WSJ's MBA Survey & Rankings
Now Playing: Podtech InfoTalk series (Podtech.net)
Topic: MBA, B-school
The WSJ's MBA Survey & Rankings came out today, including this podcast (iTunes link) by their MBA writer, Ron Alsop. Here's a quick summary:

1. Huge proliferation of part-time, Executive MBA or online programs, has increased the options for obtaining an MBA, resulting in decreased application rates for regular full-time MBA programs

2. WSJ’s survey asked recruiters to rate the success of part-time vs. full-time MBA students and the recruiters believed that full-time students have much better skill sets & experience:

30% said executive not as good as full-time was more effective

35% said part-time was not as effective as full-time

40% recruiters said online MBA programs are not effective at all

3. Ron Alsop, the WSJ’s MBA writer, has found that schools with a collegial atmosphere, which develop team and communication skills, are more successful:

Recruiters want the communication skills (the distinguishing factor), the soft skills (how one relates to others, works in teams, and has leadership skills)

4. The University of Rochester’s Simon School MBA program is seeking to raise application rates through an experimentation with an online scholarship contest, trying to create a sense of innovation around its MBA program.

Grand prize is one $70,000 full-ride scholarship

Why Simon needs help: a survey of students found that less people were applying because of the U of R’s location, upstate NY: the weather and other factors surrounding its location discouraged applicants

5. People still have sticker shock over the cost of an MBA program (just this year, Stanford and Wharton broke $40,000 a year)

6. There are still questions over the value of a MBA program (and how good is the school?) and the criticism is coming from within, professors at MBA programs themselves are questioning their peers.

And for my grocery store reading roundup (yes, the magazine aisle is my favorite aisle in the grocery store-- I see a great name for a website there, hmmmm...), it's time again for The Economist's Technology Quarterly and their tech cover story, "The meaning of free speech" discussing eBay's acquisition of Skype. Here's their take on Web 2.0 (I've seen it called AJAX, the newspaper-- The Economist is a newspaper not a magazine--calls it mashups).



If anyone is out there, let me know if I'm glossing over the differences between "mashups" and AJAX, I'd be interested in someone explaining the differences.

Posted by cph19 at 9:39 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 24 September 2005 3:26 AM EDT

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