MBA News Bites

Stacy Blackman’s Weekly Roundup of B-School Intelligence

Economy dashes b-school dreams — International students hoping to finance their MBAs at top schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Ross and Cornell through the now-defunct CitiAssist or Sallie Mae financial aid programs face mounting anxieties as no loan program has stepped forward to take their place. (BusinessWeek)

Connecting with customers is key to survival — Last week’s Kellogg Marketing Conference hit home the hard fact that firms need to not just listen to their consumers, but to engage and connect with them on a deeper, more meaningful level if they hope to survive the economic downturn. Getting too cozy with consumers can have its down side, though. Case in point: when green-minded members of the public seeded Chevy’s video website with anti-truck videos, causing some serious damage to Chevy’s image.

Slew of profs go to Washington — The Harvard Crimson is reporting on the departure of two more faculty members set to vacate their posts at Harvard to join the Obama administration. Economics professor Jeremy C. Stein and Kennedy School professor Jeffrey B. Liebman will join a growing list of Harvard intellectuals headed for the nation’s capital.

“Glass ceiling and sticky floor remain in place,” says Cherie Blair —  The civil rights lawyer and wife of the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke Monday night at the annual Weatherspoon Lecture at Kenan-Flagler Business School on the state of working women today. When it comes to the driving force in economic history, it’s not China, Brazil or India, Blair said, using the term “womanomics” to describe women’s relationship to the economy.

Georgetown panel offers solutions to crisis — The Financial Times and the McDonough School of Business co-sponsored “A Panel Discussion on the Economic Crisis and Global Challenges” for Georgetown students earlier in the week. Overall, the panelists expressed optimism about getting out of the current recession–not depression. “As soon as we recover, we need to tell people to stop spending like mad and start saving like mad,”  said William Gale, director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution.

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