so slightly different focus on what and how they measure. You can read detailed Economist ranking methodology, but in a nutshell they rank MBA programs based on four criteria:

open new career opportunities -35%
personal development/education experience -35%
increase salary – 20%
potential to network -10%

So I guess there is some reason for celebration for the GWSB faculty and administration. For me, however, it is time for a final push for my assignments for classes in the first fall module. I still have two group papers not finalized, one presentation for the group project, and one final exam. Once I am done with these, I will sure clink glasses to GWSB success

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Taking Care of Business – MBA Russian Way

October 11, 2011

in GWU School of Business,MBA experience,Organizational Behavior & Leadership

Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO

Just stumbled upon an interesting article in Economist - School of the dark arts. It is about, if not the best, at least the most touted, Russian business school – Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO. The school has been known since its founding in 2006 as a pet project of the Russian government and the collaborating oligarchs. It has been well-funded, fiercely-promoted and frequently-attended by the Russian and international business and political celebrities, including Medvedev, Putin, Schwarzenegger and many others. The school is, in a very Russian, even if somewhat twisted way, a response to the Harvards and LBS’s of the world.

The meat of the article is about a different perspective on business education taken by the school. That is, different from the approaches taken by the school’s Western counterparts. To quote the dean of the school, Wilfried Vanhonacker: “Western schools focus on knowledge. We focus on how to get things done.” Sounds very appealing on its face value, until you read further what it actually means in the context of an article. And it means that the school is preparing its graduates to function in so-called “difficult economies”, such as Russia, India, China and Brazil – the famous BRIC, which are typically plagued with “…institutional gaps, limited availability of talent and graft.” To further confirm what it actually means, here is another quote from the article: “There is no ethical proselytising. …Skolkovo does not harbour “rather arrogant ambitions” to change Russia’s business environment.”

This approach to “getting the things done” is in a quite stark contrast to the latest trends in the Western business education with emphasis on sustainability, corporate social responsibility and ethics. For reference, read my post about the interview with the dean of George Washington School of Business that touches upon these issues at GWSB, and more broadly in American business education.

What is even more interesting, this “down to earth, get your hands dirty” approach of SKOLKOVO is contradictory to the very aspirations and proclamations of Wilfried Vanhonacker, the school’s dean, just two short years ago. In 2009 he made on the list of 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics published by Ethisphere, “a leading international think-tank dedicated to the creation, advancement and sharing of best practices in business ethics, corporate social responsibility, anti-corruption and sustainability.”

Vanhonacker was listed under category Thought Leadership and credited with the SKOLKOVO’s announcement “that it will focus on anti-corruption, a welcome change to the high profile reports of alleged corruption that came from Russia [that] year.”

As the article in Economist states, “the school unabashedly takes a different perspective from its Western counterparts.” Apparently, the reverence to the anti-corruption and business ethics sentiment in 2009 was done only sheepishly. ;-(

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Why George Washington University School of Business?

September 27, 2011

in GWU School of Business,MBA experience,Organizational Behavior & Leadership

The Businessweek online has recently placed a video interview with the dean of the George Washington University School of Business – Doug Guthrie, who answers this question. The highlights of the GWU Business School approach to business education, as per dean’s interview, are the corporate social responsibility, sustainability, ethics and global perspective. These core elements need to be embedded into the business education, and this is the aspiration of the GWSB faculty and administration. The dean also emphasized again the unique location of the school that allows to it to effectively embed all those aspects into its curriculum and total student experience. By the way, this location advantage is also reflected in the tag line of GWSB: “In the Center of It All.”

From personal experience, I know that additional sustainability and international elective courses are required for graduation, on top of the core curriculum courses, and international or global business cases are extensively included into most of my courses in school. I have seen the roster of elective courses on sustainability and corporate responsibility offered in the school and it seems rather adequate to me. However, I have heard at least one of my classmates complaining that there were not enough sustainability courses available at school. As a matter of fact, the complaint I heard was in fall 2010, and since then the business school seems to have increased the offerings in sustainability domain according to the article in the George Washington University newspaper – the GW Hatchet.

For me it is hard to objectively evaluate this, since I don’t know what other schools offer in this area. But The Aspen Institute publishes its biennial ranking of Business School – Beyond the Grey Pinstripes – measuring them on “the integration of issues concerning social and environmental stewardship into the curriculum”. According to that ranking GWSB holds position 9 in the US, and 11 – internationally, out of 149 business schools participating in the surveys that lead to the ranking. Which means that our school does something right or, that many other schools are even less concerned with the “social and environmental stewardship” issues.

Interestingly, Harvard Business School is not included in the ranking, reportedly because they did not participate in the survey. Speaking of the “rankings fatigue” . Anyways, embedded at the end of this post is the interview from Businessweek. If you have other “why’s?” about MBA, here is my post on “Why Part-time MBA?”

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George Washington University School of Business-Financial Times Rankings

January 27, 2010

in GWU School of Business,MBA experience

Today in Global Perspectives class professor was seemingly glowing when he broke a news. Turned out that Financial Times published their Global MBA Rankings 2010 just two days ago on January 25. MBA program at GWSB climbed from position 71 to 57 among top 100 MBA programs worldwide. What he was even more proud of was that in a separate ranking of Top Schools by Subject George Washington University MBA program ranked #5 in Top 10 programs for International Business. The reason for his being especially happy about the ranking in International Business section is that it is probably in great part credited to the success of the department he is working at.

I mentioned before in one of the posts that rankings are quite helpful in getting preliminary information about schools and sizing up the programs. But once that information is analyzed, one needs to look beyond the rankings and find the best match for him/herself, based on personal goals and circumstances, not purely the rankings. At any rate, this news is a nice validation for all of us in GWSB.
The Financial Times Global MBA rankings is one of the three most recognized rankings of MBA programs in the USA. The FT rankings are taking more global outlook, instead of looking only at the US business schools. Just as the professor mentioned in the first lecture on Global Perspectives. The other two rankings are mostly recognized for rankings of domestic business schools:

I guess this new ranking will be celebrated and touted in the school now. But the real moral of the story is:

Heed to your professor’s advice when he is prompting you to subscribe for Financial Times and you will never be two days behind on a good news
Attend the lectures, and you will be up to speed on most important news you might have accidentally missed.

Edited 2/1/2010: Today businessbecause.com caught up on the Global MBA Ranking from Financial Times with a review on losers and winners, and some comparisons between the schools in various regions of the world.

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MBA – What’s the Buzz

January 9, 2010

In the light of my post on whether MBA is losing its relevance for businesses and attractiveness to the students I was thinking what were the events relating to the MBA programs that attracted the most media attention lately. Since my personal interest in MBA evoked only in Spring 2008, this was the time when [...]

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Welch MBA – Any Takers?

December 7, 2009

Read an article today about new online offering in business education: online MBA degree from Jack Welch Management Institute. The guy has already made a name for himself, even if occasionally in dubious nominations. Nevertheless, he was named the Manager of the Century by Fortune in 1999, and obviously has something to say about business. Now he [...]

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