Tipo de calibración a llevar a cabo Expertos Expertos

One of the drawbacks that the GSBPP faces is the fact that the MBA industry is driven by reputation. Reputation is driven by rankings in the various publications cited in Chapter 3. Rankings are driven by student and faculty preferences, recruiter and employer preferences, admission standards, GMAT scores, and graduates’ salaries, just to name a few criteria. However, the underlying factor in each of these categories is that the schools that dominate the Top 20 in rankings from year-to-year are the programs that have been around for quite a long time and have “ambassadors,” if you will, that champion the name of the program in the real world.

For example, the business world has been exposed to many Harvard MBAs that have collectively established the reputation of the Harvard Business School as a quality MBA program. This draws more students to apply because they feel the Harvard MBA will get them whatever it is they want (more money, access to a new career, and so on). In turn, Harvard now has a broader range of students to choose from. So, they are able to pick more of the high-caliber students and less of the low-caliber students. Consequently, the students do better because they started out more qualified.

Then Harvard MBA graduates go out in the business world and excel, not necessarily because of the Harvard MBA, but because they were high-caliber to begin with. Regardless of why they succeed, the fact is that they do

Business School because the rest of the world doesn’t see these students’ credentials prior to going to Harvard. All the world sees is that these Harvard MBAs are excelling. So now the demand for Harvard MBAs goes up because businesses want them. So, more students apply to the Harvard Business School and the cycle repeats itself.

Unfortunately, for the non-ranked or new schools, the reverse is true. Fewer high-caliber and more low-caliber students (probably those that got rejected from the higher- ranked schools) attend the non-ranked or new schools. So, they have less to choose from and one can draw conclusions where it goes from there. The impact of MBA program reputations creates both a “virtuous cycle” and “vicious cycle” at the same time.

So, for the GSBPP, which only initiated the MBA in 2002 and only had its first graduating class in 2003, it faces a difficult task if it aims to break into the Top 20 or even top 50 rankings. Because it is still in its introductory stages, there haven’t been a lot of the “ambassadors” out there from GSBPP who can carry the banner of the school and who can vouch for the quality of the program.(Trevino, Lertangtam, & Viera, 2004) This, coupled with the fact that there is no GMAT requirement for admissions, and the fact that only military officers (U.S. or foreign) and DoD civilians can attend, does not bode well for the hope of ever being ranked highly (or for qualifying for these rankings at all).

The fact that the GSBPP has been successful in gaining accreditation is a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, there are too many things out of the realm of its control to ever gain access into the upper echelon

of the MBA elite, at least in terms of rankings. The accreditation serves more to validate its graduates and entice officers to choose the GSBPP over civilian schools when choosing to pursue an MBA, than it does to compete with other MBA programs.

The GSBPP also faces budgetary constraints that most other programs do not face. As noted previously, most universities understand that tuition only covers a fraction of the costs of running the MBA program. They rely on additional funding from sources such as endowments from alumni, donations, government subsidies, and executive MBA programs, consulting fees, and research funding. The endowments constitute the bulk of the supplemental income. The only limit on this additional funding is the generosity of the alumni. Thus, if a program needs additional funding to expand, they can organize a fund raising drive and offer to name buildings after alumni and whatnot.

The GSBPP, on the other hand, is to a large degree constrained to its portion of the overall budget at NPS, and the NPS budget is constrained by what the DoN allocates and what the other services provide in terms of tuition. They also have access to research funding, but since the majority of the research projects are for the DoD, the pool of money that the funds providers possess is limited as well. The DoD does not have the same access to capital resources as IBM. So, research funding is constrained as well.

Most noticeably, however, is the lack of sizeable endowments from alumni. Beyond the NPS Foundation, a large pool of funds from philanthropic alumni doesn’t exist to

If the GSBPP wants to expand the programs it offers, there are very limited channels that it can access to alleviate funding shortfalls. Thus, the GSBPP cannot be expected to compete on the same level as the dominant MBA programs.

Another burden facing the GSBPP is the competition for renowned professors that also assist in making a name for the MBA program. As pointed out previously, demand for faculty is up and so is the price. Unfortunately, due to the congressional cap on what GSBPP can pay professors, it falls out of the realm of competitiveness for faculty salaries at the Associate Professor and Assistant Professor ranks. With the additional stresses that the strong local economy put on faculty members, especially in the housing market, it further limits the pool of applicants to those who are uniquely interested in defense-focused research or those who love the Monterey area.

The defense-focused niche also limits the applicant pool of professors. When young professors are hired to the GSBPP, there is no guarantee of acceptance on the tenure track. So, prior to being approved for the tenure track, a professor must conduct a certain amount of research in the defense area. With no guarantee of acceptance or of tenure once accepted onto the tenure track, there is little incentive to perform DoD-relevant research. This is for the simple reason that faculty are leery of being pigeonholed as a defense-focused professor by the broader academic community.

A professor gains credibility in his/her discipline based on the research he or she conducts and publishes in that discipline. If junior faculty members primarily conduct defense-focused research that is loosely tied, at

best, to their discipline during the early years of their careers and they do not get tenure from the GSBPP, they stand the chance of either being seen as an outsider from the mainstream academic community or at least being behind the power curve at their next place of employment. Thus, incentives do not match up between all professors and the GSBPP defense-focused MBA niche that is desired.

Lastly, in regards to what the GSBPP can do to curtail the threat of substitutes, it is doing all that it can. By branching out into distance education, GSBPP is taking full advantage of the constraints it faces. As mentioned in the Chapter 6 analysis, there are basically three basic avenues to address the threat of substitutes. You can stop doing what you do and start doing only what the substitutes do, you can do both (called straddling), or you can ignore the substitutes and focus on what you’re already doing.

Given the constrained resources and how the GBSPP falls under the NPS mission, dropping the resident MBA and focusing only on distance learning or executive education would not be feasible. Because of how the GSBPP is geographically isolated from operating bases, offering a part-time MBA is not feasible either. There is no large pool of officers in the local area that can attend night classes or weekend classes, and since only officers can attend, civilians can’t come here at night or on the weekends to take courses either. You have to be stationed in Monterey to have access to the GSBPP and you have to be accepted into the full-time resident MBA program to get stationed here.

there are students who desire to earn an MBA, but do not have access to the GSBPP. So, instead of ignoring them and, consequently, forcing them to seek a MBA from competitors, the smart avenue is to reach out to them through distance education. Ignoring them would only hurt the image of the GSBPP. For an infant program seeking distinction, turning away students who desire to participate in the MBA program offered is a poor strategy.

Trying to break into executive education is another smart move. Currently executive education at NPS is taught primarily at the Center for Continuing Education (CCE). The CCE is located in the same building as the GSBPP yet, as of now, there is no direct affiliation with the GSBPP faculty, although moves are being made to incorporate GSBPP influence into the CCE. This effort would expand GSBPP’s avenues for funding as well as its overall reputation without incurring too much additional cost.