A New Online MBA Is Launched In The U.S. Heartland

Iowa State Ivy is launching an online MBA whose target audience is “a working professional, so with at least a year and a half of being professionally employed,” says Valentina Salotti, associate dean for academic affairs

From Ames, Iowa: The Ivy College of Business at Iowa State University is expanding options for graduate students pursuing their master’s degree through the MBA program. A new online option has been launched for the MBA program intended to provide an option for graduate students hoping to pursue the program remotely.

Valentina Salotti, associate dean for academic affairs and diversity and associate professor in finance, said the program has been modified to fit different students’ availabilities. She said she’s slowly seen their foundation grow, which allows more hybrid and online options within the program.

“There is a full-time population, but the part-time population is much more developed,” Salotti said. “The online option is essentially inspired by the desire to serve more students in a way that they can still have access to a degree program that is high quality [and] that they can take the coursework on on their own terms.”

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Full-Time MBA Market Is Not Likely To Grow, Says Chicago Booth Dean

From Chennai, India: Madhav Rajan, who has been the dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business since July 1, 2017, was back in his hometown, Chennai, recently and interacted with a cross-section of industry leaders at an exclusive session. Bloncampus caught up with Rajan for an interview, where he talks about the future of the MBA.

What are the big changes happening in management education post-Covid, especially in pedagogy, the delivery of education et al?

The big one is that post-Covid people learnt that you could actually do online education.

If you look at a school like Chicago, most faculty were very opposed to online education, but we had to switch instantly, and within ten days everybody were teaching online.

So I think the big thing of the experiment is faculty learning how to do good online teaching. And they also realise that in the future they may have to keep doing it.

Now, some schools have gone to the extreme mode of saying, we’ll just do an online MBA. That’s a very big, bold, and risky move because you’re essentially diluting your brand in some sense that these students have no connection to you. They’re taking a class remotely, sitting at home.

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Mesa School founders Varun Limaye and Ankit Agarwal

Elevation Capital, Others Bet $4M On Mesa School Of Business

From Bengalaru, India: Mesa School of Business, a business school focused on creating startup leaders, has raised $4 million in a funding round led by venture capital and growth-equity investment firm Elevation Capital.

The fundraise also saw participation from angel investors including Kunal Shah and Vidit Aatrey, the founders of fintech player Cred and social commerce platform Meesho, respectively, among others.

The business school plans to use the fresh funds for building a cutting-edge, hands-on and application-based curriculum, designed and delivered in partnership with startup leaders and potential future employers for a founding cohort of just 60 hand-picked students, it said in a statement.

“We believe startups will be responsible for creating the bulk of the new aspirational jobs in India, and yet there isn’t a B-school focused on preparing candidates to be successful in these leadership roles. This gap inspired us to start Mesa School,” said the founding team of Mesa School of Business.