HOW DO YOU GET THE NON-BUSINESS UNDERGRADUATE READY FOR THE MBA?

Context is a funny thing. I remember a teacher I had who once explained context like this: she said, “If two people are talking, and one casually points to a tree outside commenting, on say, its size or height and the other person, as they look at that same tree, recalls when they were 10 years old and fell out of a tree and broke their arm, that tree has a totally different context for those two individuals. One is simply pointing the object out; the other is vividly associating the object with a personal experience. I had another teacher with a little more direct definition – context is two or more sets of eyes looking at the same thing and drawing different conclusions.

I provide those examples as a backdrop to the discussion that we had regarding a key element of our MBA program. Many graduate programs only attract students who already have a base level of knowledge in the graduate subject area. The MBA degree, as its name suggests, is a graduate program in Business Administration. The difference in the MBA and many other graduate degrees is that the MBA attracts a widely divergent body of undergraduate degrees. The reason for this is fairly simple. Chemists, engineers, physicists, physicians, designers and so forth, while professionals in their own right, typically have to function as part of a profitable business. The MBA is typically designed to produce leaders/general managers who can guide a business both strategically and profitably. Many professionals want the value of an MBA but don’t have the undergraduate background that a business major would have.

How does one insure that all these divergent backgrounds mesh in the classroom without placing non-business undergraduates at a distinct disadvantage?  Everyone agrees that non-business undergraduates need to be brought up to speed but the issue arises as to what this “up to speed” training should be called. Here’s where context comes in. I had one group who suggested we call these classes “BRIDGE” classes (because they bridged the gap between undergraduate and graduate knowledge). I had another group who liked “COURSE IN A BOX” because it sounded like something that stood alone. A third group just liked “PREREQUISITES” or “MBA PREREQUISITES” because that sounded like something that needed no further explanation. There was considerable debate about which of these three names had the proper context for what we were trying to convey.

Midway through this debate, my youngest son and I were discussing why he needed to mow our lawn on a regular basis. This task seemed to highly interfere with his pursuit of video game technology. “You never made my brother mow the lawn,” he reasoned, “So why start with me?” I was about to vigorously explain labor economic theory to him when he interrupted me with “That’s not a fair leveling of the playing field if I have to do things my brother didn’t.”

The next day I suggested LEVELING classes as the name for our MBA classes required of non-business undergraduates and everyone immediately liked the name. It contextually fit.

By the way, I’m sure you’ve probably already figured this out, but my son doesn’t mow the lawn. After all, a good idea has to be worth something….