MBA Programs and Executive MBA Programs sometimes have a similar curriculum, but the class format and admission requirements vary.

Different for different prospects: The EMBA course is aimed at experienced executives who prefer not to take a career break to take a full-time MBA and typically require significant business experience to gain admission. The regular MBA course is generally taken by candidates with relatively lesser work experience. On the other hand the EMBA course is generally taken up by experienced people who want to augment other skills/knowledge areas. Read the rest of this entry »

There are a variety of MBA course available in India and abroad and the students opting for MBA admission have a varied background. While some go for normal two-year MBA course, those who have little time or are engaged with businesses or jobs opt for Executive MBA course and part-time MBA course. An MBA education broadens and enhances knowledge and should be viewed in a sense of building up skills. It is utilized to find solutions to business issues.

An MBA course imbibe in the students the capability and skills to maximize individual and organizational productivity. An MBA course prepares the students to meet the demands of the marketplace. Dr. P Chandra, Director, IIM Bangalore, says, “Enrolling for an MBA course is the best way for the candidate to learn how to build and mould innovative organizations. An MBA degree teaches the learners how to go about analyzing management techniques and paves the way for building managerial perspectives. It also elucidates how the economy works within a society.

Also the case methodology that is practiced by almost all MBA colleges is a thing that leaves the students with a great understanding of practical management knowledge and solutions. The Case-Method creates a classroom in which students succeed not by simply absorbing facts and theories, but also by exercising the skills of leadership and teamwork in the face of real problems.

An MBA courses equip the candidates with adequate skills to face the challenges of a corporate career. IIM Ahmedabad graduate Santosh Desai, who’s now CEO, Future Brands, says, “The wonderful thing about the MBA course is that one will not just be the manager, but also a creator. I think the most important future challenge would be how you are going to transcend the act of managers. In MBA colleges, you are given the freedom to think and to face the challenges. It will be new because all the things are in you but nothing compels you to think independently as does the good MBA course.”

So, the MBA is not just a degree, much more in fact. It helps you find yourself and the capability within. Read the rest of this entry »

Amazon’s Kindle may not yet be a success story on business school campuses, but there appears to still be hope for the Apple iPad. Last year, I wrote a story how seven universities, including two business schools, attempted to use the Amazon Kindle DX in the classroom. The device proved problematic and after a few months, most students stopped using the e-reader, complaining that it wasn’t user-friendly and hard to navigate in the classroom.

Now, some B-schools are turning their sights to the iPad. Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business (Robinson Full-Time MBA Profile) is one of the first business schools aggressively pursuing using the iPad as a replacement for classroom textbooks. This fall, they rolled out a pilot where students in the college’s Executive MBA program were given iPads as a replacement for textbooks, the school said in a press release. The 1.5-pound iPad will replace the 20 pounds of textbooks that students typically are required to buy for class, the school said. By next fall, the school plans to distribute the devices to students in the school’s professional and global partner MBA programs, the one-year specialized master’s program, and the executive doctorate in business. Read the rest of this entry »

Having an MBA gives you the great opportunity to advance your career and increase your income. If you are in a mid-career level who are waiting for a good career opportunity to move your career to next higher level, taking an MBA is a good decision because an MBA will certifies you as a master in business administration. With the MBA qualification, you are putting yourself to a competitive edge to grab any good opportunity which may open to you along your career path. With the available of online education, you have more options to choose whether your want to pursue your MBA traditionally or earn it through online MBA program.

The worry about whether degree earned through online education can be widely accepted in the job market is not valid anymore since many job market survey reports have proved it’s accepted by most employers. The only question is whether you can fully benefits from online education if you choose to pursue your MBA online.

If you are already in the workforce full-time, and the constraint of your commitments and obligations might keep you from earning your MBA in traditional way. Online MBA may be the best way to allow you to continue your job and earn the degree at the same time. Moreover, selecting an online option to pursue your MBA, you do not need to worry if you need to travel for job assignment, or can’t finish your job on time for classes, because you can logon to online classes from anywhere and at any time, you plan for it.

Basically, you can benefit from the advantages of online MBA as most of online MBA programs do take into consideration factors that best fit the working adults. But, one downside of taking your MBA online is you will lose the interaction with professors and other students face-to-face. It’s becomes more difficult to build a network with your colleagues which will be very helpful contacts throughout your career. However, if you can create relationship with your online instructors and online classmates in cyber-environment, you can make up for some of the loss interaction.

Choosing an online MBA school is an important step when selecting your MBA program. You should not simply choose one because if you accidental select an MBA program offered by diploma mill, you will not only lose your money, but the worthless degree issued by diploma mill won’t help you in grabbing your career opportunities later. Do your homework about each online business school that you’re considering. Information such as accreditation by which the accrediting agency and what other people talk about these schools on internet can be a good reference in your decision to choose one of the MBA programs that best suit your interest.

Since, many online MBA students failed to complete their MBA program with all sort of reasons, don’t let you be part of them. In order to be a success online MBA student who will complete the MBA program and earn the valuable degree that will help in your career, you must be prepared to adapt yourself with the online learning style and have a self-motivation to push yourself through the online study process.

I started my career as an entrepreneur at twenty-four years old, right out of college. I ultimately built and sold a $250 million global scrap metal company, an experience I wrote about in my book Starting from Scrap.

After my book came out, I visited several U.S. business schools and met with MBA students to talk about my experiences launching a company in emerging markets. Many of the students who came to hear me speak were aspiring entrepreneurs in the process of getting MBAs. Many of them asked similar questions: “You didn’t get an MBA, nor did many other successful entrepreneurs, so if I want to start my own company, is business school a worthwhile experience? Is it worth paying all this tuition — or will my degree just be a resume-builder?”

I once had a conversation about this topic with Dr. John Yang, the dean of the Beijing International MBA program at Beijing University. Here’s what he had to say: “In my opinion, entrepreneurship is a matter of the heart, and education is a matter of the brain. It is difficult to teach a heart.”

I share his perspective. By definition, an entrepreneur is one who takes risk. It’s an attitude and an appetite, one which may be hardwired into one’s personality. Education can influence one’s attitude toward risk: for instance, understanding the principle of diversification or the long-term returns of equities versus bonds may make an investor more willing to create a “riskier” stock portfolio. But ultimately, can you teach someone to really enjoy taking risks? I don’t think you can.

When I think about the value of an MBA for aspiring entrepreneurs, I see a parallel with the military. Countries spend billions of dollars training soldiers so they’ll be ready for combat — they’re taught to fire rifles and operate in simulated high-pressure situations. But that training only goes so far. A Marine colonel once told me that he never knows how a soldier will respond — whether he’ll hide in his foxhole, run in the other direction, or stand and fight as he’s been trained #8212; until the bullets start flying. How someone reacts in times of great stress relies largely in instincts and the makeup of his or her personality — and training only takes you so far.

The same is true with entrepreneurship. Understanding strategy, finance and marketing can be very helpful. But it’s also important to possess self-confidence, a need for independence, energy and passion, curiosity, and an ability to communicate ideas. If you don’t have these natural assets, you’ll struggle as an entrepreneur.

I’m lucky, because those are personal attributes that I have. I don’t have an MBA, but I’ve picked up many of the business skills I needed during more than 15 years running a company. (My grandfather referred to me as having an MBA from the School of Hard Knocks, whose official colors are black and blue — an expensive education that makes Harvard Business School appear inexpensive by comparison). Many of the lessons I learned from those tough and painful experiences I might have learned in an MBA program — and if I’d learned them earlier, my company might have been even more successful.

As the HBR article makes clear, if I’d understood the use and importance of financial and inventory controls, I could have prevented millions of dollars in fraud. Perhaps studying cases about companies that had grown too fast and lost control of both their finances and the quality of their products would have encouraged me to expand at a more sober pace. We wasted years trying to re-organize after over-expanding and perhaps missed countless opportunities in the process. I could have saved or made a lot more money had I taken some courses in business law or venture capital financing. (We ended up getting strong armed by our investors, and they got away with it due to our early-stage naiveté.) I also would have benefited if I’d known more about human resources and the need for well-designed compensation and incentive systems. These are just a few of the tools you can get in business school — and they’re all tools I wished I’d had.

So I believe MBA programs do give future entrepreneurs valuable tools to help them mitigate risk and increase the probabilities of success. But even with those tools, only you know whether or not you have the heart to execute on the opportunities we all recognize to launch a compelling new business. That is when the real bullets start flying.

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/does_an_enterpreneur_need_an_m.html

The Best International Business Schools 2010: A lot has changed since the last time Bloomberg Businessweek ranked international full-time MBA programs. In Europe and Canada, placement rates and starting salaries for newly minted MBAs took a major hit, then began the slow process of recovery. Disgruntled students sent satisfaction scores plunging at some schools, while fickle recruiters switched allegiances at others. The result: France’s INSEAD catapulted from No. 3 in 2008 to the No. 1 spot, overtaking Canada’s Queen’s School of Business and Spain’s IE Business School, which were Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in 2008.

In the slides that follow, we lay out the winners and the losers in the top 10. But it doesn’t end there. This year we nearly doubled the size of the list, ranking 18 international schools in all. Click here for the complete ranking. Read the rest of this entry »

Part-time MBA programs are a good option for people who don’t want to quit working to go back to school. Once thought of as a way to advance an existing career, part-time MBA programs have become a suitable option for career changers as well. If you’re interested in part-time MBA programs, here are the best of them by region, according to the 2009 BusinessWeekpart-time MBA rankings.

Note: On the slides that follow, average GMAT scores and completion rates are self-reported by schools. Grads reporting salary increase and average salary increase are based on respondents to the BusinessWeek survey; data may not be representative of the entire class. Ratings, based on survey results, are provided for “career advancers,” who are looking for a promotion with their current employer; “job changers,” who are looking to advance their careers with a new employer; and “career switchers,” who want to change industries, functional areas, or both.

The job market for 2010 MBA graduates made a slow but steady recovery this year, beginning to rebound from one of the worst MBA hiring seasons in recent history. All but three of Bloomberg Businessweek’s 30 top-ranked full-time MBA programs saw improvements in the percentage of students landing jobs within three months of graduation, according to the latest data reported to Bloomberg Businessweek.

The news was not all good, though, with the schools’ results showing an MBA job landscape that has significantly altered in the past two years. A surge in hiring later in the school year boosted many schools’ placement numbers, but few are back to their 2007 placement levels of 2007, a headier time before the financial crisis, when the vast majority of students landed multiple job offers and fat signing bonuses. This year’s results were still welcome news to career placement officers, such as Read McNamara, executive director of the career management center at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management (Owen Full-Time MBA Profile), which had 87 percent of students placed by the three-month mark, up six percentage points from the year before.

FEWER SIGNING BONUSES

This year, on average, about 12 percent of graduates at the top 30 schools, or one in eight, still hadn’t received even one job offer by the three-month mark. That’s an improvement from last year, when one in five students were jobless three months after graduation. Salaries are flat or down at 23 of the 30 schools, with starting pay averaging $97,049, inching up only $549 from 2009. Meanwhile, the much-coveted signing bonus has also seen a fall from favor, with 23 of the schools reporting that the percentage of students with jobs receiving signing bonuses is down, some by 20 percentage points or more from the year before.

DISAPPOINTING SALARY OFFERS

Even in a tight job market, some recent graduates are not willing to compromise when it comes to compensation. The turnaround in the employment picture means that students like Hussain can be a bit more selective when it comes to the type of jobs they are angling for. Many of the top-ranked schools hit hard by the financial crisis last year have started to bounce back, including Harvard Business School, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

FRUITLESS INTERNSHIPS

The hiring outlook did not look bright for the 2010 class last fall, when many students returned from summer internships without a job offer in hand. Recruiters were still showing up on campus but were hiring fewer students, leaving career services officers such as Wendy Tsung, associate dean and executive director of the MBA Career Services Office at Emory University’s Goizueta Busness School (Goizueta Full-Time MBA Profile), nervous about students’ prospects. “We went into the year very unsure about how it was going to play out,” she says.

She encouraged students to be more proactive about their job search, and her staff worked to develop recruiting relationships with companies the school had not worked with before. By the time the spring rolled around, a “second wave of recruiting” lifted the school’s placement numbers by 11 percentage points, to 93 percent.

SLUGGISH PLACEMENT RATES

Even with the start of a turnaround in the market, some schools have made little to no progress in improving their placement figures. At the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, the placement rate stayed flat at 22 percent, while the University of Maryland Smith School of Business and SMU’s Cox School actually lost ground. Smith’s three-month placement rate fell from 87 percent in 2009 to 81 percent in 2010, while a third of Cox graduates ended the summer unemployed, up from 27 percent in 2009, a deterioration in the placement rate the school blames on turnover in the career services office.

At the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, only 82 percent of the graduating class reported a job offer at the three-month mark, an improvement of just one percentage point over 2009.