Business School, Continuing Education, and business educational options

Gibbs College in Livingston, New Jersey, offers specialized college degrees that can help you get ahead professionally.

Have you ever wanted to learn about computer programming? Do visual communications interest you? How about criminal justice or business administration? 

Then Gibbs college programs might be just right for you.

Although I didn't attend a small college, I know quite a few people who have. One of the strongest reasons my friends have cited for attending a small college like Gibbs College is the greater chance for student-teacher interaction and classroom discussion.

If you're in need of financial aid, Gibbs offers a variety of options to help you afford your college education.  I know I appreciated the Pell Grants and Stafford Loans that helped me through higher education!

Gibbs College also offers career services if you'd like some help deciding what to do for a career or would like to find good job options while you're in school.

Strayer University is a private, for-profit institution that has a large online division (Newington, Virginia) and numerous mini-campuses located in various southeastern states. It is a genuine money-making institution; its stock is selling at an all-time high, and growth prospects continue to look good.

However, all is not as it might appear. Strayer's bread-and-butter degree programs are in business administration and public administration. The latter diploma is especially popular with state and federal bureaucrats who whish to pad their resumes. The problem is in accreditation of these two programs.

Strayer's BSBA and MBA programs are not approved by AACSB--the recognized professional accrediting association in these two fields. Additionally, Strayer's MPA program lacks professional accreditation by NASPAA.

BSBA students learn in their Principles of Management course that managers have to promote the twin goals of effectiveness and efficiency. Many students just nod and include this statement in their class notes, but in doing so they miss an important point: these twin goals are often inversely related!

That is, we can increase effectiveness by hiring more people, perhaps at higher-than-normal salaries, spending more to develop new products and perhaps also by increasing advertising. But if the dollars going out will not dramatically increase the dollars coming in, efficiency suffers.

A classic example of "management run amok" is the U. S. Department of Defense (DOD) under Robert McNamara in the 1960's. His background was in manufacturing (Ford Motor Company), not in military operations. Yet he and his "whiz kind" advisors thought that every decision could be evaluated through a cost-benefit analysis.

The best advice I can give to BSBA students nowadays is to pay attention to details. This habit, if mastered, will greatly assist the grad after he or she enters the world of business.

Few things are more annoying to college professors than students who simply don't take the time or make the effort to prepare assignments correctly. Students are expected to follow guidelines in the syllabus and to submit assignments on time and in the correct format. Not a day late. Not something that is "close" to what the professor wanted. It must be done right.

My personal pet peeve is misspelled words. Why is it that young adults can't remember "i before e, except after c" and similar rules? And why do they think that they can create a possessive version of the pronoun it by adding an apostrophe and the letter s? The word it's means "it is"; it is not a possessive form of anything. Why don't students use dictionaries if they are unsure about words?

BSBA and MBA graduates must learn to ask tough questions when they finally get jobs as managers. Perhaps they can develop this trait in business school, but in other cases they will have to acquire it on the job.

The expression tough questions includes asking "why are things done this way"? and "isn't there a better way to accomplish this"? In other cases, the question may be as simple as "are your workers trained and qualified for their jobs"?

I suspect that newly minted BSBA and MBA degree holders are reluctant to ask tough questions on the job site because they don't want to embarrass anyone. So they meekly nod and continue to look around, maybe taking notes.

Students who major in accounting are normally required to take one or two courses in auditing, but other business administration majors can skip these courses. That's too bad, because a knowledge of auditing can often mean the success or failure of the enterprise.

By auditing, I mean more than pushing pencils and clicking keys on a computer keyboard. I mean the auditor must go into warehouses, count boxes, check serial numbers, check model numbers and so forth. When it comes to evaluating fixed assets, the auditor must be rigorous in determining the value of the physical plant. He or she must ignore the opinions of plant managers and others who would like to see the audit go a certain way.

In the mid-seventies I earned my MBA from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, courtesy of the U. S. Marine Corps. The Marines were glad to send me to graduate school at full pay and allowances, but I, in turn, was expected to then serve as a senior management analyst at the Marine headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

I was put in charge of the Administrative Programs Section, which was responsible for all forms, reports, records and micrographic systems used throughout the entire Marine Corps. I had a dozen or so career civilians to run these various programs, and all were classified as "343"  management analysts.

But dealing with these civilians put me through culture shock. First, I discovered that not one was a college graduate. Most held a GS-12 rank, but one, an old guy named Dan was a GS-13. He was the "forms" specialist.

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Date     Topic

30        Index

29        Confessions of a college professor

28        Accredited online business degrees

26        Avoid Ashwood University

25        Beware of bogus accrediting organizations

25        University of South Dakota gets a "thumbs up"

24        More on management theory

23        Submitting comments to The Biz Class

20        Arizona's best business schools

19        Virginia's top business schools

19        Management theory - part 4

17        Management theory - part 3

16        Management theory - part 2

14        Management theory - part 1

12        Management theory - introduction

11        Avoid Bedford University

9         AACSB accredits Adelphi University

6         Drexel University Online is "okay"

3         Ever heard of DeVry University?

1         Avoid Everest Online and Florida Metropolitan University

Teaching at the college level can have its rewards, but it also has a downside: teaching introductory classes to freshmen and sophomores.

I've been teaching college courses off and on for over 20 years, usually as an adjunct professor. At first I was enthusiastic and grateful for every teaching assignment that came my way. That began to change for two reasons. First, the constant repetition involved with introductory courses was boring; second, with seniority I was able to teach more and more classes designed for advanced undergraduates. The older, more advanced students made classes interesting and challenging, not only for me but for other students in the class as well.

It should not come as a surprise to you that Teaching Assistants (TAs) teach most of the introductory courses at big universities. Senior instructors and professors are, in many ways, wasting their time teaching Business 101 or Marketing 105. Those courses focus on the terminology and concepts that the students need before taking more substantive courses as advanced undergraduates.