Studying for the California Bar exam? Have an extra $1000 burning a hole in your freshly-law-degreed butt-pocket? Then by all means check out BarMax: California Edition. One of the only iPhone apps to cost that much money, its creator, Mike Ghaffary, a JD/MBA ‘06 Harvard grad, says it has everything one might require to study up for the bar.

Ghaffary has an MBA and as of December 2009, is a member of the California Bar; so he’s got that whole I’m business savvy and I studied for and conquered the bar exam thing going for him.

As with all things iPhone, it’s portable and weighs a lot less than the fifty pounds of books you’d be buying and dragging around town if you were to go the dead-tree route. So handy! Also, if you contact BarMax, they’ll send you a free trial version so you can evaluate the materials before forking over a decade’s worth of ramen money.

BarMax: California Edition, available now in the iPhone’s App Store for $999.99, is a study guide for the California Bar Exam. Harvard lawyers oversaw development of the app, which weighs in at 1 GB and includes outlines, lectures, a study calendar, and real questions and essays from previous exams. The only comparable app available now is from BarBri, but you must be enrolled in the company’s $3000 to $4000 classes to use most of the features.

TechCrunch reports that Mike Ghaffary, a former law student and current director of business development at TrialPay, envisioned BarMax as an alternative to BarBri’s pricey classes and digital offerings. Ghaffary partnered with successful app developers in Los Angeles, and enlisted some fellow Harvard Law alumni to guide development. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

How unfair is it to have gone through 13 grades of school, done everything better than anyone else, been involved in an unreasonable number of activities, been the high school valedictorian, gone off to George Washington University, graduated magna cum laude from the GW business school, applied for dozens of jobs and been turned down for every one of them?

You can read the article in the Washington Post about Melissa Meyer, who is currently living back at home with her successful parents, getting no end of s**t from her successful siblings, and is trying to come to terms with the nearly unacceptable fact that doing everything according to The Plan for a Super Successful Adulthood has not worked out in the slightest. If you string out the factual bits in a line, you’ll see that they go against every property of matter and all laws of nature and physics.

She works the counter in a record store selling CDs and incense and spends her nights working as a hostess in a restaurant. She’s killing herself trying to find a job; she shot for the starlit jobs all GW business school grads are expected to apply for, and is now mucking about in the bottom of the barrel along with all but the handful of fellow GW graduates who won the For God’s Sake, Please Hire Me lottery.

She’s been at it for months and is wanting to take the universe’s big fat hint and just go be something else for a while. Travel that’s totally unrelated to success is her goal. She has certainly paid her dues and moved as many mountains as she could find. Life is short, and rarely works out the way you planned it. I hope she can let go a little and can have a grand and wholly deserved adventure.

Further Reading:

Fallout Life, Interrupted

Posted by Alexa Harrington

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School has a new video microsite up for anyone who might be researching MBA programs. If you go here, you can watch what recent graduates of the program have to say about how well UNC prepared them for the business world.

Further Reading:

UCLA Anderson MBAs Go Global
The Cheapest MBA Program for Computer Science Students…
UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program
UA’s Two New Dual-Degree Engineering and MBA Programs
Washington State University Announces New Online MBA Program
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
MBA Programs
Business Schools

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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It’s Blog Action Day, and the politically correct bloggers (of which I am, mostly, on my less-sarcastic days) are supposed to tell everyone to save the planet, damnit. So reduce, reuse, recycle, walk, don’t drive, eat local, think global, compost, be as organic as is everly possible, don’t tangle up dolphins or club baby seals, and if you can possibly swing it, please consider adopting some polar bears or penguins (they’re in trouble and it’s totally our fault).

Previous Planet-Saving Posts:

Sustainability Degree Offered at Arizona State University
Saving the Planet is a Solid Career Choice
Textbook Rental Saves Money and Trees
Green Toilets at ASU Polytechnic
Penguin Games
It’s Not Easy Being Green
Free Money For Textbooks
No More Tray Sledding For You!

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Having a home base to call your own is good. And as in love as I am with travel, one of the best feelings ever is the moment you get home and walk back in the door. It’s strange and new and comfortably enveloping and familiar all at once.

As marvelous as coming home to the place that’s yours in the world, the most profound bit a trip abroad can offer is a better understanding of a whole new group of humans. I don’t care how educated someone is or isn’t, or how much political-correctness training they’ve had; leaving home base and finding yourself among people you don’t consider familiar or anywhere near your own will open your eyes a smidge and will wedge some new information and thought processes into your noggin.

It doesn’t have to hit the “It blew my mind!” level of experience intensity; subtle works too. The more we humans grok the fact that the planet is full of other humans who are basically just like us, the better things will be. Global knowledge and understanding is good.

Even if their reasons aren’t planet-saving or brotherly love, I’m still glad UCLA’s Anderson School of Management will have an international requirement for their MBA students. Starting with the Class of 2012, students will have three requirement-fulfilling options:

1) Take an international elective.

2) Spend a term abroad at one of more than 50 premier global partner business schools.

3) Complete an international Applied Management Research (AMR) project.

It’s possible the business types are hoping to use their powers for global economic rule, but they’re still going to gain insight into other earth-dwellers—in non- business-y ways—whether they want to or not.

Further Reading:

UCLA Anderson: Compare MBA Programs
Business Week: UCLA Anderson School of Management
The Cheapest MBA Program for Computer Science Students…
UC Davis Working Professional MBA Program
UA’s Two New Dual-Degree MBA and Engineering Programs
Washington State Univ. Announces New Online MBA Program
Saving the Planet is a Solid Career Choice
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
AllBusinessSchools.com

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Big dreams and no money. Such is the situation colleges, universities, and the students who attend them are struggling with. The schools want to teach students to think outside the box, to be able to look ahead and improve the future of humanity. The students want to learn how to think wider and deeper and bigger and more. The President wants the schools to kick some researching butt and find ways to get us out of this mess (pick one).

Too bad there’s a global economic crisis, and the recession our country is experiencing is sucking the life and the funding out of everyone’s Big Dreams balloons. Now the schools and the students are walking around carrying sad little limp and deflated aspirations, jettisoning the deeper-thinking, big-picture courses and degrees for the more utilitarian/practical ones.

I won’t bore you with numbers, but there are an astonishing number of folks doing pre-professional undergrad work, and a ridiculous number of business degree holders in this country. I think we’re good on the ‘future of money’ front; someone learn something that’s helpful in a different way. Think outside the box, people. Don’t give up on the idea that knowing how to think in non-linear directions is conducive to the survival of mankind.

Read this piece in the NY Times:

The world economic crisis and the election of Barack Obama will change the future of higher education. Even as universities, both public and private, face unanticipated financial constraints, the president has called on them to assist in solving problems from health care delivery to climate change to economic recovery.

American universities have long struggled to meet almost irreconcilable demands: to be practical as well as transcendent; to assist immediate national needs and to pursue knowledge for its own sake; to both add value and question values. And in the past decade and a half, such conflicting and unbounded expectations have yielded a wave of criticism on issues ranging from the cost of college to universities’ intellectual quality to their supposed decline into unthinking political correctness. More…

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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…It costs $99 and it’s called the App Store. This post over at the FairSoftware Blog starts out funny, but ends up making sense. If you’re working toward a degree in Computer Science, you’ll be writing (one hopes) cool and useful programs. Unless your future plans for world domination necessitate a separate MBA degree, consider the quick and dirty (and extremely practical) business lesson that selling your iPhone app at the App Store will provide.

You’ll be out the $99 fee to become a registered iPhone developer. That’s less than a textbook would run you, and you’ll have the chance to make that cash back, assuming you learn your MBA lessons well and write a kick-ass iPhone app that people will want to buy.

According to FairSoftware, here’s what you’ll learn by doing:

Marketing: How do users hear about your app? How can you create some buzz to attract more people? You will learn that having an amazing technical product is nothing if you can’t communicate its value.

Customer support: You will be forced to look at your product with the eyes of your end user. Is the app really intuitive? How come every user seems to be making the same usability mistake? You will learn to respect your end user and project yourself to code for what they need, not what you think is neat.

Economics: By now you should be having fun. Some money is coming in. You’d want more. How can you manage that? Maybe it’s time to bring on board another student to help with support or graphics. How much will that cost you? Is that a good return on investment? You will learn to make your own business decisions.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Aaaaahh…back from vacation. I apologize for the technical difficulties (it sucks when one’s fear that controlling less and relaxing more will surely lead to everything going to hell turns out to be a well-founded fear). But now I’m back and have alerted the technical people and we can move on.

Here’s an informative higher education tidbit I came across: Will Sitch gives anyone interested in a working professional MBA program a thorough break-down of UC Davis’s version. The classrooms are located off-site, thirty minutes east of San Francisco, and because the course schedule is designed for working professionals, it requires in-class time only every other weekend. Mr. Sitch is three quarters in, and seems pretty happy with what the program has to offer.

In the post, Mr. Sitch answers questions about the caliber of the program, professor quality, student quality, how well the schedule works for a working professional like himself, and why he chose UC Davis’s program over Santa Clara’s or UC Berkeley’s programs.

Being a huge fan of higher education and the college campuses that go along with it, I could still see his point regarding why he’s fine with missing out on campus life while earning his third degree:

“…the reality of the part-time MBA program is totally different from a full-time program. Believe me: you wouldn’t benefit at all from having class on campus (assuming the campus was closer). A part-time MBA is so much work! You’re not going to have ANY free time for any extra-curricular activity.

When I did my M.A.Sc. full-time at Carleton University in Ottawa, I really liked being on campus. I lived on campus. I knew all the Profs, chilled with all the other grad and post-doc students, ate at the cafeterias and worked out at the campus gym. I occasionally left campus, but not very much. It worked for me then, but I couldn’t imagine trying to attend a real campus while working.

Listen, when you go to class you’re going to be speeding because a morning meeting ran late. You’re going to get there, do the non-essential reading while you scarf down lunch/dinner, and as soon as class is over you’re going home. Maybe, if you’re one of the cool kids, you’ll get an adult beverage with friends before you speed home. There’s no time to hang out. There’s no time to talk to profs. There’s no time to hit the gym or go to the library or walk in the park.

The Profs at UC Davis WP-MBA come to the campus. They teach. They have an office hour. They go home. They’re all available through email (and some by cellphone), but you’re not going to need them much. Maybe it’ll be different in upper-year courses, but there’s so much instruction provided in course notes, books, textpaks, and course websites that you’ll have everything you need already.”

Further Reading:

UC Davis Bay Area Working Professional MBA Program
UC Davis Sacramento Working Professional MBA Program
UC Berkeley Evening and Weekend MBA Program
Santa Clara Univ. Working Professional MBA Program
Business School Resources
Distance Learning MBA Programs
Will’s Thoughts On His First, Second, and Third Terms in the UC Davis Program

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Most folks, when faced with a sucky economy, panic in the face of economic downturns. There are some, however, who come up with an innovative twist and offer an elegant solution to a problem. The University of Alabama is now offering a combined engineering and MBA graduate degree program, so students can multi-task their little hearts out and end up ready to kick business-minded engineering booty as soon as they graduate. Less time in school, better prepared for their future careers.

Engineering and MBA graduates from The University of Alabama will now offer more than just technical knowledge to their future employers, as they will combine essential financial skills with engineering through two new innovative dual-degree programs.

Beginning this fall, students can earn master’s degrees in engineering and business administration in two years, and the programs are specific for civil engineering and mechanical engineering.

As Alabama’s automotive, manufacturing, energy, construction and civil engineering industries continue to expand, financial business skills are more essential to guiding engineering projects. Students will be able to immediately impact their future employers through both engineering technical knowledge and the bottom-line financial goals.

“With the mounting costs to rebuild America’s aging infrastructure and with the need to continue the American leadership in the world economy, the need has never been greater for engineers with a strong education in the financial, public funding and economic aspects of major projects,” said Hugh Mathews, president of England, Thims & Miller Inc., a leading civil engineering firm in the Southeast. “This program offers the opportunity for future engineers to prepare themselves to meet this challenge.”

Further Reading and Resources:

UA Announces Two New Dual-Degree MBA and Engineering Programs
MBA Facts and Figures
Accredited MBA Programs
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA
Washington State University Announces New Online MBA Program

Posted by Alexa Harrington

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Washington State University is rounding out their already-successful business degree program with an Online MBA degree starting Fall 2009. It’ll start out as a part-time program for the first year, but by Fall 2010, it will be available as a part-time or a full-time degree program.

The program is geared toward professionals already working, so WSU has a day-job-friendly system set up for students who work all day and would have inevitable scheduling conflicts:

The Online MBA program consists of 39 semester credit hours and is comparable to WSU’s Accelerated One-Year MBA offered on the Pullman campus. Like all WSU College of Business academic programs, the Online MBA is accredited by The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Courses are offered completely online, with no campus visits required.

[Mark] Fuller noted that WSU Online MBA courses are accessible 24/7 in an asynchronous format, allowing maximum flexibility for working professionals. “We use a variety of online tools, which allows significant interaction between faculty and students,” he said. “Those same tools allow students to participate in group projects and team presentations.”

In addition to 24/7 course access and tech support, Online MBA students will have support services, including advising, financial aid and career counseling, registration assistance and help maneuvering the WSU system.

Further Reading and Resources:

WSU Online MBA Degree
Online MBA Programs
Consider a Well-Rounded MBA

Posted by Alexa Harrington