Overnight Idea: The Virtual and Personal MBA

In thinking about what would be a really different and challenging thought, I came to this idea: Design a MBA program around internet searched materials, library books and course materials bought on the cheap or obtained for free. Now, (I know) this seems reaching into an area that is all ready done well enough to turn out so many competent and creative souls. I mean, look at Wall Street and all their recent successes?

To me this will a be a project of compiling data, doing the actual course work discovered at MIT Free Online Courses, incorporating known models at Harvard, Princeton University Economics, Columbia, Stanford, Michigan and Northwestern resources, while adding in the latest business thoughts, from entreprenuerial to regulatory practices.

A music interlude: Johnny Cash's I Walk The Line


By no means is this going to be groundbreaking or money making. It's a desire to learn and study in depth what makes all these $100,000 a year people (well, more in NYC, less, in Midwest fly-over) include oddities and books that are classic, and others, that teach a different mantra, that isn't in Milton Friedman's wettest dreams.

I wanted to take the GMAT years ago, back in 1998-99. Studied, bought the Princeton Review book, etc. Got sidetracked and wound up taking the LSAT. Scanner at heart and soul.

So, this will be a new project with a twist or two likely. I like to incorporate information into a model of how something works. Which is what Business is: a model of what works and what doesn't.

More interesting is to discover how Economics, Business, Law and Public Policy work (or don't work) together.

I figure it will take 2-3 years of reading, writing, researching and designing the course work. With plenty I won't learn or know, but plenty that will enlighten me to the history and evolution of what a true MBA graduate should know.

Example: Jim Kramer's Warning in October 2008 about Stock Market


I will post my work: course study, books read or researched, internet articles, business channel stuff, youtube vids, research papers I will write (God willing) and compiled program of PDFs, Powerpoint stuff, Excel spreadsheets, etc. Maybe it will work out well.

There is a few of goals to this: to create both a virtual program and get what others are learning (or mislearning) in their programs. Criticism is welcome - as well as resources that are good to use or available for free. Nearly free is also the goal. Who is getting their education on the cheap in these hard economic times?

I figure if I can put together a comprehensive, intelligent and understandable model for a learning (with the undergrad course stuff included), why does education need to be so expensive?

I'm not selling this idea yet. But it has merit. People need choices that are low cost and digestable in 1 1/2 -2 year window of learning. Also, the path to enlightenment is usually a personal experience more than a guided tour by people with their own motivations and shortsightness built in.

I hope that in the end I can be more informed while informing others in the process.

My 1st semester will start in January 2009. Till then, I am compiling the nuts and bolts of what I need to include and discover during the next 2 years.

(So, that Perfect Storm post will take a backseat.)

Final Music: Johnny Cash's God's Gonna Cut You Down