Graduation was last Friday. The David Eccles School at the U graduated approximately 1,100 students with bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees. I love graduation. It is a truly joyous event for everyone involved. Everybody is happy, families and graduates are rightly proud of the accomplishment graduation represents, and we had a huge crowd in the Huntsman Events Center. My guess is around 8,000 family, friends, spouses, in addition to approximately 700 students who attended graduation and approximately 50 faculty who were there to celebrate our graduates accomplishments.

One of the developments this year was a substantial number of graduates who had majored in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship as a major is subject to debate in entrepreneurial circles. The basic argument is that “appetite for risk” cannot be taught, and this is what it takes to be an entrepreneur. We can teach people how to get financing, how to put together pro formas, the fundamentals of market entry, and help them develop strategic entry plans and at the end of the day — so the argument goes — they are not entrepreneurs if they cannot make the jump off the cliff and start the firm.

There are others who view this slightly differently. Jon Huntsman spoke at the David Eccles School several years ago, and he strongly endorsed the idea of “getting paid to learn the business.” His point was that no one knows enough about their industry and the fundamentals of running a business coming out of school, so potential entrepreneurs should put in a few years really learning the business and industry they hope to enter. From this perspective, take a job, pay attention, and keep developing your business plan until you have the credibility to launch a firm.

These two perspectives on how potential entrepreneurs should launch their careers both have some validity, and they are probably complementary. I have a different take on the entrepreneur major and why it is becoming popular nationwide. The entrepreneur major is the only major in business where students are trained to think about value creation as their core activity in the world of work. Every other major is about mastering a technical body of knowledge necessary to occupy a professional position working for someone else. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are grilled from day one on how they are going to create economic value through their business activities, and they have to develop answers that are about running the business, including serving customers, financing operations, and developing the human resources necessary for the firm to grow and prosper.

Entrepreneur majors learn about business. Few of them will start a business coming out of school because they know what they do not know. Will they eventually start businesses? Some will, some will not. I do not see starting businesses as the most important contribution they can make, although I hope the risk takers have the preparation to avoid the more obvious landmines that tank start-ups in the early phases. For the typical graduate who is more risk adverse, I think the payoff is they look for opportunities to generate value, and these are the kinds of employees we all want working for us. They are also employees who advance into leadership roles in the firms where they work.
I think the growth in students majoring in entrepreneurship is going to make a difference for Utah’s labor force over the long run, and I think the students graduating with this major are going to be the contributors to the growth of firms in Utah for a long time. It is great to see students graduating with a business degree who are interested in business, and this is what the entrepreneur major is all about.

Later.

I knew the labor shortage was acute when I started seeing signs out on the street advertising for employees. The University’s parking services as signs in all the parking lots describing “great jobs” for students on campus, retail stores are trying to persuade customers to become workers, and companies are using signs out by the road and on the highways hoping someone driving by will decide it is a good day to apply for a new job. The shortage of qualified job applicants is particularly severe in many professional areas. It has gotten to the point that CEOs are approaching me at events and whispering: “Got any accountants you can send me?”

One approach to managing recruiting — and it is the approach most often used in Utah — is to let the market dictate the hiring process and just roll with the situation. This, however, can be a problem. When the business cycle is down and there is a labor surplus, firms can hire outstanding people, often at a bargain. But what about when business is expanding and there is a labor shortage? The difficulty is growth is impeded by an inability to hire qualified employees, and failure to grow in the good times means the company never grows to its full potential. Sure, some companies grow during when the general economy is in a slowdown, but even this growth tends to be during the transition from start-up to mature company, so at some point every firm needs to be poised to take advantage of the “good times.”

There is another hiring strategy that is based on establishing relationships in the job market, and this strategy yields the very best employees in good and bad times. In one sense it is more expensive because it incurs some costs that market-driven firms do not incur, but it is much more effective because it ensures firms have access to top employees when there are labor shortages and they need to take advantage of growth opportunities. Plus, these firms are not putting clowns in sandwich signs on the sidewalk out front trying to hire right now, which I have to believe is not the image you want to project for your business.

Firms that emphasize relationship building in human resources recruiting have a strong presence on university campuses with two types of programs, internships and campus recruiting. Companies with internship program are incurring costs with the pay for interns and some marginal costs for supervision of the interns, but they are saving an enormous amount by not making bad hires that take months to unwind and by hiring individuals who they know will be immediately productive, which can save months of learning investments in a new professional employee who is likely to make a lot more while they are learning than three interns. Plus, interns can be highly productive individuals who can be let loose on lingering problems that need fresh ideas and creative solutions. Finally, the management effort necessary to run an intern program is an excellent management development opportunity for a young manager who needs experience managing complex projects and running professional teams, i.e., every manager who is working up to higher level responsibilities.

In addition to the “preview” an internship provides, the internship program is a point of interaction with an emerging professional labor pool that is going to be working in Utah for the next 40 years. This group is not very experienced at age 22, but they may be just the people a firm hopes to attract when they are 42 and well established in professional careers. Internship and recruiting programs are an opportunity to establish a human resources brand in the labor market, and for some firms this is also an important opportunity to establish their services brand as well. The professional accounting firms “get it,” understanding presentations on campus to potential interns and as part of their recruiting effort are also an opportunity to tell the firm’s story as a service provider to a group who will need to hiring accounting firms in the future.

The second practice that defines excellent hiring is recruiting on campus. I have had several CEOs tell me, “Recruiting on campus is too much trouble. We just put an ad in the newspaper and your students apply.” Forget all the issues around labor shortages and the fact that newspaper ads do not seem to work right now and consider the possibility that “students apply” might just be the individuals who did not successfully interview with the companies that come to campus, i.e., you are getting the lower tail of the distribution. A president of a large national financial institution with a local office was stunned when I shared this comment with him, so he decided to do some “campus screening” to see how recruiting on campus might work. He told me he did not expect to hire, but he thought I had good points about having a campus presence. He ended up hiring two individuals from the first interview pool and is now on campus every year.

In addition to adopting the simple steps of establishing an internship program and recruiting on campus, firms with excellent hiring practices sustain their programs even when they are not hiring a lot of employees. First, most firms need to hire a few replacements for positions that are vacated by retirements and normal turnover every year, and excellent hiring practices are about getting the very best employees every year. Second, “employer of choice” is an investment worth sustaining, and like all investments, it is best made in advance of when the business needs the resources to grow and prosper. In the scheme of the investments most businesses are making every year, excellent hiring practices are a trivial cost with a high return. They just require a commitment to excellence.

And the answer is, “No, I do not have any accountants.” They all had offers in November to start jobs when they graduate in May. About all I can suggest is a clown with a sandwich sign down on State Street.

Later.

It seems like just about everything is ranked these days. Best dog park, best 10 all night diners, and best sweaty workouts seem to appear weekly in every news outlet. Of course there are also best and worst dressed at the Oscars, what is in and what is out listings, and all manner of ratings of food, song, movies, people, and ice creams that invariably get turned into a ranking by someone. Some rankings matter to those being ranked. Take the BCS in college football, for instance. This matters to the colleges whose post season depends on it. But does it really matter if Indian cuisine is ranked a notch below Thai cuisine by those stopping for gas in Levan?

Higher education used to operate in a world where potential students came to campus, met an advisor, met the professors, took a look at a dorm room, went on a campus tour, and looked at the catalog to see what courses were offered. Potential students weighed programs of study, talked to current students, and looked for a campus that was the right challenge and the right opportunity. There was a sense of prestige associated with each campus, but the rankings were high, good, and they will let me into the program. Mostly, students looked for a “good fit” and an engaging campus experience. The research showed individuals generally matriculated at a campus they had visited, and students were happy with their choices.

It is a totally different world when it comes to applying to college today. First, you can hire a consultant to help you manage the application process. Does this strike anyone who actually went to college as strange? Second, applicants need “a strategy” made up of aspiration schools, target schools, and fallback schools. Looking over the advice on application strategies is strangely reminiscent of the portfolio allocation advice that comes with retirement planning materials. And do not even get me started on the financial planning that needs to accompany the college application process. I hope you started before conception.

There are quality differences across educational institutions, but the differences that matter for students are the programs offered and the range of learning opportunities. But these are not what the rankings measure. Most rankings are devised to sell magazines, who are the great rankings proliferators, and the people doing the rankings have a story to write on deadline, which precludes any type of serious effort to evaluate the actual education offered. So instead of evaluating schools based on actual education offered, the rankings predominantly use “beauty contests” that are little more than asking a bunch of people who do not know the answer what they think. Ask enough people to pretend the results are “significant,” put the data into a statistical meat grinder to produce some variance, and you have yourself a ranking. But of what? And does it matter?

The other twist on this that never ceases to amaze me is when individuals talk about going to a school, taking a job, or pursuing a career based on “prestige.” We talk about these choices as if prestige is something an institution bestows on us. A few years ago I had an epiphany that continues to serve me well: prestige is something an institution gets from me. It is the work I do, my accomplishments, and my dedication that is the institution’s prestige, and I bestow it on the institution every day. The same is true for students who attend any university. “Prestige” is what alumni achieve based on the quality of programs and the educational experience, not something that comes with every sweatshirt sold at the bookstore.

The rankings game is reality for everyone in higher education, and we live with it. But being in the game does not require playing the game. If we focus on providing great programs and an exceptional learning experience, I figure the rankings will take care of themselves. Yes, it is possible to put funding into PR and marketing efforts to affect the rankings, but what does this accomplish in terms of the educational mission of a university? True quality is enduring, it is what matters, and it is what we do in the classroom, not what we put in the brochure.

Picking a college is a major life choice. It is a commitment of a significant chunk of lifetime and a major investment of financial resources. It is a choice that should be informed by an understanding of what the experience is going to be and what the student will learn. It should be about the program and the education, because this is what students take into careers and adult life. I fear for the young person who is picking 12 over 34 for the “prestige” as if the college choice was all about the logo apparel once wears to the gym.

Later.

I presented to a community group Friday evening on technology/innovation and economic development, and during the Q&A someone asked a question that used to come up frequently but has fallen off the radar in the past couple of years: What are business schools doing about the terrible state of business ethics in America? During the Enron/WorldCom years, this question came up every time I addressed an group, and I suppose it is making a comeback now because of the options back dating scandals that are in the news.

While public interest seems to change with the latest news, I see a lot that gives me confidence in the future of American business in today’s students. First, they care. The students who are in business school today have a much greater sense of social responsibility than any group I have seen in my 30 years in higher education. There is a recognition of the public leadership role of business leaders, and our students are interested in programs that prepare them for community service. Our Board Fellows Program, which places students in internships with local non-profits, was created by students interested in getting more community experience and has 25 students placed this year. Our non-profit consulting group serves 5-8 non-profits in our community every year by providing business consulting designed to make these organizations more effective in the delivery of services, and we are currently working on a social ventures fund that will help develop sustainable non-profit organizations in our community through the provision of one-time investment capital. And the service learning programs at all the universities in the area are experiencing record student participation.

Second, I think we know a lot more about preparing students for the ethical challenges they are going to face in the course of their careers. Early ethics courses focused on the “rules,” but knowing the rules did not really prepare individuals for the conformity pressures and incremental “legal” activities that often lead to unethical practices in the real world of business.

Seventeen years ago, the David Eccles School of Business took on the challenge of preparing students for business leadership by starting their training with a course that challenges each student to translate personal values into a credo of business conduct that will define their business career. I did a short piece for an alumni magazine that details this approach, and I think it remains timely. Take a look.

Business news was seldom carried on the front page in the past. This has changed dramatically in recent years with one corporate scandal after another. The amounts involved are staggering, and the resulting impact on stock markets and pension accounts has made most Americans innocent bystanders.

The impact of these crimes on how business is conducted is wide ranging. Recent federal laws demand a much greater level of business accountability in financial reporting, and appropriately so. The change in attitudes towards business was captured in a recent movie mini review in Entertainment Weekly: “The Perfect Score. A movie about high school students trying to steal SAT answers. So they can go to business school and learn how to steal millions.” (pg 16, February 6, 2004)

As a business educator, it is bewildering to see business education included among the presumed rotten apples. Still, we do not want to dodge questions about ethics and business education, they are valid and challenge our assumptions about the effectiveness of what we are doing to prepare our graduates for business careers.

“Ethics” in Business Schools

My experience teaching in a number of business schools has convinced me most are getting business ethics wrong. I think the elite business schools might be even worse at teaching this subject than others. One recruiter recently characterized a visit to a prestigious Ivy League business school as a “walk in the Land of the Velociraptors.” It was not a compliment. Students can walk out of an ethics class and not see a connection their next class, even when the organizational behavior case is about corporate fraud.

The core problem is business schools tend to teach business ethics as a set of rules, typically the law. Students too often conclude it is okay to walk the boundary of the law as long as the do no stumble into illegal behavior. This is the opposite of what we want our students to learn, because the boundary of ethical behavior is typically crossed well before one gets to the boundary of illegal behavior.

There has to be a better way.

David Eccles School of Business faculty started struggling with the problem of teaching business ethics about fourteen years ago. As we better understood the failure of traditional approaches to preparing people for ethical leadership, we started to understand two issues we needed to address:

1. In cases of illegal behavior, individuals cross the boundary of unethical behavior long before they start engaging in illegal acts. The difficulty is ethical dilemmas are subtle shades of gray, and the boundaries are hard to see. What our students seemed to need was a much better grounding of their business behavior in personal values and “gut instincts.” This approach is not about externally defined rules, it is about understanding core personal values and how they relate to business decisions.
2. The second feature of ethical business dilemmas is they occur in complex social systems with concentrated authority, distributed responsibility, and diffuse accountability. In many instances of illegal activity, hundreds of people are involved, yet no one raises an alarm. It is in understanding the complexities of “being ethical” when one lacks authority that we found personal attributes like courage, skills like effective dissent, and the importance of career preparation matter, leading to the quip, “Six months salary in the bank is the key to integrity.” There is no textbook on courage. We do not have easy answers when it comes to teaching our students how to act with integrity, but we are asking the right questions.

The David Eccles School did something extraordinary twelve years ago, replacing introductory business with Foundations of Business Thought, a course examining personal values and business practice. David Eccles School students begin their business studies with questions about the community responsibilities of business, the moral obligations of leadership, and market economy values. More than 2,000 students a year take the class, and just 60% are business majors.

The Foundations of Business Thought course now enrolls over 2,500 students a year and 50% are pursuing majors other than business. We were ten years ahead of everyone else on this, and we will be here with the same focus year after year because we know this is the right kind of education for every student who will eventually work in large organizations with a concentration of economic, social, and political power. And as I said in the beginning, I am confident because today’s students care.

Later.

I am delighted to see Utah Business announce Jim Sorenson, alumnus of the David Eccles School of Business, as their CEO of the Year. I knew he had been selected and was waiting for the official announcement to comment. Many know Jim’s business accomplishments, and he deserves the recognition based on these alone. But Jim is also active as a supporter of higher education, and higher education for every student in Utah has benefited from his many contributions.

Jim was the founding donor who helped us jump start the University Venture Fund (UVF), surely one of the boldest initiatives in business higher education in this decade. It is easy to see the vision now. Things looked different in 2001 when UVF was a vision staffed with five undergraduate students who did not know how they were going to raise the funds, let alone invest them. Jim immediately caught the vision for a sustainable education program that would provide an extraordinary experience for the students involved, and this is exactly what UVF has become. With $18.3 million in the Fund, our students are partnering with over 40 national venture capital funds, doing some of the best due diligence in Utah, which is what keeps our partners coming back, and achieving extraordinary returns for students and investors. Jim serves on the Board of UVF along with several other community members, and he continues in the role of “holder of the vision.” The success of UVF is a challenge in its own right, and all the Board members, including me, look to Jim as the person who keeps us focused on what the purpose of the fund is: to educate students while making money for our investors.

Jim serves on the advisory board for the Lassonde New Venture Development Center, a program at the University of Utah that brings together science, engineering, and business students to work with university researchers on the commercialization of new technologies. This is tough work, because it is technology looking for markets, and it is not easy to find the right markets and understand how new technologies can create commercial value. This is what business innovation is all about, and very few are good at it. The contributions of an astute businessman like Jim Sorenson are hugely valuable to the student teams associated with the Lassonde Center, both in giving them direction and helping them ask the right questions of the technology and the business.

Given the experience with the Lassonde New Venture Development Center, Jim is partnering with the David Eccles School on a new program that will be announced this spring. This is an exciting development for the University and the Utah business community, but what is most exciting is the innovative concept for providing an educational experience that will benefit students across the universities in the entire state. Jim Sorenson understands the value for business that comes from investing in Utah’s most precious natural resource: our children. Once again, he is providing the risk capital to make a vision of what is possible a reality. We will be announcing this program soon, and I hope to provide details in a future blog.

Jim also serves on the David Eccles School of Business National Advisory Board along with about 60 other friends and alumni. The Board’s focus is providing strategic insight and working to ensure the David Eccles School continues to be one of the world’s best business schools. While the School has a record of achievement and recognition that places it consistently in the ranks of the World’s Best Business Schools as evaluated by publications like the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, it takes constant innovation and attention to delivery to sustain this ranking. The School’s National Advisory Board makes sure we keep our edge and keep striving to improve our programs every day.

Jim Sorenson is a MVP for the David Eccles School of Business and for higher education in Utah. He dedicates a great deal of time to serving Utah’s students and has served as a visionary investor in supporting new programs that are establishing Utah as an innovator in higher education. Does this matter? Think about national centers of excellence in higher education, which include Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco Bay Area, LA, and San Diego. Exciting things happening in these economies? The answer is obvious. Jim Sorenson is a MVP in my book because he is investing in Utah’s future, and he understands innovative higher education is the secret to his success and Utah’s success.

The legislative session is winding down, and it looks like the Legislature is going to provide significant new support for public and higher education this year. As the session winds down, there will inevitably be news coverage pronouncing “higher education was a winner” in this year’s budget. This strikes me as a very peculiar notion. Can an institution like higher education, public education, or social services be a winner? I think not.

Higher education, and the business education component that is my little corner of the University, exists to serve the greater social good by preparing the next generation of leaders for Utah and the world. An educated and skilled work force supports the high technology companies that are Utah’s promise for the future, individuals with college degrees will generate more than a million dollars in greater lifetime earnings than a high school graduate, which means they pay considerably more taxes, and college graduates participate in their communities more extensively than those without college degrees, partly because they are making more money and can afford to spend some of their free time on community affairs and participating in government. College graduates also serve in leadership roles in many arenas, including the arts, social services, non-profits leadership, education, government, and in business. Support for higher education opens the opportunity of higher education to a broader segment of our society, and clearly these individuals win and society wins.

You may be thinking “good in theory,” but more money is more money. Yes. I have budget responsibilities for an organization of about 150 employees, and everyone is glad there will be raises. But state support for higher education also means a lower tuition increase than might otherwise have occurred, which means the students who are attending the state’s higher education institutions will pay less for their education and probably a few students who might otherwise have been unable to afford an education will be able to attend a college or university. So, a few citizens of Utah, who are hard working and have remained hard working through a long series of disappointing pay years from 2002 to 2006, will finally get a little bit of an inflation catch up and a large group of students, who are the sons and daughters, grandchildren, and neighbors of everyone in Utah will get a break that will help them realize their full potential to contribute back.

The “winners” when the State invests in education at every level are the citizens of the State. The money goes to directly benefit the children and young adults who are the future of this state, and these young people are our children. The institutions are not the winners, it is the people who benefit from the commitment and qualifications of the teachers and staff who are the winners. To borrow a paraphrase: “We have met the winners, and they are us.”

Let’s have a party! And let’s remember when it comes time to make hard choices that those who are the winners from investment are also the losers when we fail to support the children and young adults who are our future through the tough times.

Later.

There are note worthy examples of individuals who succeed in business without formal training in business, but if you dig into the stories you always find they have a business education. They might have gotten it by starting in a “family business” at 10 years old, they might have years of experience in their industry where they built up knowledge through a series of escalating responsibilities, or they might have come into business through an affiliated profession like law where they had to master finance, accounting, and tax issues as part of studying regulatory law. These stories also regularly feature some bad road rash from a fall along the way. An education was had, but it hurt.

People can go a long way in business on charm and motivation. There is a component of success in organizations, whether government, social service, non-profit, religious, or business, that is based on social and communication skills, and many people get promoted into good jobs based on these skills. But at some point along the success path, people get into positions that require decisions that matter. Whether entrepreneur or corporate manager, there are moments of truth strewn with land mines that will go off with one wrong move. These are good times to know what you are doing.

I know a CEO who is now retired from a firm that in its time was in the major leagues of corporate America. When he became the President of the firm, he did something that surprised his board, his employees, and to some degree himself: He enrolled in the David Eccles School Executive MBA Program. In talking to him about going back to school after he had “made it” by anyone’s standards, he said something very interesting: “I had come up on the marketing side of the business, and I knew the business as well as anyone in the industry. But once I started going to Board meetings, I realized I really did not understand the firm’s financials. They were complicated, and while I could see how we were doing, I really did not understand what they were telling everyone else in the room. What the EMBA gave me was a set of tools to understand every facet of the business. As a result of doing the EMBA, I was able to participate with the Board in setting direction for the business and make contributions beyond what I was previously making, which gave the Board the confidence to ultimately make me CEO. I needed to grow as President of the firm, and the EMBA helped me grow rapidly to the point I was ready to become the CEO when the opportunity became available.”

One of the recurring themes in classic Greek tragedy is the heroic figure destroyed by hubris, the Greek word for arrogance associated with pride. The force that takes down the heroic figure is typically fate, often embodied by the intervention of one of the mythic gods who has taken offense. Hubris is a dangerous trait in entrepreneurs and corporate managers, because at some point fate comes calling. Those who are successful as entrepreneurs and corporate leaders are among the most humble individuals I meet, and the CEO above is a great example. He had the humility to go back to school and pick up the key knowledge he found he was lacking rather than try to fake his way through or learn “from experience,” which he realized was dangerous for the firm and his career. Humble leaders also get the most from their people because they understand their success is the result of the efforts of many individuals who are following their lead. Finally, humble leaders help those in their organization get the knowledge they need to succeed in the opportunities that will define their careers. The individual who came back to get his EMBA has sent many others in his organization back to school in programs all over the nation, many of them already in senior positions. Most of those he encouraged became presidents and CEOs, and they are leaders who have the tool set to make vital strategic decisions.

There is a phrase I have heard many times, and I think it summarizes the point here well: Education is experience you do not pay for. Yes, all the lessons of business were once learned the hard way, and businesses failed and careers were ruined in the process. Much faculty research in business focuses on developing best practices and cataloging mistakes. This research is the basis for what is taught, and the mistakes are a context for learning why strategic decisions need to be approached in a certain way. There is wisdom that comes with career experience that is tough to teach, but we know a lot about the landmines that destroy businesses and careers that we can teach. Experience you do not need to pay for.

It is possible to make a fortune in Vegas in a day by making all the right bets at the roulette wheel, craps table, or any of a dozen different bets. The same is true in business: it is possible to make all the right bets over a career that lasts 40 or more years. Last I checked, the casinos in Vegas are not owned by individuals who raised their capital at the gaming tables.

Later.

I’m graduating from the University of Utah in May, and, as a senior (with a decent amount of free time), I’ve given a lot of though to my college career and the things I have and have not done.

I am majoring in Political Science, and I couldn’t be happier about my choice. People give me a hard time about it being a cop-out, or too easy, or a cesspool of future lawyers. While some of these may be true, I feel like it has taught me skills that are not easily learned in other departments. Things like thinking logically about an issue and being able to communicate those thoughts through writing.

All this leads me to believe that undergraduate general business degrees are becoming irrelevant, and in fact leave those with majors in business administration at a significant disadvantage when it comes time to find a job. Not because business knowledge isn’t important, but because it is more important than ever. To get a job, I need to know the things that undergrad business majors know. And I do. I’ve learned them outside the classroom.

To be certain, I’m talking about the non-specialized business majors. Finance, accounting and IS teach marketable, specialized skills. Management, I believe fits into my theory, but only because no one is going to hire someone without any experience out of undergraduate school into a position where the skills learned are actively used.

Back to the point at hand, however. General business degrees leave individuals with those degrees at a disadvantage because they have no differentiation or specialization. They have the basic business knowledge that everyone needs to get a job – and nothing more. While my social science degree may not be specialized, it differentiates me from the masses of general business majors, and also lets someone know that I have gained extensive training in logic and writing.

From what I can tell, this is a relatively new phenomenon, and I believe that everyone knows that major has little correlation with success. I am writing strictly about the utility of an undergraduate general business degree when finding a job.

So am I right? For those of you that hire, are undergrad general business degrees actually a disadvantage when it comes time to find a job? Or is this just to make myself feel better because my GPA was too low to get into the business school?

(Dean Brittain, your thoughts would be very appreciated!)

In an effort to be a better human being while attempting to do what countless others have done for me, I'm launching two new social features on Smooth Harold. The first is the Smooth Harold Helpdesk. If you have a specific question you think I might be able to answer (business, web, personal, etc), don't hesitate to ask via email, phone, or in person. I'll usually respond same day when possible and free of charge. If I don't know the answer, chances are I can refer you to someone who does. And no, this isn't quid pro quo (really), it's just a genuine attempt to share the little that I've learned from talking with people smarter than me, reading good books, and seeing what sticks. The second offering is perhaps an extension of the first; it's an open invitation to share lunch with any one either living in or visiting the greater Salt Lake area regardless if I know you personally or not. I remember a little over a year ago being down and out in business. I had just become a first-time father and hadn't taken home a paycheck in over three months due to slow sales. Swallowing my pride, I asked an individual whom I respected but didn't know if he'd be willing to go to lunch and answer some of my questions. It was one of the most helpfully and motivational experiences I've had as an entrepreneur in progress and was just the antidote I needed to keep going. (Thanks, Josh!) All you have to do is ask, and there are plenty of other people out there willing to do the same. So have your people call my people; we'll do lunch! Of course, I don't have an entourage of people, so you can just contact me or have your entourage contact me. See the updated sidebar for complete details on both.

Although my career has been in traditional universities, I am a big proponent of education alternatives for individuals who do not have access to college because “life gets in the way.” I am a first generation college graduate and have siblings who were unable to attend college, and I know they struggle to get additional training in order to become eligible for better jobs and to get promotions. I also saw my father struggle to become a supervisor with only a high school education. With five kids to feed, bringing home a paycheck took most of his time, and he and my mother put enormous energy into their volunteer service as scout leaders, which was a contribution to our entire community.

Dad was always taking correspondence courses by mail. Today he would be taking online courses. When I was in graduate school, he was taking a management course, which is my PhD concentration. Curious, I took a look at what was in the course, and I was dismayed to see how out of date the content was. This was in the late 1970s, and the content in the materials he was studying was from the 1950s. He was paying a modest amount of money for the course and putting a lot of effort into studying and doing the exams, and I am sure he was learning the material. But what was he learning? This was the “opportunity cost”: what he was not learning that he should have been learning.

Human beings are learning machines. They will learn in every circumstance, and they will learn things in every “education program,” regardless of the cost, quality of materials, or how good the instruction is. A motivated individual will get something of value in every learning opportunity. The opportunity cost is what is not being learned because the learning option includes out of date materials, the instruction is poor, or expectations are low. In addition, unlike Dad’s correspondence course, many current “alternative formats for working adults” are more expensive than higher quality options from traditional universities. Pay more and get less is not a great value proposition.

The good news is there are now many options for working adults that did not exist 30 years ago. Many AACSB-accredited — the standard for business education accreditation — business schools offer programs in the evening with schedules convenient for fulltime working adults. Yes, they are a lot of work, but most allow a motivated student to complete a graduate degree in two years taking classes two nights a week. Undergraduate degrees take more time, but there are more options because much of the lower division material for the degree can be taken at a community college and transferred to a university. For someone who can maintain the discipline of staying on top of the material and taking courses every semester, these are great options.

I know family responsibilities can make it difficult to attend classes at night, but think about the role model you are for your children. Some of the most inspirational stories I know about individuals finishing degrees are parents hitting the books with their kids every evening. This has a huge impact on a child at every age. When a kid sees a parent, or both parents, devoting evenings to studying and writing papers, the kid sees just how important education is. The example is worth a thousand lectures. I also know of parents who are attending school at the same time their kids are in college, and the bonding that comes from the shared experience can transform the parent-child relationship into an adult relationship of great depth. Just do not go to the concerts with the kids and expect to sit with them at football games. You are, after all, still the parent.

Another option worth considering is taking concentrated short-course programs. While these do not result in a degree, they do allow individuals to pick up the basics of accounting, finance, and management in courses taught by fulltime professors in a classroom with other working professionals. These programs are typically 2-3 full days and are sometimes organized into several modules that result in a certificate of completion that shows employers you are familiar with basic business concepts and have skills that may well be equivalent to those of current employees (who may well have attended the same short course program). A certificate program is a fraction of the cost of a full degree program, and it is a good supplement if you already have a degree in an area other than business.

Individuals can also pick up a lot of business knowledge, and especially a lot of business vocabulary, by regularly reading business periodicals. Fortune and Business Week are very accessible, well written, and they cover a lot of topics over the course of a year. Utah has several good business magazines like Connect and Utah Business that cover companies and industries that are likely familiar to you. The Wall Street Journal also has a lot of meat, but because it is a daily, it is a big commitment. Still, it is worth subscribing and reading the sections that deal with general business topics if you want to get more depth. Finally, the daily newspaper typically has a few articles about business, but the articles tend to be just the news, so they are not enough to build a real foundation. They are, however, good for keeping track of what is going on in the local community.

There is no shortage of companies and providers willing to offer business education. These range from outfits that will send you a diploma based on “life experience” for $59.99 to very expensive programs that feature residential sessions at luxury resorts coupled with online group-based learning. Expensive is seldom an indicator of quality in business education, however. What is? First, go with an AACSB accredited institution. There are many “agencies” that provide accreditation, and most schools have the regional accreditation required to offer federal financial aid. AACSB is the only accreditation that really matters for business education. Many employers only recognized and reimburse degrees from AACSB accredited institutions, so make a choice that you know will serve you for your entire career.

Second, talk to individuals who are currently in the program and find out what their experiences are. You will find those currently in a program are brutally frank and will tell you the positives and the negatives.

Finally, visit a class if possible. You are looking at a major commitment of your time. Spend a few hours making sure your time will be well spent over the long haul.

There are a lot of advantages associated with finishing up a college degree from a university when you are young. But if for some reason this passed you by, there are other learning options that can enhance opportunities for career progression. If nothing else, your motivation to pursue these options is a signal to current and potential employers that you are going to work hard to achieve career success.

Later.