Sorting out the MBAs

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Peter French, Sep 2, 2002.

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  1. Peter French

    Peter French member

    Won't It Be Embarrassing for the Graduates of Elite MBA Programs Who Paid Over $100,000 in Tuition and Flunked the CMBA Examination?

    "Controversy awaits MBA certification exam," by Del Jones, Money, August 26, 2002 --- http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2002-08-26-cmba_x.htm

    A certification exam for MBAs will be launched in April in an attempt to figure out who among the 112,000 graduates each year has learned the core subjects of a master's degree in business administration.

    The CMBA — certified MBA — will be announced Sept. 3 by the International Certification Institute (ICI) and Thomson, a company with $7.2 billion in 2001 revenue and a giant in the growing industry of certification exams and testing administered by computer.

    It's certain to stir controversy because it's a potential threat to the nation's top-tier business schools, whose graduates have long been able to demand fatter salaries than those from other schools. Test-takers will know where they rank against all test-takers, as the CMBA will provide an instrument to compare students from the 900 universities offering an MBA.

    The $450 exam is being compared to a bar exam for law students. The five-hour exam will have 300 questions covering finance and accounting, economics, operations and marketing and management. Unlike the bar, no regulatory body will require the CMBA, which means the exam's success will rely on employers expecting it of applicants or students deciding it will give them an edge in a job hunt.

    Companies spend $8.5 billion a year in salaries for new MBA hires and often "get burned," says Peter Navarro, a business professor at the University of California at Irvine.

    Navarro has seen companies pass over the top Cal-Irvine MBA graduate to take last-place students from Stanford. "The top 20 schools won't want this, because they have a brand-name monopoly," Navarro says.

    "There is no debate that there are incompetent MBAs," says Louis Lataif, dean of Boston University's highly ranked management school. But top schools can cherry-pick applicants already headed for success. Companies recruit at those schools because "the sorting has been done for them by the admissions committee," he says.

    The exam comes at a time when the MBA degree is under attack. Management scholar Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford combed through 40 years of research and concluded that those who get an MBA make no more money nor do they advance faster in their careers than executives who don't get the degree.

    Pfeffer calls the CMBA an interesting idea if the scores wind up predicting success. But U.S. companies have never cared much about tests and grades, he says.

    The market is huge. There are 2.5 million people with MBAs, and MBAs account for 25% of all graduate degrees.


    originally contributed to an acounting discussion board by
    Professor Bob Jensen, Trinity University

    P J French
    MAcc MEd CMA
    Melbourne, Australia
    [email protected]
    www.pjfrench.homestead.com
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 2, 2002
  2. believer

    believer New Member

  3. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

  4. Thanks, Peter. (Though probably not necessary to quote the entire text!)

    There are already several other threads about this on the board:This thread from the Heriot Watt EBS Watercooler is also of interest:
     
  5. Peter French

    Peter French member

    My apologies ... remove this thread?

    My apologies ...

    I don't have the time to anywhere near read every thread, as I have a high teaching load [31 hours] and am in the final stages of 'you-know-what' and will be defending in December. However as it will make me overqualified [I have read that thread] I won't be using it.

    Maybe Chip could remove this most unnecessary post...

    Peter French
    MEd MAcc [as I will remain]
     
  6. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Ensuring quality in academia. Isn’t that what the regional creditors are for?

    Having some sort of a post-graduate test, whether it be for MBAs or any other major, would shake up the entire academic world, especially if it could realistically quantify what a student has learned after completing his course-of-discipline.

    I wonder if that would be something that would be universally considered? Naw, to many political impediments are in the way because too many nests would be shaken loose.

    We're safe. ;)
     
  7. Vinipink

    Vinipink Accounting Monster

    Well for me will be the CPA, it cover about the same areas, Is this will be limited to the RA only?
     
  8. Here's the CMBA web site: Certified MBA.

    I would expect this effort to go nowhere because I don't think that International Certification Institute (Greensboro, NC) has sufficient recognition (let alone authority) for the CMBA exam to become a widely accepted standard.
     
  9. Professor Kennedy

    Professor Kennedy New Member

    Here we go again!

    ;) Looks plausible but I have concerns. Thomson is a business and this is a business opportunity. If it works - evidcenced by thousands of participants and the commensurate revenues - it will be imitated, much like the current proliferation of competing 'accrediting agencies' (in reality marketing agencies for their members' products).

    Also, the examining vehicle, primarily Thomson Inc., also sells MBA level materials that might help students get through their tests. Kerching! Kerching! It also is associated with associate institutions providing 'MBA' programmes leading to 'degrees', available at a price. Kerching, Kerching!

    If the 'test' is the real evidence of MBA competence, why study for the MBA? Much better to study to pass the 'Test'. But who tests the 'test'? And the imitation 'tests'?

    Well, no doubt the die is cast (as Caesar once said) and we will go through yet another charade feeding the already frenzied neurosis about the value of the degrees reputable institutions deliver to those who deserve to pass and withhold from those who don't. It might be simpler, but will never happen, that those programmes with zero, or near zero, failure rates were shut down.
    :)
     
  10. Gus Sainz

    Gus Sainz New Member

    The answer to question number 16 in their CMBA Frequently Asked Questions will probably be sufficient to doom this initiative to failure.


    • 16. Do I need to be enrolled in or have graduated from an “accredited” MBA program to take the CMBA exam?
      No; any degree-granting MBA program is acceptable.

    John Davy, if you are reading this, here’s your chance to redeem yourself and put that degree from the Ashland School of Business at Denver State University to good use. :rolleyes:
     
  11. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member

    Re: My apologies ... remove this thread?


    Is this 31 hours per week? You would be 3 people where I went to school. 5 people if you have administrative duties.
     
  12. tcnixon

    tcnixon Active Member

    Interesting. This could be one way for all those folks out there that got unaccredited MBAs to prove that they actually know and were taught what they say they know and were taught.

    Hmmm...likely the end of civilization (or at least civility) as we now know it.


    Tom Nixon
     
  13. John Bear

    John Bear Senior Member

    If the CMBA does catch on, then most MBA programs will begin teaching to the exam, just as law schools must do for the bar exam.

    One simple example of how murky this can get: knowledge of calculus is essential in some MBA programs, useful in others, and irrelevant in others. Many of each. So whichever way the CMBA people swing with regard to testing for calculus skill, the programs that swing the other way will need to rethink what they do.

    John Bear, delighted that Professor Kennedy of
    Heriot-Watt's splendid MBA program, is reading
    and responding in this forum
     
  14. Peter French

    Peter French member

    Re: Re: My apologies ... remove this thread?

    Per week - over 5 days. Separate staff for adminstration but still have to do lecture and assessment preparation and correction - law and accounting.

    It is called 'working for a living' :)
     
  15. Dennis Ruhl

    Dennis Ruhl member


    You need a union. A lot of our professors teach 3 classes of 3 hours. Is this why Australian programs are cheap?
     
  16. shabs

    shabs New Member

     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 3, 2002
  17. telfax

    telfax New Member

    Just ignore the whole stupid thing!

    This will only work (and it shouldn't!) if folks go along with it. People should just walk past it - complete and utter waste of time and if employers get 'struck' by all this 'clap trap' - more fool them!

    If we want to test people more so beyond the MBA degree there are far better indicators than this total nonsense!

    There are more things in heaven and earth
    Than are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio!

    (Shakespeare's Hamlet)


    'telfax'
     
  18. Peter French

    Peter French member

    My choice

    I am 58 and choose not to be tenured but a freelance contractor. The union set the rate at which I get paid and also that I have a 10 hour limit per week at any one institution - so I work at 3+. I get more than an academic's salary and egt 4 months a year completely free to do other things.
     
  19. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Re: My choice

    I could handle that kind of schedule.

    I have done a little bit of teaching and have found it to be challenging and exhausting.
     

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