Quotable Quotes: Rethinking the MBA

“Increasingly, we believe, business schools are at a crossroads and will have to take a hard look at their value propositions. This was true before the economic crisis, but is even truer in its aftermath. The world has changed, and with it the security that used to come almost automatically with an MBA degree. […] High-paying jobs are no longer guaranteed to graduates, and the opportunity costs of two years of training—especially for those who still hold jobs and are not looking to change fields—loom ever larger. To remain relevant, business schools will have to rethink many of their most cherished assumptions.”

From the introduction to the new book Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads, by Harvard Business School professors Srikant M. Datar and David A. Garvin and research associate Patrick G. Cullen, as quoted on May 3, 2010, in HBS Working Knowledge.

NYU Stern Launches Risk Rankings of Financial Institutions

An extensive research effort focused on the 2008 financial crisis has resulted in the creation of the NYU Stern Systemic Risk Rankings, a weekly rating of levels of risk that the largest US financial institutions bring to the financial system, by the New York University Stern School of Business. Drawing on stock quotations and other market data, the new rankings are designed as an early warning system to identify threats to the overall health of the financial system.

Darden Reports on Kindle Experiment

After experimenting with the Kindle as a learning tool, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia has found that most of its students prefer not to use the electronic reading devices in the classroom. The Kindle DX was given to a randomly selected group of 62 first-year students as an alternative to traditional paper-based business cases, articles, and textbooks. While some students used the Kindle extensively, most found that the electronic reading devices were not as nimble as paper alternatives for accessing information. Michael Koenig, Darden’s director of MBA operations, said that the Kindle trial was useful as a means to help assess “the complex challenges of digital content distribution for all future Darden students.”