This week, two schools announced the creation of programs aimed at boosting management education and research collaborations in international locales. The MIT Sloan School of Management has entered into a government-sponsored agreement with two universities in Portugal and a group of leading private Portuguese corporations, in order to assist them with their goal of strengthening their capacity in business education and management science at an international level. According to a news release, this initiative will also provide the opportunity for MIT Sloan faculty to continue to broaden their exposure to new global business developments and challenges. Meanwhile, the Haas School at the University of California, Berkeley, has launched a new Asia Business Center focused on significantly increasing its leadership training for Asian business managers and expanding its research collaborations with Asian universities.

Under the five-year agreement with their Portuguese counterparts, MIT Sloan faculty will offer guest lectures to Global MBA Program students at the School of Economics and Business at the Portuguese Catholic University and the School of Economics and Management at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. MIT Sloan will also offer a summer immersion program for the Portuguese students and under the agreement, professors from those schools will travel to Cambridge as International Faculty Fellows to be exposed to teaching practices which are designed to assist with their goal of enhancing their teaching effectiveness.

“Our faculty will be greatly strengthened by what they learn at MIT Sloan,” says Professor Manuel V. Heitor, Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Higher Education in the Portuguese Government, “and MIT Sloan faculty and students will have the opportunity to deepen their ties with a worldwide academic community.”

The Asia Business Center at Haas builds upon and expands existing joint programs with the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University with new partnerships inked with the National Taiwan University and the City University of Hong Kong. The new center will enable the Haas School to expand its outreach to Asian alumni, business leaders, and academic communities, and will provide executive leadership training, advanced management programs, certificates on risk management, and business networking opportunities. Future targeted regions include mainland China, India, Japan, and South Korea. The advanced management programs will be offered in collaboration with the Center for Executive Development.

Program creator and director, professor Teck-Hua Ho, is currently traveling with Dean Tom Campbell throughout Asia to promote the Center and sign agreements for new programs. “In recent years, the Asian markets have taken the world by storm. They are now a critical part of the world’s economy,” says Professor Ho. “While there is great demand for management expertise and training, these markets also offer innovations that are changing the way business is done elsewhere. For the academic community this offers rich grounds for joint research.”

This week’s GMAT challenge from PrepForTests.com is a problem solving question.

What is the approximate perimeter of a square that has a diagonal of length 6?

1. 4
2. 13
3. 17
4. 20
5. 24

Have a go at answering this and then review your answer.

MBA graduates are still worth the fat paychecks, according to a recent piece in the Hartford Business Journal, but the article also asserts that it may be time for a restructuring of MBA programs toward more specific disciplines. Too often, businesses complain that MBA graduates have only a superficial knowledge of their subject matter and struggle to provide in-depth analysis with limited expertise. The University of Connecticut School of Business thinks it has found a way to solve that problem.

P. Christopher Earley, the new dean of UConn’s business school, says that instead of a general MBA, students would get degrees in specialized fields such as a Masters in Real Estate Finance or a Masters in the Science of Risk Management. It would require offering more in-depth classes, but such changes could be made with the current faulty pool already in place. Earley hopes to have his plan in place by Fall 2009. UConn’s MBA program would remain, but it will be kept small and elite, ideal for senior and experienced managers to pursue after they’ve worked for eight to 10 years.

“In Europe, this is already a fairly significant movement,” Earley says, adding that he wants UConn to be ahead of the curve by embracing these changes now.

The more specialized MBA model will become the new norm, Earley thinks, with general MBAs all but dying out except at elite schools or in lower ranked, Internet-based programs. Kevin B. Taylor, MBA program director for Quinnipiac University, says it’s tough to imagine Earley’s theory that general MBAs will die out. Instead, many schools have just reworked their MBA programs–in Quinnipac’s case, adding more credit hours and ramping up business knowledge emphases.

Boston’s Northeastern University made its own MBA changes two years ago, says Thomas Moore, dean of the College of Business Administration. Rather than moving away from the MBA altogether, Northeastern reworked its programs–but Moore agreed with Earley’s assessment of the MBA’s current flaws. “The one-size-fits-all, the general MBA, has lost some of its appeal,” he says. “The notion of a broad, general MBA that’s going to create this Renaissance manager and leader, those days are probably gone.”

Northeastern has tried to incorporate more specific programs on issues such as finance, marketing or supply chains, but the college has also added an emphasis on “soft skills”, such as project management abilities, data mining, and communication. Moore says they restructured their program based on advice from corporations such as Fidelity, W.R. Grace, State Street Bank and others, gathered from a series of focus groups. The process took about 15 months.

The school has since kept in contact with many corporations to gauge how the changes have fared in terms of real-world results, and Moore says those businesses are happy to be more involved in the process. Some of those strengthened academic-corporate bonds have helped increase the number of corporate residencies–similar to internships–offered for their students.

“Companies are paying a premium for the MBA, and they expect results,” Moore says.

MBA applicants may be familiar with the theoretical benefits of overstating one’s accomplishments. After all, the purpose of a resume is to pitch oneself by highlighting strengths and accomplishments. It may be tempting to overstate or “creatively describe” one’s accomplishments on business school applications.

Denise Palmieri recently wrote an interesting article about “puffing” your GPA on your resume.  While her article was more focused on using the resume for a job application, the issue is the same.  Most MBA applicants know that several MBA programs have taken steps to ensure that applicants are not misrepresenting themselves by fudging basic facts in their applications.  Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Kellogg, Stern, and Haas (to name a few) all conduct application verification, and reserve the right to deny admission if a material misrepresentation is discovered. Several of these schools outsource the task of credential verification.

Beyond the fact that you might get “caught”, isn’t it best to start off this type of experience through being admitted on your own merits?  At the end of the day, it really is best to be in a place where you belong and are accepted for who you truly are.

Denise Palmieri states the bottom line well: “a firing in your work history, or a puffed salary, can cost you a job offer or cause your subsequent firing. The best plan is to learn how to be comfortable in your own skin with who you are, your experience to date and what you can offer. Honesty really IS the best policy.”