Business Schools

When Aarti Kothari decided she needed a top-quality business education to further her career, her choices at first weren't encouraging. In a country suffering a dramatic shortage of placements for college students, the nation's best business school, the Indian Institute of Management, had more than a hundred applicants for each seat. Lesser programs, strapped for resources, offered degrees of questionable value.

Prospective and current graduate business students who used a website to cheat on entrance examinations over the last five years could have their scores thrown out. The exam's publisher, the Graduate Management Admission Council, is tracking down users of Scoretop.com after winning a lawsuit to shut down the site and seize a computer hard drive containing payment information and user identifications.

Once they stood to inherit the world, or at least a tidy little corner of it. Now, staring into the abyss of the worst financial crisis in decades, California's MBA students are tempering their expectations, networking like crazy and looking for a Plan B or even C. "People come to business school to shoot for the stars," said Bangaly Kaba, 29, a second-year student at USC Marshall School of Business. "At some point, you have to look at what's in front of you because the stars aren't available."

Four years into a job at a giant state-owned engineering firm in central China, Jennifer Liu asked her boss for permission to return to graduate school. She was refused. Liu, a civil engineer with big ambitions, didn't give up. During a holiday in Beijing, she toured a handful of graduate schools and MBA programs. After returning, she persuaded her boss to allow her to apply to Tsinghua University, one of China's most prestigious universities.

They don't usually teach this in business school: When it comes to launching companies, style can matter as much as substance. The budding capitalists at Stanford University on Friday held "Entrepreneur Idol," a takeoff on the Fox Broadcasting talent show. Instead of singing tunes by Bon Jovi or Burt Bacharach, 48 students each had one minute to pitch their best business ideas.

DAVIS, Calif. -- The University of California Board of Regents approved a three-year plan Thursday for major fee increases at 34 professional schools that would push the cost of some law and business schools to $40,000 a year by 2010. The increases will take effect next year and range from about 7% at most of the schools to a high of 15% at UC Berkeley's law and business schools.

USC announced Thursday the abrupt resignation of its business dean, Yash Gupta, who came to the school after a nationwide search 19 months ago. Gupta's departure comes slightly more than two weeks after it was disclosed that he was a finalist for the presidency of the University of Arizona -- a position he didn't win. It also followed a recent sharp drop in a ranking by the Financial Times of the overall MBA program at USC's business school.

The family of pioneering Oxnard developer Martin V. "Bud" Smith has pledged $3 million to establish a school of business and economics at Cal State Channel Islands, a move that will raise the profile of the emerging Ventura County university. Smith, who died in 2001 at age 85, was a longtime supporter of the campus near Camarillo. Six years ago, he created a $5-million endowment to boost the university's business programs.

Business schools are getting a lesson in supply and demand when it comes to teachers. The schools have been competing for students for years as the number of master in business administration programs at universities has soared. Now, the schools also are competing for a dwindling supply of doctoral business faculty to teach those students.

The very first thing I learned about the desire of the business and law schools at the University of California to wriggle out from under the dead hands of UC headquarters and the state Legislature is this: None dare call it "privatization." The term "confuses more than illuminates," Christopher Edley, the dean of Berkeley's law school, Boalt Hall, wrote in an op-ed in these pages last year. The issue, unsurprisingly, is money.