NC State Jenkins Online MBA is ranked #9 by US News.

Fantastic news today.  Our online MBA program is ranked #9 by US News.  From the beginning, we focussed on creating a very high quality experience for our students, and it's nice to see that this focus has paid off.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/north-carolina-state-university-raleigh-OBUS0421/mba

For details about the Jenkins MBA - check out this link.

NC State MBA a top overperformer

Yet more love from Poets and Quants on our MBA program.

http://stevenallenblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/nc-state-mba-top-overperformer.html


HT: Steve Allen's Blog.

NC State's Jenkins MBA moves up in the rankings

A big move up in the US News and World Report rankings.

Details on Steve Allen's blog.

Poets and Quants on the NC State Jenkins MBA

A really great write up of our MBA program.  If you are thinking of getting your MBA or know someone who is, you need to read this.

HT: My colleague Steve.

NC State Jenkins Online MBA program is number 36 nationwide.

Our online MBA program just graduated its first class and we're already ranked at number 36!

I have been involved in the development of the online program from its inception and this ranking reflects our goal of creating an exceptionally high quality online experience.   I may be biased (I teach in the program) but I have to say that this is a very good MBA.   And yes - you can apply...here

NC State Professional MBA ranked number 20 in US

Big news for our MBA program - we were just ranked number 20 in the US by BusinessWeek.

My colleague Steve Allen has some of the details.

1 hour course for NCSU MBAs

This is only of interest to NCSU MBA students.   I'll be teaching a one hour course on asset allocation this fall.   Details are here.
Contact me directly if you are interested.

89 business cliches

I could barely get through these because they are so painful.  But you might use them in your next game of buzzword bingo.

HT: George.

CFA Challenge

If you are an MBA student at NCSU graduating in spring 2013 or later and interested in finance, I invite you to apply to be on the the CFA challenge team that we are putting together for next year's competition (starting fall 2012).   Details are here.

Last year's team (our first year entering) placed in the finals.

An MBA is still a good investment

...and especially so for women.

OWS at Wharton

An attempt to bring OWS to the cradle of all evil - the Wharton School.  Sounds like it was a pretty entertaining event.

NCSU Jenkins MBA is in the Businessweek Top 30

Great news about our part-time MBA program. 

Dilbert on MBAs

All I can say is that I have a Finance PhD and an MBA and I'm not making any money in the market either.

What is Finance?

Anant Sundaram (Finance Prof at Dartmouth) explains.   (Potentially useful for students considering studying Finance).

Finance Jobs

My colleague, Steve Allen, blogs on where the growth in the finance job market is.   Summary: Pack your suitcase and make sure your passport is up to date.

Who should study for the CFA?

An interview with the CFA Institute Managing Director on who should study for the Chartered Financial Analyst Designation.  The bottom line:  If you want to get into investment management, then you should probably give it some thought.

HT: Steve Allen

A few on business education.

More on the perpetual hand-ringing of whether business education is relevant.

From the Financial Times.
and a few from Craig Newmark.

The research - teaching disconnect in MBA education.

An opinion piece today in the Financial Times laments the disconnect between Management research and teaching.   It argues that

What is being taught in management courses is usually not based on solid scientific evidence. Instead, it concerns the generalisation of individual business cases or the lessons from popular management books.

While this may or may not be the case in some management disciplines, it is not the case in Finance.  I usually start off teaching Financial Management (our intro MBA class) by pointing out that we will cover 4 Nobel Prize winning theories.  I'll then draw much more recent research (including some of my own) into lectures.

For example: last week in my Investments class, we were talking about creating portfolios with short positions in foreign securities and I noted that US traded ADRs facilitate shorting in cases where their home countries have short sales bans - a topic of one of my current working papers.

While, there is frequently much hand wringing in the business press about the relevance of some content of MBA education, I think Finance is in pretty good shape.

Technology and teaching.

The Economist magazine argues that MBA programs should use more technology in their teaching.  As Professor who teaches in an MBA program, I hear this a lot.

I'm not at all averse to technology - I'm a bit of a geek really.  I run linux as my primary O/S and I think cloud storage (dropbox, evernote) is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  But I also think that you should use the simplest technology that gets the job done.  My primary teaching tool is a large white board and a lot of colored markers.  I'll use powerpoint to put up talking points, excel to show examples, and of course the web to grab data.  But beyond that, what is there?

The use of hardware technology seems very overplayed.  Do Ipads, kindles and Ipod touches really help?   Are smart boards, where you can manipulate the items on the screen really worthwhile?  For that matter, is excel 2007 so much better than excel XP?

I think that all these technologies are cute toys, but if I'm teaching target date immunization, they would just get in the way.  Of course I might just be a luddite.

I welcome comments on this topic.  But please, don't suggest that I use Second Life.

The MBA Oath

Apparently 300 graduating MBAs from Havard have taken the "MBA Oath" this year and pledged to make a positive impact on society.

While this seems a positive development, it is worth remembering that MBA programs have historically had a bit of an ethics problem. A study done in 2006 reported that 56% of MBA students admitted to cheating.