Certified Master Of Business Administration

I will go against the majority, but I like the CMBA idea. I believe it is a tool that, properly managed, can better identify good universities as opposed to known universities.

Let's say that Harvard, with grade inflation and all, is forming unprepared students. While some online university, with way less credibility around the employers, only approves students that know all subjects in great depth. The exam will start to show that students learn more at this online university than at Harvard. I believe the CMBA is a way to closer the gap between people's perceptions of regular and on-line universities.

It also allows a student to show his knowledge, in spite of what school he did go to. If I get a great result on the CMBA, I am being compared with the entire country/world, and this might strenght my employability, even if I come from an average university.

I think it should be something compulsory and made by the goverment, so every manager out there would have to learn at least the fundamentals to pass it and we would have less unprepared people fooling around in the market. Being from a private institution, and sooo expensive, I am not sure if it has the potential to catch on.

Finally, I don't believe the content is much of an issue. Of all the subjects covered in the text, the only one that is not important for any MBA to know, in my opinion, is Operations, that it does not apply itself so well in some industries. Asides from that, I don't think MBAs should get this title without knowing Finance, Marketing, Organizational Behavior and the others.

The main problem might be that schools emphasize different topics in their subject teaching, but still marketing can't get away too much from the contents of Kotler's book, for instance, and all these fundamentals have a basic framework that is taught practically anywhere (Acc and Fin might not ask about legislation, however, or european MBA courses will have a disadvantage).

There is my opinion. I don't know if this exam will get any importance, but I think it is a nice tool. Thank you all for the attention.

 

HW EBS MBA

Rich,

thanks for the info, I requested some more on the program and you are correct.

Here is a link to someone who has completed the program,

http://morrigg.tripod.com/ebs.html


From the material that I have received so far it seems fairly straight forward. And not only is the price not bad, but depending on your level of knowledge and the time invested to pass, one may come out better off if time is an issue.

Also it would seem that you could take each exam as a stand alone affair and receive graduate credit for the topic.

Thanks again.


regarding the CMBA:

The certified MBA is still a bad idea and will not identify "good universities as opposed to known universities." I say this because any standard exam becomes a target for enterprising individuals to establish courses that prep you for the standardized exam. Just look at Microsoft, CompTIA, PMP, GMAT, etc.... and you will find someone who is guaranteeing you to pass if you take their course. While this effort may be good for additional money making ventures it does not establish a standard level of competence merely a standard level of passing another test. Considering the many tests that most of us have crammed for, passed, and then flushed the knowledge, I would question if another one is really useful. More importantly, until someone requires me to take this test I won't since there is no established industry value, nor peer review to indicate its worthiness.

 

FAQ 1: The CMBA is the only universal exam that measures an MBA student or graduate’s grasp of the fundamentals expected of an MBA.

Okay, who decided what was expected from an MBA?

I got my MBA from Cal State - hayward (AACSB) whose program was significantly different from UC - Berkeley (Haas - Also AACSB) becuase I was more interested in the practical managem,ent side than theory which Haas emphasized.

As before by others, this is a marketing ploy to convince the gullable to part with their money.

 

There is a subset of professionals (especially in the IT industry) to whom certifications have become important. The CMBA is one company's idea on how to expand the market for certifications. I wish I had thought of it.

There are some crazier attempts to expand the certification mania to other fields -- such as the Certified Bioinformatics Specialist and the Certified Chemoinformatics Specialist.

 

Certified MBA?

No need. Schools either have accreditation or don't. Even accredited ones have levels. AACSB is the highest... What would be the point in a certified MBA? Nope, it is a money maker for an organization (and they ain't makin' any money off of it). I'd say forget it. An MBA program is challenging enough.

 

Re: HW EBS MBA

That is true. Maybe there are ways to overcome that, though. Like requiring different porfessors of top universities to agre on the curriculum or to develop different questions each year.
I think it can be done. Maybe it is not perfect right now (I see no point in pass/no pass, it should give scores like the GMAT, imo), but might be improved in the future.

 

Re: There oughta be a LAW!

Nice word play, but I believe you understood my point.

Companies have no way to know how much someone learned at the MBA asides from applying a test themselves. Without the government , te market for this kind of test is free, but people do not care for it.

If a compulsory test is developed, like the BAR, people will need to learn business to pass it, and not just party for 2 years, which happesn at many MBAs, even top ones.
Without it, companies will be still trying to hire by soft skills and past experience.

In my company, for instance, we use group dynamics, interviews,
psychological tests and even case studies to hire. The only method that covers part of an MBA curriculum are the case studies, and a couple cases usually covers very little of its content.

All these methods are efficient and dictade by the market, right? So here comes my point. Since most schools sucks, in the meaning that over half the MBAs I interview barely understand product life cycles and can't do a net present value analysis, the market has no way to know which students have value. If MBAs are not learning anything, why hire them? Why not hire highschool students that show the traits we look for in the tests, younger and with more time to work for the company?

What the market does? They try to avoid non RA schools. But most RA schools graduates suck. So they try to avoid distance learning (sad, but true) and relatively unknown schools. But most MBAs out of the schools left also suck. Some companies, then, hire only from the top 5 or 10 schools, which would be nice but, unfortunately, many students in those schools suck.

The downside is that, while you might be a great business student at a DL school, you will never be a McKinsey consultant, for instance, or get agood job in IB, since teh perception is there are more students "sucking" at your school then, they think, at Harvard.

With a compulsory exam, made either by the governemnt or top recruiting firms (banks, consulting), good DL students would get a chance to get at least to the interview, while some graduates of top schools would not waste anybody's time. As it is right now, a DL resume is tossed into the garbage in the screening process of many companies.

 

I think the proof of your MBA's worth will be the value you bring to your company or the contribution you make by starting your own business.

The CMBA does not seem similiar to the CPA or other certification because those other certifications are geared towards a specific profession. You might as well get a CFA, CPA or other certification that will prepare you for a specific job.

 

Re: Re: There oughta be a LAW!

First of all the BAR exam is different for each state.

Second there are already tests that do what you want, the CPA and the CFP tests and the like.

 

Re: Re: Re: There oughta be a LAW!

True. However, I believe the CMBA is geared towards people trying to get general management positions. I also read about other test like it, called CBM (for business management). I don't now if it is any popular.

I believe the two exams you mentioned are just for finance planners and accountants, respectively, so it is not the same thing.

About the BAR, it is still dictated by state governments (I don't now if it is how it's called at US, the politicians who run the state?). But the law changes from state to state, so the BAR must change too. Business principles are relatively similar all over the world, and even more in a specific country, like USA.

I mean, asides from the price, I can see what's so wrong with teh test. If one knows about business, will just spend a couple hours passing it and getting its curriculum in a better position than people who spent two years doing MBAs just for the trip.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: There oughta be a LAW!

First of all most of the states (all but Louisiana) base their law on English Common Law (Lousiana is based on French law). And it is fairly uniform, while business genrally works on the Uniform Business Code (a set of laws) modified by each state.

Next how does an engineer with an MBA working in Texas for Shell doing planning relate to a marketing person working on an internet start-up in California, versus a stockbroker selling financial planning in New York?

IMO there is more diveristy in business and what an MBA needs to know than what is needed to pass the verious state bar exams (which are organized by the various state bar associations, not the state govenrment I beleive.

Basically you would neeed to have something simialr to the professional engineer exams which are broken up by disciplene where each disciplene has its own specific test. Now, that maybe what this whole thing is heading for, but I just think that the entire CMBA is just some group trying to make a buck selling a certification, because they can.

 

Re: Re: Re: BAin4hours? One can dream....

The to RA undergrad schools I went to didn't have that as a requirement. I had to take two English classes, but I took one on Shakespeare and another on African American Liturature. One of the schools was tier 4 (its now tier 2), the second school was a top 25. They had an english comp class, but you didn't HAVE to take it.

Sorry to reply so late, I totally forgot about this thread.


Jon

 

It looks like Webster University is on board. Link

Anyone know of any other schools that are supporting this certification?

Tony

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: There oughta be a LAW!

The way I see it, this kind of test would be not to evaluate how much they know about their area/jobs, but instead how much they learned from the MBA. Like the marketing person working in California. Supposes he (or she) goes to Wharton, and spend 2 years doing its MBA. The Wharton MBA will be an important part of its resume, and prospective emplyers will assume he knows at least the basics of Finance, Organizational Behavior, Accounting and others pretty well. If all he knows is Internet Marketing, there is no point in his MBA to begin with. He just bought a brand to increase his marketability.

I don't believe a test like this can be more important than previous work contribution, but I believe it can be an interesting tool. We can't be sure about the goals of this organization but, even after all the critics, the core of this idea is still appealing to me.