Please read my well read article
Harvard Vs Wharton, A Comparative Study
Please also read my other well read articles
Friday, March 30, 2012
Is MBA worth the investment 03-31
Please read my well read article
Harvard Vs Wharton, A Comparative Study
Thursday, March 29, 2012
India specific Global Strategy 03-29
I would like to share exclusive HBR content on India specific global strategy with senior and middle management level managers working for Indian organizations or organizations having their presence in India. I have accessed this exclusive content as an Advisor on Advisory council on HBR.This I bartered for giving my inputs to them on the prospects for 2012-13 for leading economies like India china & USA.
This I will share in an exclusive online lecture to the executives sponsored by the organization.The lecture would be of three hours duration it would be by way power point presentations,video, illustrations and info graphics, & case studies followed by question-answer session.
The date and timing can be as per mutual convenience most probably after 18th April 2012.
The organization interested in sponsoring their middle & senior level executives need to contact us through the form. They will also have to provide the URL of their website. It will help us to evaluate the organization and customize the content of the content as per the need.,will also help us decide the cost of the event.
Once we receive the form from you, we will provide you with our email id and and a Skype id for you to contact us and have pre-scheduled meetings. Please mention "India Specific Global Strategy" in the "Product Name" column.
Click Here to contact us.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Helping Women Win Back Opportunity Through Education
AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program
Helping
Women Win Back Opportunity Through Education
The
AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program is helping win back opportunity for
low income 50+ women by funding education, training, and skills upgrades that
can lead to better employment and increased financial security for women and
their families. Since 2007, The AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program has
awarded scholarships to more than 800 eligible women- facilitating their entry
into programs they could otherwise not afford, and ultimately assisting in
their recession recovery efforts.
How to Apply
The scholarship application period for the 2012-2013 academic
year will last from Wednesday, February 1, 2012, at
9 a.m. CST until Friday March 30,
2012, at 5 p.m. CDT.
Note: Read the instructions
carefully and use the correct combination of uppercase and lowercase letters
when completing the application. Click the "Save" button often to
save your work and do not use your Web browser's "Forward" or
"Back" buttons.
QUALIFICATIONS
Eligibility Requirements
An applicant for the AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program
must be:
·
Women, age 50+ by March 30, 2012
·
Low-income
·
Pursuing a technical or vocational education, an associates
degree, or a bachelor's degree
·
Enrolled in a U.S. Department of Education accredited school or
techinical program within 6 months of the scholarship award date
*An applicant, when taking into account income and family size,
must be at 150% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines or less to qualify for a
scholarship. If an applicant does not meet this criteria they will not have
access to the application, because they are not eligible for the scholarship.
Selection Factors
Scholarship winners are chosen by an independent selection
committee established by the AARP Foundation.
Priority is given to women in these categories:
·
Those who have been unemployed for more than one year
·
Those in low-paying jobs with no career opportunities
·
Those who are raising the children of another family member
·
Those who are women veterans
In addition, the following factors are considered for each
applicant:
·
Financial need
·
Personal circumstances and achievements
·
Educational and career goals
·
Challenges faced in life
·
Impact of scholarship
Accreditation:
Scholarships may be used for any course of study at a U.S.
Department of Education-accredited public or private post-secondary school,
including community colleges, technical schools, and four-year universitities.
Applicants should check with their schools enrollment or financial aid office
to confirm U.S. Department of Education accreditation.
Scholarship funds are paid directly to the institution and are
used for tuition, fees, and books.
Please visit the database of accredited postsecondary institutions and program provided by the U.S. Department of
Education to see if your school is accredited.
Mentoring Program
The AARP Foundation Women's Scholarship Program provides mentors
for one year. The mentors are trained retention professionals who help the
women:
·
set academic and career goals
·
work through time-management issues
·
improve study skills
·
understand and navigate the “hidden curriculum”/social mores of
colleges and universities
·
provide sustained, effective encouragement and guidance to
ensure academic progress
·
Challenges facing low-income, high risk adult learners,
including addressing basic needs and identification of other sources of
financial aid for school
·
Building and maintaining confidence
·
General career planning
The mentors achieve these goals through online mentoring and telephone but there could be cases where the mentor and student live close enough to provide opportunity for face-to-face meetings over the course of the year. Learn more about the Mentoring Program.
Important Dates:
Dates
|
Action
|
February 1, 2012
|
Application Opens at 9:00am
CST
|
March 30, 2012
|
Application Closes by 5:00pm
CST
|
June 2012
|
Awards are announced via
email
|
August 2012
|
Scholarships available for
disbursements to institution
|
December 2012
|
Deadline to be enrolled in an
accredited institution
|
The scholarship program is made possible by AARP Foundation with generous support from Walmart Foundation and AARP.
The Results Are In: Women Are Better Leaders
The Results Are In: Women Are Better Leaders Erika Andersen (Courtesy Forbes)
Just read an excerpt of an article from HBR, over at my friend Bob
Morris’ blog. The article, by Jack Zenger and Joseph Folkman, is based on a
research study they did of 7,280 leaders in 2011.
They looked at leaders in a variety of positions
– from very senior management to ‘individual contributor.’ In the study, they
asked others to rate the leaders in 16 leadership competencies. According
to the data shared in the article, they found that women out-scored men in all
but one of the 16 competencies, and in 12 of the 16, the women were better by a
significant margin. And, in the words of Zenger and Folkman, “two
of the traits where women outscored men to the highest degree — taking
initiative and driving for results — have long been thought of as particularly
male strengths.”
And though there were more males in the study
(and the imbalance increased at higher levels, as is the case in most
corporations – at the highest level, 78% of the mangers were men), the women
were seen as better leaders at every level. Again, in Zenger and Folkman’s
words: “…at every level, more women were rated by
their peers, their bosses, their direct reports, and their other associates as
better overall leaders than their male counterparts — and the higher the level,
the wider that gap grows.”
This lines up with my experience. Women are
among the most talented and respected leaders in the organizations with which
we work; I often find that the women at the 2nd or 3rd level from the top in an
organization, especially, are more impressive than their male peers. They
build better teams; they’re more liked and respected as managers; they tend to
be able to combine intuitive and logical thinking more seamlessly; they’re more
aware of the implications of the their own and others’ actions; and they
think more accurately about the resources needed to accomplish a given outcome.
This study by Zenger and Folkman seems to
demonstrate pretty strongly that women are seen as better leaders than men by
those around them. And there are other studies indicating that companies
that have a higher representation of women in management ranks are more profitable and have higher employee productivity. And
yet – I’ve noted this statistic
before, but I’ll say it again in this context: only 33 of the Fortune 1,000 are
headed by women.
So, what’s the deal? Why are women still so woefully
under-represented, especially at the most senior levels?
I’d love to hear your sense of why this is still
happening. Here are two elements I think have a big impact:
Women don’t self-promote. Of the 16
leadership competencies Zenger and Folkman assessed, the only one where men
outranked women was “develops a strategic perspective.” One of the areas
in which I observe womennot developing a strategic view is the
advancement of their own careers. I notice that many more men than women focus
on where they want to take their careers, and regularly use some part of their
time to develop the relationships that will support their success, and offer
themselves for outside-their-day-job opportunities that will show their
superiors they have the bandwidth and the capability to do more. Women, on
the other hand, tend to put all their energy into simply doing the best
possible job in their current position. We seem much more inclined to
believe that work is a meritocracy, and that if you simply work hard and get
great results, you’ll get noticed and promoted. Admirable, but not very
accurate.
Senior men still mostly hire other men. My husband
and I have been watching the first four seasons of Mad Men lately, and it’s
shocking to remember that only 50 years ago, women in business were almost
exclusively secretaries and telephone operators – and generally stayed in those
jobs only until they got married. In the mid 1960s, only about 35% of women
worked, and only 1 in 50 working women held managerial or professional jobs.
The grandmothers and grandfathers of the young women coming into the work force
today expected that women, if they worked at all, would be secretaries, nurses,
teachers, librarians, or possibly factory workers, and that they would only
work if they “had” to – that is, if they didn’t have husbands who could be the
family breadwinner. The older white males who run most companies are only
one generation away from those beliefs – and I suspect their parents’
expectations still color their hiring and promotion decisions more than they
would acknowledge.
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel,
though. Perhaps I’m being overly hopeful, but I’m seeing both of these
phenomena much less often in men and women in their 20s and 30s: the young
women I deal with in organizations tend to be as confident and ambitious as the
men, and the young men seem to be much more gender-neutral in their hiring and
promotion decisions.
But till these younger people come fully into power in business,
what can we do to change the statistics, and give women a more equitable – and,
according to Zenger and Folkman, well-deserved – shot at the corner office?
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Five up and coming Universities in USA 03-24
Five universities that really are
up-and-comers
By Daniel de Vise
Many in higher education love to
pick on the U.S. News rankings franchise— because it’s the dominant collegiate
ranking, and because ordinal rankings seem somewhat arbitrary and are difficult
to defend.
George Mason University has enjoyed a rapid ascent through the ranks of research universities. One reason: puppies. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post - THE WASHINGTON POST))Yet, a U.S. News ranking provided part of the inspiration for a story in Wednesday’s Post about the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. For each of the last few years, U.S. News has listed the suburban campus among the nation’s top institutions for undergraduate teaching. The list is based on a survey of university presidents, provosts and admission deans, asking them to name schools they consider leaders in collegiate learning.
What struck me about the ranking
was the way UMBC stood out on the list. Here’s the rest of the top 10:
Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Stanford, Berkeley, Notre Dame, Miami
University and the College of William and Mary. All are actual Ivies, “Public Ivies”
or Ivy-caliber institutions.
UMBC is a decidedly different
sort of school.
For one thing, it’s
not the flagship. That distinction, in Maryland, goes to the University of
Maryland in College Park. It’s not hundreds of years old, either; UMBC opened
in 1966. For the first half of its young life, UMBC existed as a minimally
selective commuter school.
In a very brief span, the
university has ascended to the ranks of national universities, with serious
research ambitions and ranked doctoral programs.
UMBC is part of higher
education’s younger generation, so to speak, a cohort of universities that came
into their own in the second half of the 20th century and only recently joined
the ranks of “national” (as opposed to regional) universities.
Higher education is a relatively
static world: the vast majority of top-tier universities existed before the
20th century, built large endowments and, in the case of public institutions,
have long enjoyed a status as state flagships.
UMBC and its peers are a sort of
new breed: young, fast-growing schools that are swiftly ascending into the top
rank. Why have they prospered? Partly as a matter of simple growth: there are
far too many students in Maryland, California, Florida and most other states to
fit in the historic flagships. But it’s more than that. Faculty at these
schools say they’ve benefitted from a rare opportunity to build a university in
the modern era, with modern priorities and contemporary sensibilities.
(Although UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski notes the success of his school’s
classics department, hardly a cutting-edge pursuit.)
“What we’re working to do at UMBC
is to take the best of what we know about liberal arts colleges, and the best
of what we know about research universities, and put it together,” Hrabowski
said.
Here is a brief dossier on UMBC
and four other institutions with similar trajectories:
UMBC: Established in 1966 as part of the University
System of Maryland. Evolved from commuter school to residential research
university — a sort of second flagship behind U-Md. in College Park. SAT
averages rose 300 points in 25 years to 1206 (actually 400 points; I’m
subtracting 100 to compensate for recentering.) Joined the elite “Research I”
list in the past two decades; now listed as a “high research activity” school,
technically the second-highest Carnegie category. Annual research funding tops
$80 million. Ranked 157th among national universities by U.S. News.
Binghamton University :
Founded in 1946 as a two-year college. Evolved into one of four “university
centers” and an unofficial flagship of the flagship-less SUNY system. Ranked
90th among national universities by U.S. News. Joined the Research I camp over
the past 20 years, and now listed as a second-tier “high research” school.
Considered a “Public Ivy.” SATs average in the 1200s.
George Mason University: Founded as a freestanding institution in
1972, after serving as an anonymous branch campus of the University of
Virginia. Ranked 138th among national universities by U.S. News. Rated as a
“high research activity” university by Carnegie, with a $107 million research
budget and 33,000 students. Recognized, along with UMBC, as an up-and-comer by
U.S. News, and cited for strong minority completion rates. Moreover, the school
has enormous influence over development and culture in Northern Virginia.
University of California, Santa Cruz: Founded in 1965 as an outpost for the liberal
arts within the UC system — a sort of public Swarthmore. Evolved into a
Research I university over the past 20 years. Now categorized as a “very high
research activity” school. Ranked 72nd among national universities by U.S.
News, with elite admission stats. Beat out Berkeley and Stanford to house the Grateful Dead archives,
befitting its status as the unofficial torchbearer of the old Berkeley ethos.
What other campus could have spawned the band Camper Van Beethoven?
University of South Florida: Founded in 1956 as a modestly ambitious state
university. Evolved into sprawling Research I status over the past 20 years and
now considered one of 63 top-tier “very high research” institution, as well as
the eighth-largest U.S. university. Ranked 181st among national universities by
U.S. News. Like GMU, USF is known less for selectivity and more for the sheer,
impressive scale of its research and scholarship.
Please also read my other well read articles
Please also read my other well read articles
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