MBA News: B-School Buzz

Welcome back from the weekend! This week we’re getting started with a round-up of MBA and business education news from the U.S. and around the world.

First up, Harvard Business School has announced a new dual degree program in conjunction with the University’s Kennedy School of Government. The degree will prepare students with skills in public policy and management, with the goal of training leaders for the public and “quasi-public” sectors. The program, still in its planning stages, would likely take students three years to complete and is tentatively slated to begin in Fall of 2008. The new program is part of HBS Dean Light’s goal of creating more “intellectual bridges” between HBS and the rest of Harvard University, and follows in the footsteps of dual degree programs with Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law. Dean Light imagines students in the program working on projects such as using business to revitalize urban neighborhoods and sees great potential to make a positive impact on public management. For more on the new degree program, check out this week’s Financial Times article.

For those students who are considering pursuing an MBA in Canada, a recent article in Canadian Business Online offers a thoughtful comparison of Canadian and American MBA programs, highlighting the changing shape of the MBA landscape in Canada and the benefits and drawbacks of both Canadian and American programs. In other news, Dartmouth-Tuck’s Dean Paul Danos offered a strong defense of MBA education at this year’s Association of MBAs’ Student of the Year award ceremony. The awards honor MBA graduates who demonstrate academic excellence, a commitment to their institution and to furthering internationalism, as well as the promise of enhancing the value of the MBA degree in the marketplace. Dean Danos took the opportunity to highlight the value of the MBA to students, pointing out that at Tuck, the MBA is changing people’s lives, tripling the average student’s salary and creating a five-fold increase in international students’ salaries. For more on the AMBA Student of the Year Awards and Dean Danos’s remarks, read the full article in today’s The Independent.