Trinity Term: Weeks Five and Six

The big news this week was that the MBA program was being significantly revamped for the incoming MBA class. You can read about the details of the revamp at Poets and Quants and at the Financial Times. The revamp is the result of the introspection that started after the financial crisis which prompted business schools all around the world to take a hard look at their programmes.

The first two terms (Michaelmas and Hilary) are being extended by two weeks each. In comparison to other one year MBA programs, the Oxford MBA is on the lower end of the scale as measured by contact hours (hours spent in the classroom) and the addition of four extra weeks is an attempt to make the program more rigorous. Analytics (Statistics) has been moved to the pre-course. Most core courses still have the same number of contact hours (24 hours), but a few such as Strategy and Firms & Markets have been extended to 36 hours. Firms & Markets (formerly Managerial Economics) now borrows a lot of content from Macroeconomics and Business Finance (formerly Finance I) has added content from the Finance II elective. Macroeconomics was an elective this year and after completing it, I felt that it really should be a core course and Strategy was the one core course that I felt lacked depth and hence these changes are welcome.

Currently the courses in the first term were largely quantitative while the second term was more qualitative. Hence, poets found the first term very challenging and the second term easy and the reverse was true if you were a quant. The revamp shuffles the courses around to create a more balanced workload across both terms. The GOTO module have moved from term 1 and 2 to term 2 and 3 which will allow students to apply their learnings from the core courses to their GOTO projects. The school also plans to place a greater emphasis on soft skills using optional workshops and coaching. The school is also expanding the use of class participation grading which is vital if we are to take advantage of the diverse experience and backgrounds of the class. Class Participation was introduced for the first time this year (during the second term) but will henceforth be an integral part of the program. Dean Tufano is a big believer in the Business school engaging more with the wider university and this revamp reflects that with more electives and half electives being offered by other schools such as the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

Oxford University is highly resistant to change and getting the revamp approved took a significant amount of time. All in all the revamp looks like a big step in the right direction and I’m sorry to have missed being a part of it by just one year. I believe that it will improve the quality of the program and attract more students to the Business School.