Candidate Info: why study overseas (in NZ)

The question often arises about what criteria you should use to select the "right" MBA programme. We recently conducted a survey of why students choose to study overseas and specifically choose to come to New Zealand and attend the Otago MBA. Respondents' answers follow familiar themes: affordability; geography/outdoors; desire to live and work in NZ; encouragement of international students; joy of travel, adventure, living abroad, pushing boundaries; stable economy with good job opportunities; Dunedin (e.g., beaches, peaceful, university city); global perspective with a focus on Asia/Pacific; and westernized, English speaking country. Here are sample responses:

• Want a global perspective.
• NZ is westernized and embracing of immigrant cultures, unlike the USA where after eight years there's no renewal of the visa. I would like to retire in NZ!
• I like travelling and being abroad.
• USA is cost prohibitive; New Zealand is more cost effective.
• The focus is on Asia/Pacific; this region is booming; growing economically; I want to be part of it.
• I prefer a one year MBA for economic reasons.
• NZ is encouraging for international students: it is a good destination.
• NZ is an English speaking country.
• NZ is a unique environment; mix of cultures; with outdoor activities and beautiful scenery.
• I want to try something new and push my boundaries.
• [Otago] is a renowned University; number one in NZ; with a flexible curriculum (phase two); and I would not be just a number out of 400 in a class.
• I'm a nature loving guy; travel a lot to the mountains. NZ is very beautiful.
• NZ has a stable economy and has good job opportunities.
• Dunedin: hills, beaches, peaceful and a university city. I can get total concentration on my studies.
• I looked at a number of Universities (e.g., Copenhagen), but didn't have enough funds. NZ caught my eye.
• The people are a joy to work with. NZ will help me to understand how people think.

So, the questions becomes: What are you looking for in an MBA experience? And, are you

the kind of person who would benefit from studying in New Zealand? 

Cheers,

David

Term One: Lecturer's Meeting

All Students Passed Term 1 Courses

Our Otago MBA team met on Friday for the end-of-term lecturer meeting to review students' performance and formally accept final grades: all of our full- and part-time students successfully completed their term one courses!

We use these meetings to discuss insights gained from the experience to improve our programme, year over year, and identify ways we can further support our students as they enter term two.  Our Term One lecturers and MBA management team shared the following insights:

• We have a very capable group of full- and part-time students: they performed well.

• Our MBA38 full-time students were anxious starting the year and may not have anticipated the rigor of our programme: the need to study every day.

• Time management represented a continual challenge through the term.

• A few international students struggled with the challenge of thinking in their language and writing in English, an issue we are addressing.

• Our students focused excessively on grades (over the quality of their reasoning) early on. 

• Our support with writing workshops (focused on conceptual reasoning) appears to have helped with our students' study (reading) habits and performance on assessments.

• Our full-time students are very good group: cohesive and supportive within and across syndicates.

• The full-timers have proactively (doggedly) solved challenges affecting their performance. They have taken full advantage of the out-of-class access to our lecturers.

• All of our students are gaining confidence and should perform well going forward.  They are experiencing the normal transformative (growth) process of becoming polished professionals. 

Congratulations on a great start to the year!

David

Term Two: a preview

Term Two Preview

Term two of our (2014) MBA 38 programme begins on 9 June, with our students taking Accounting, Marketing and Investment & Global Finance. Our lecturers this term are Daniel Hellyer (Accounting), Dr. Sergio Biggemann (Marketing) and Anindya Sen (Finance).  As a brief introduction, Daniel is an Associate Director at Deloitte Consulting with extensive practical experiences to share with our students; Sergio is from Bolivia with more than fifteen years of teaching (using a case-based pedagogy) and extensive international experience; and Anindya is our new MBA management team member (last) from IIMB in India, with three years experience teaching stats and finance in our MBA programme.  Anindya is a perennial favorite lecturer owing to his energetic personality; he has designed a balanced course emphasizing corporate finance and investments (including derivatives).

Students will complete term two with a professional understanding of how

assess the financial and operating performance of a corporation

owing to their acct and finance courses.

We look forward to an outstanding term two. Our students will continue to build their quantitative skills with a practical emphasis, as well as analyze real world data (cases) using the professional marketing literature--another opportunity for students to refine their conceptual reasoning abilities. Students will also enjoy the diversity and multicultural experiences of our lecturers from India, Bolivia and New Zealand. 

In terms of logistics, Accounting will meet on Monday and Thursday morning (9:30 to 11:30); Marketing happens on Monday and Wednesday afternoons (2:00 to 4:00); and Finance classes meet on Tuesday and Thursdays (2:00 to 4:00); with tangential professional development workshops mixed in; and Fridays reserved for non-contact hours (e.g., readings, class prep, syndicate work and written assignments). Final exams occur on 28 & 29 July, marking the end of the term.

As a side note, the Otago MBA management team will soon begin to work with our students

to identify "Live Case" clients, a syndicate level analysis of a real client conducted over

about twelve weeks - and delivered on the last day of our 2014 programme. 

The challenges our students face will continue to grow, as will their readiness and 

confidence to face these challenges. This growth is fundamental to the

transformational experience of our MBA programme.

Express your interest now to join next year's MBA class.

Cheers, David

Otago MBA: Now accepting applications for April 2015

Considering an MBA?

An investment in an MBA degree may be one of the most important, career-changing investments you can make in yourself; and make no mistake, the $40+ grand in tuition and time away from a income generating job is an investment in you, with a return on investment (ROI) calculated over the remaining years of your employment (e.g., better jobs, more mobility, faster promotions, greater responsibility, access to executive-level positions, higher salaries and payback on the initial investment in just a couple of years).

Otago MBA is now accepting applications for April 2015

The question is: "Are you worth the investment?!"  April 2015 may seem like a long way off, but our market for incoming MBA candidates will peak over the next five months and the nucleus of our MBA 39 class will be in place before the end of 2014.  The choice of MBA programmes can seem bewildering and risky; thousands of programmes exist; and many candidates rely on rankings as the predominant criteria for evaluating their options.

Your reliance on rankings (i.e., a suspect summary statistics of programme quality) equates to

us (the Otago MBA management team) distilling your quality as an MBA candidate

to a GMAT score, something we do not do.*

Everything you need to know

This blog is intended to allow you to get to know us, to peek inside our programme, meet our people and gain an understanding of the experience (value) we offer.  I encourage you to click on the links below to gain insights into the Otago MBA and make an informed decision about whether a good fit exists between your needs and our programme.

Programme Design: Focus on the individual and Academic Integrity. 

Candidate Selection / One & Two: experienced, mature, self-motivated, etc.

Why Candidates Choose Us: New Zealand experience or residence. 

Reliance on GMAT Scores: a suspect summary statistic.

Diploma vs. Full-time MBA: two options.

Conceptual Reasoning: Business Model, Concept, Reading & Writing, In the Classroom.

Placement: You're kidding!, A better way.

The Classroom: Emphasis on thinking, Active Learning, Power of Introverts.

Students: Cultural diversity.

Our Faculty Team: Denis Kobzev, Paul Hansen, Julia Richardson, Beth Rose, Anindya Sen.

Our Students: Ryf Quail, Krister Häll, Silvia Scherer, Melissa Barry.

 Mentored Consulting Experience: One, Two, Three, Four / Congratulations James!

Graduate Profile: what should our graduates look like?

Otago MBA Ranking: QS Global 200.

Life in New Zealand: Dunedin, Adventure, Coffee, Top Tourist Destination.

Miscellaneous:  Public Speaking, Doing Business in India. 

Register your interest in our Otago MBA programme!

Click here

*We do request a GMAT score, but we're far more interested in the complete candidate profile, ...and we provide you with our most recent QS Global 200 ranking (above).

Academic Integrity: the Otago MBA

As you may know by now, I'm the academic adviser for Executive Programmes with the dedicated responsible for maintaining the academic integrity of the MBA, as well as mentoring students through their Live Case and BUSI 540 professional consulting engagements. 

I was recently asked to document the steps we take to "maintain the academic integrity" of our MBA programme and thought it would be useful to share this information here.  All of the following initiatives fall under the umbrella concept of Quality of Learning as specified by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and Equis accrediting institutions. 

We devote great attention to designing our courses and the overall MBA programme, including:

• working from a Graduate Student Profile linked to our coursework and mentored experiences

• emphasizing consistent themes across courses: e.g., educating the whole person with specific focus on character and the quality of students' conceptual reasoning abilities

• maintaining small and active classrooms, as well as encouraging the involvement of all students in discussions

• balancing student workloads across courses to assure the doability of assignments / assessments

• selecting students with sufficient experience to contribute to the classroom experience; emphasizing diversity among students; and not reducing students to a summary statistic (GMAT score of questionable validity.

• selecting lecturers (from around the world) with both scholarly grounding and practical experience in their area of expertise: see Denis Kobzev, Paul Hansen, Julia Richardson and Beth Rose

• monitoring students' performance in our classes on a near weekly basis: to assure their success (e.g., providing mentoring help if needed) in each course

• adhering to the scholarly literature on assessment and student feedback

• conducting beginning and end-of-term reviews of each course: and using these reviews to improve the quality of our programme from year to year

• offering professional development workshops tangential to core courses; for instance to building networking and presentation skills

• and, benchmarking our courses (e.g., our strategy course against the London School of Business), and evaluate how well we stack up.  Very well, thank you!  Recent reports from our students' participation in the "Doing Business in India" and International Exchange at Duke MBA affirm the quality / rigor of our Otago MBA core courses.

And we provide this high quality education in New Zealand, an environment of 

scenic beauty, adventure and great coffees

The Power of Introverts

Everyone Contributes Valuable Insights!

In a prior post, I emphasized the importance of active learning and the collaborative discovery of
knowledge through shared inquiry in our classes.   Some of our students may remain reflective by nature; others may initially feel hesitant to speak in class; still others may face the challenge of thinking in one
language (e.g., Chinese) before translating thoughts into English; and differences in
culture may compel others to remain respectfully quiet.

I have included the "Power of Introverts" Ted Talk to embolden our more reflective students
and encourage more vocal students to remain culturally sensitive, respect everyone's
right to participate and strive for an inclusive learning experience.

Thank you,

David

Day One: The start of MBA 38

MBA 38 - 2014 MBA Programme 

The start of MBA 38, our thirty-eighth year as an MBA programme, is rapidly approaching with orientation on Friday the 4th and classes beginning on Monday.  We have a total of 60 students across our programmes, some full-time and part-time, some just beginning their MBA and others striving to finish their capstone 540 business consulting engagement. We also unofficially have twelve nationalities represented among our students, including Australia, China (w/Hong Kong), India, Indonesia, Kiwi (Maori & Pakeha), Vietnam, South Africa, Finland, Pakistan, England and Scotland.  Their backgrounds range from IT consulting and project management, to finance/accounting, banking, healthcare, construction, public service, media/marketing, hospitality, HR consulting and film production. Plus, we have one professional snowboarder in this year's class, an individual striving to make the transition to the business side of action sports.

Our core MBA programme is designed as four terms of three courses each lasting eight weeks, with students kicking off the year in Organizational Leadership, taught by Professor Julia Richardson from York University in Canada, a perennial top lecturer in our programme; as well as Economics and Statistics & Decision Tools taught by our own standout lecturers Paul Hansen and Elizabeth (Beth) Rose, respectively.  It's an exciting time, with the Otago MBA management team striving to get everyone registered, conduct final checks on course designs, and help our students adapt to their new home.

We welcome our new students to the programme and look forward to

continuing to work with returning students.

Cheers,

David

Our Otago MBA Graduates

We begin the Otago MBA by selecting the right candidates and then we strive to educate the whole person, with emphasis given to the student's reasoning abilities and character.  The question remains: "What should a graduate of our MBA programme look like?"  We adhere to a well-designed Assurance of Learning (AoL) programme that ties student assessments (course-by-course) to specific learning objects and cumulatively aligns with the following graduate student profile.  

As a professional, we expect our students to demonstrate maturity, experience and self-motivation. They should possess clearly articulated career ambitions; embrace “scary” challenges as growth opportunities; work well independently or confidently alongside seasoned professionals; as well as deftly network with business colleagues (e.g., through social media).

As a scholar, our graduates should demonstrate the ability to think conceptually within relevant business disciplines (e.g., economics, finance, marketing, human capital, operational excellence or international business), as well as within practical professional literatures (e.g., sustainability, leadership, and ethics).  They should possess the ability to capture complex business problems in a credible business frame; express an independent voice in business discussions; and make a genuine intellectual contribution to strategic decisions.

As an effective communicator, our graduates should possess the ability to construct well-crafted arguments in professional presentations; express him or herself efficiently and fluently in written documents; confidently express independent opinions with business colleagues; identify appropriate / relevant business analysis; translate those analyses into quantitative methods; and confidently support arguments with accurate, rigorous and reliable data.

As a leader, our graduates should demonstrate character (e.g., remain ethical and honest); slow the world down to think critically, thoughtfully and reflectively; remain respectful of individual and cultural differences; positively impact others (i.e., adhere to a Hippocratic Oath: Above all, do no harm); demonstrate refined interpersonal skills (e.g., manage relationships); overcome difficulties and work without trauma; accept prediction errors as learning opportunities; and remain coachable: listen and accept advice/guidance.

We emphasize consistent themes across our core programme with the intention of

instilling these skills and qualities in our students: a transformation occurs

 as they near graduation.

Cheers,

David

Our Classroom: the Power of Introverts

Everyone Contributes Valuable Insights!

In a prior post, I emphasized the importance of active learning and the collaborative discovery of
knowledge through shared inquiry in our classes.   Some of our students may remain reflective by nature; others may initially feel hesitant to speak in class; still others may face the challenge of thinking in one
language (e.g., Chinese) before translating thoughts into English; and differences in
culture may compel others to remain respectfully quiet.

I have included the "Power of Introverts" Ted Talk to embolden our more reflective students
and encourage more vocal students to remain culturally sensitive, respect everyone's
right to participate and strive for an inclusive learning experience.

Thank you,

David