MBA Programs move into Big Data realm

[Andy Nguyen]

An interesting article on NYTimes about the changing landscape of business schools where it's increasingly important to teach "skills like A/B testing, rapid prototyping and data-driven decision making, the bread and butter of Silicon Valley."

According to the article, the study body at MBA programs is changing as well. At Harvard Business School, "a third or more of the 900 students there have experience as programmers, and far more of them have undergraduate degrees in the so-called STEM disciplines — science, technology, engineering or mathematics".

How these changes at the top M.B.A programs will trickle down to science, business department across the country remain to be seen.

“But the major business issue, especially for entrepreneurs, is often that problems are not known, need to be discovered or defined in a new way,” Mr. Pass said. “You need a more integrated, broader view of things.”

The M.B.A. program, he said, is trying to nurture people with those wider horizons, technical know-how and quick business reflexes — “a new pivot on graduate education,” as he put it.

Now, this is the kind of training I may pay big bucks for.

 

[Tom Sun]

An interesting article on NYTimes about the changing landscape of business schools where it's increasingly important to teach "skills like A/B testing, rapid prototyping and data-driven decision making, the bread and butter of Silicon Valley."

According to the article, the study body at MBA programs is changing as well. At Harvard Business School, "a third or more of the 900 students there have experience as programmers, and far more of them have undergraduate degrees in the so-called STEM disciplines — science, technology, engineering or mathematics".

How these changes at the top M.B.A programs will trickle down to science, business department across the country remain to be seen.

“But the major business issue, especially for entrepreneurs, is often that problems are not known, need to be discovered or defined in a new way,” Mr. Pass said. “You need a more integrated, broader view of things.”

The M.B.A. program, he said, is trying to nurture people with those wider horizons, technical know-how and quick business reflexes — “a new pivot on graduate education,” as he put it.

Now, this is the kind of training I may pay big bucks for.

In all honesty, I find MBA becoming an increasingly obsolete program, especially for the sky-high and ever increasing tuition. Most of prestigious MBA graduates told me the biggest return you get from an MBA is the network, not the knowledge. The curriculum is rudimentary, especially if you come from a more technical or quantitative background. Network can be cultivated conscientiously without paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to read and discuss business cases. A masters in more technically oriented disciplines, such as Computer Science, Data Science, or Quantitative Finance has more value from my perspective.