Friday, January 04, 2008

Term 5

I can't believe it's term-5 already. Things have been so busy at work and at school that I have not had time to write.

In the last 8 months or so most of us have stopped complaining about the quality of the program and the lack of flexibility. Occasionally we find a good professor or good reading material that makes the course bearable. We had good professors in finance and marketing and there were some courses that seem really redundant, for example:

1. Material Management - Don't know of anyone who is really interested in this course. None of us are managing inventory or have an inclination to. More importantly, we have already learned these things in our Financial Management I course.

2. Management Information Systems: A strangely taught course with focus on theoretical understanding of work systems, CRUD matrix, MIS strategy, Role of managers and a really sadly designed mid term paper

3. Business environment: A course that can put an owl to sleep at night. This should basically be a course with lots of reading assignments. Folks should be ask to submit summaries of chapters, topics, articles before each class and we should spend time discussing better things than going over the history of the Indian economy or ricardian models of world trade. Perhaps, just having every one read the "commanding heights" would have been enough.

People were really happy with the half credit elective courses only because there was no homework involved in the HRM or the Advanced Oral communication courses.

Most folks agree that structural changes need to be made to this course so that it is easier on working managers. The 80% attendance requirement and the 4 year cap on the completion of the program seem really hard to manage for lot of people. One person in our program today are commuting from Chennai, another has taken a leave of absence from his government job since he was transfered - without warning - to Chennai.

Two folks got married this term and a couple of participants had babies. Of course, like every year, a couple of folks also dropped out of the course due to personal reasons. A couple of folks also switched jobs during the course.

I think you can find out the true value of a course if folks show up for class even if there isn't an minimum requirement for attendance. A lot of courses will get minimal presence from participants if the institute drops this requirement. One other thing that I hate is that the last class for each course ends up with the participants asking what the instructor will ask in the exam (mid term or end term) so that they can structure their preparation for the course. This is vastly different from my MS course at UT Austin and kinda sad to see.

All course participants seem to agree that the sunk costs are too high to quit the course now and are barely able to motivate themselves to learn. We all have forgotten one of the first lessons in finance - SUNK COSTS ARE ALWAYS IRRELEVANT.






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