Tuesday 17 December 2013

Placement? You're kidding, right?

Central Otago
Central Otago
We do not “place” students, a perversion of any graduate programme
designed to train global business leaders.

We do not place our students and offer no excuses or apologies.  If the Otago MBA management team and our lecturers do our jobs well and prepare our students to compete effectively at the highest levels of business, then why do they need to be placed?  We're talking about MBA graduates, presumably some of the most talented business people on the planet!  Why shouldn't we afford them the opportunity to demonstrate their readiness and earn a position with an employer well-aligned with his or her career ambitions. Placement?  It's passive.


A recent Poets and Quants article describes the solution for improving MBA student
satisfaction as, "...increasing students' personal accountability throughout
the career management process."

Enough of the rant: we believe we have a better solution: our BUSI 540 professional consulting experience. The 540 is the highlight of the Otago MBA programme, an opportunity for our students to perform on a big stage, with a potentially high-profile client and demonstrate the ability to tackle a complex business challenge using knowledge and skills acquired in our core courses.  It is framed as a professional and mentored consulting engagement aligned with the student’s career ambition, to help him or her gain access to the right industry, right company and right professional network.  

Sounds scary right?   It's not.  Our students continually make us (the Otago MBA programme) look good through their accomplishments with major corporate and nonprofit partners.   

We are extremely proud of our students and their ability
to shine when given the spotlight.

             Note: In a later post, I'll explain the well-honed process we use to help our students 
             complete the 540 with minimal wasted effort, interact with the client as an equal and 
             express an independent voice in interactions.

             The evidence suggests we outperform many professional consulting houses.  Why?  
             Our students are good; they have us in their back pocket; and we adhere to credible
             academic frames to structure problems and design analyses to deliver solutions.  If we
             do our job well, the client responds, "That's so simple."

David

No comments:

Post a Comment