Posted by: Alison Damast on November 04
The Carlyle Group and the Robert Toigo Foundation have joined forces to help make it easier for minority MBA graduates to pursue a career in the private equity sector, a field long criticized for its lack of diversity in the top ranks. Beginning today, second-year MBA students can apply for the new Toigo Private Equity MBA Fellowship, a year-long program where fellows will divide their time between working at Carlyle, its portfolio companies and some of the firms’ investors, according to a press release from the Toigo Foundation.
Those selected as fellows will receive an annual stipend, which includes a $50,000 MBA tuition payment to help them pay off their student loans. Carlyle, a global private equity firm, is committing $1 million to the effort over the four years. David Rubenstein, the managing director and co-founder of the The Carlyle Group, said he views the fellowship as a “significant and meaningful step” for the sector.
"…We believe more must be done to accelerate how we attract and retain minority talent within the industry," Rubenstein said.
The Robert Toigo Foundation is known in the MBA community for its prestigious fellowships awarded to minorities who want to attend business school; over the last 20 years more than 800 students have received fellowships, according to Toigo. Many of the foundation’s alumni have wanted to pursue careers in the private equity world, but have not always found it easy to break in, said Nancy Sims, president of the Robert Toigo Foundation.
"The growing number of Toigo Fellows and Alumni focused on private equity balanced with the perceived barriers to entry sparked Toigo’s efforts to address the disparity," Sims said.
The new Toigo Private Equity Fellowship will hopefully serve as a "catalyst within the private equity sector" by attracting top minority graduates, Sims said.
Students interested in applying to the fellowship can apply at the Toigo Foundation’s Web site. The deadline for submitting an application is December 11, 2009. Both Toigo and the Carlyle Group said they expect interest “to be strong” in the program.
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on October 30
Our recent story on MBA salaries analyzes the post-crisis job market for BusinessWeek’s top 30 U.S. MBA programs. As a few people have pointed out in the comments, employment numbers for the unranked programs are missing.
The reason you don’t see them is that many schools that don’t make it into the ranking don’t report complete information to BusinessWeek for their online profiles. However, we do have some additional numbers for the unranked schools that are illuminating. Unfortunately, not every program in this category submitted employment data and others submitted numbers that raised some red flags with us, so take these averages with a grain of salt.
For 42 of the unranked schools that submitted sufficient data, the average rate of students not reporting job offers (usually the reporting cutoff is in the fall) was 22%. Last year, the overall average was 12%. Some schools fared better than others, but among the hardest hit were Texas Christian University’s Neeley School of Business, the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business , the Howard University program, and American University’s Kogod School of Business --all reporting more than 40% of students never getting an offer.
For context, the number of graduates of top 30 MBA programs not reporting a job offer three months after graduation was 16.5% in 2009, up from 5% last year.
What these data seem to show is that the rate of job offers declined about 10 percentage points across the board this year in the U.S. That may not be surprising for unranked schools, but it's not what you might expect given the reverence some top schools command.
A possible explanation is that, contrary to popular belief, cachet won’t save you in times of trouble. Alternatively, it could mean that lower-tier schools caught employers’ eyes by accepting lower salaries. The 2009 starting pay for the unranked schools we looked at was about $78,000, with about 40% of those who accepted jobs getting signing bonuses. For the top-tier schools in 2009, starting pay was close to $96,500, with roughly 65% reporting signing bonuses.
Internationally, however, the picture was markedly sunnier. Though many of the 25 schools considered for BusinessWeek’s non-U.S. ranking did not report their employment data, and others reported implausible data, in terms of final job offers reported, most programs seemed to hover around the range of 90% of students getting at least one in 2009.
A few came in much higher, though one, top-ranked Queen’s School of Business in Ontario, reported a staggering 48% without an offer. The average salary reported at international schools was about $94,500 and the average number of students who accepted jobs who got signing bonuses was 33%.
One last thing: if you click on any of the school links included in this post, you'll be directed to the school's 2008 full-time MBA profile on the BusinessWeek web site. The 2009 profiles, which contain the offer, salary, and signing bonus data reported here, won't be ready for another week or so.
--Anne VanderMey
Posted by: Alison Damast on October 27
Here’s some good news for students planning on signing up for the Jack Welch Management Institute, a new online MBA program: Jack is back. The former General Electric CEO’s plans to open his school this fall were delayed after he obtained discitis, a rare but curable infection of the spine After being hospitalized for nearly 14 weeks at Columbia Presbyterian in New York, Welch finally was released in early October. Since then, he’s been busy firming up coursework and curriculum for his online MBA program, according to a press release issued by the Jack Welch Management Institute today.
The school, which is affiliated with Chancellor University in Cleveland, will open its door to students on Jan. 4, 2010. Classes will be offered both online and at Chancellor’s Cleveland campus.
"I’m thrilled about the launch of the program in January; everything has really come together," Welch said today. "A terrific team of highly respected academics and experienced practitioners has contributed to courses that do exactly what we envisioned – offer an MBA that is relevant, powerful, and unique, filled with real-world utility and infused with a management philosophy I deeply believe in."
Welch also had some other news to report, naming Steve Kerr as executive director of the Management Institute. Kerr, who led GE’s Leadership Development Center in Crotonville, N.Y., and the executive education program at Goldman Sachs, will work closely with Welch and the school’s faculty on the vision for the school and the academic program.
Kerr says he is looking forward to his new role and creating an experience that will be unique for students.
"Classes will be small, students and faculty will get input from Jack, and the curriculum will be current and relevant to today’s news," he says. "I think the Jack Welch MBA will be unlike any other business degree in the marketplace."
The school’s curriculum will place a heavy emphasis on leadership, people management and strategy and finance. It will also be heavily infused with business know-how from Jack Welch, who will present students with weekly online video updates on breaking business news and topics.
Readers, are you planning on signing up for classes at the Jack Welch Management Institute? Do you think the school will be a success?
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on October 21
The Graduate Management Admission Council, owners of the GMAT, seem to have found a new ambassador for the brand. And he’s dressed as a hotdog.
The GMAT test’s current ad campaign plays on the bad economy to get grads to consider business school. On the home page, videos of three different characters in dead-end jobs implore you to “take the GMAT, now,” or else languish in career limbo working as a waiter, a “poop scooper,” or, yes, a giant hotdog.
There is something poignant about the well-spoken man in the sharp glasses and hotdog costume describing himself as the “world’s most over-educated wiener.” And it might tug at your heartstrings to see him offering “big, succulent wieners” to passersby on the street. “Instead of humiliating yourself in a job you’re overqualified for, why not take the GMAT and think about going to b-school?” he asks, before earnestly telling the camera, “This is the one time listening to a wiener can actually pay off.”
But though these spots will probably hit close to home for many recent college grads, it might be too soon to be taking life advice from sausages. And it’s unclear how credible the poop scooper is when she says that “earning an MBA is like putting your undergraduate degree on steroids,” then, overwhelmed by the smell, “What are these animals eating?” There are B-schoolers in the unemployment lines like everyone else, and critics argue that the only thing an MBA will put on steroids is student debt.
Then again, in a country that believes in education, these kinds of gentle scare tactics might be just the ticket. And GMAC probably has good reason to be shelling out for ads. The GRE has been mounting a threat to the GMAT’s B-school monopoly. Plus, though GMAT test taking is at record-levels now, this recession’s MBA boom shows some signs of flattening out and possibly subsiding over the next few years. Whether or not that happens depends on whether the B-school applicants of the future want to leave their jobs for two years–or if they have jobs to leave. A talking wiener might strike just the right note for a jobless recovery.
Posted by: Alison Damast on October 21
Students with a keen interest in the social and environmental savvy of business schools should keep an eye on the Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey, a biannual “green” alternative ranking of business schools released Oct. 21. Unlike other business school rankings like the ones conducted by BusinessWeek and other outlets, this survey takes a close look at how MBA programs weave social and environmental topics into their core classes, electives and academic research. The data taken is from the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years.
The number one-ranked school this year is York University’s Schulich School of Business in Toronto, the first Canadian school to top the list in the survey’s 10-year history. Closely following on the heels of Schulich are the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, the Yale School of Management, the Stanford Graduate School of Business (the number one school in the 2007 ranking) and Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. For the full list of the top 20-ranked schools, click here.
Schulich stood out as the top school because of what the Aspen Institute called the “extraordinary number of courses” available to students with environmental and social content, as well as the large number of relevant academic articles published by the school’s faculty.
Dezsö J. Horváth, dean of the Schulich School of Business, said he was pleased that the school was being recognized for its years of work in this area. The school’s emphasis on sustainability was more important than ever given the “watershed events of the past year,” he says.
"Schulich began laying the groundwork for research and teaching in the areas of business ethics and sustainability back in the early 1990s when few other business schools were doing so," Horváth says. "Today’s number one ranking is recognition of close to two decades of research, innovation and curriculum development at our School."
This year’s ranking, which surveyed 149 business schools from 24 countries, had plenty of good news for business-school students with a green leaning. According to the ranking, the percentage of business schools that require students to take an elective course focused on “business and society” issues continued to increase, jumping from 63% in 2007 to 69% in 2009. And of the schools surveyed, more are offering electives that feature social, environmental and ethical content. Back in 2005, schools offered only 12 courses that met these criteria, a number that jumped to 19 in 2009.
This is an encouraging trend, one that is indicative of just how important schools are taking their responsibility to prepare students for the social and ethical complexities of modern day business, says Rich Leimsider, director of the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education.
"In these challenging economic times, the general public, not just scholars, are questioning whether the established models of business are broken," Leimsider says. "Beyond Grey Pinstripes schools are thoughtfully pursuing new approaches. They are preparing students who take a more holistic view of business success, one that measures financial results as well as social and environmental impacts."
Despite the progress being made, not all of the survey’s findings were cause for optimism. Of the schools surveyed, the percentage requiring student to take a core course in social and environmental change remains low, at 30%.
For Adam Aston's take on the ranking, check out his post on the Green Business blog.
Readers, what do you think? Should more schools require students to take these sort of classes as part of the core curriculum?
