[分享]加拿大MBA细分

General management
When Harvard created its business school in 1908, it cobbled together for the first time a formal education in the various business techniques necessary for managing the new industrial economy. Managers needed to master double-entry bookkeeping, statistical methods and finance to keep new and massive companies running, and Harvard's answer was a series of courses that taught students how to run a large, complex organization. The idea of general management, and the MBA, was born.

A hundred years later, MBA students can take their pick from a number of streams and specialties, but at many schools the broad approach to business education remains. Not surprisingly, general management programs still comprise the most widely attended stream at Canadian schools offering MBAs.

Larry Wynant, an associate dean at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, points out that "general manager" was a common title for senior executives in banks. "What that meant was that you were running a complex, multifaceted division, including HR, marketing and financial results," he says. "That's still a skill in demand today." And it's especially so for those who picture themselves at the top of a large organization. If you want to help your company navigate through the risks and hazards of the global economy, general management is for you, says Wynant. "It's for individuals who like big ideas, want to consider the larger picture and have a say in where their organization is going strategically."

Typical jobs for grads include senior management positions, though investment banking and consulting are also common. "It's anything that requires total enterprise thinking--you're looking at competitive strategy and big global issues," says Wynant. "This is not for people who are content to sit at lower levels."

Those looking to move up will want to consider Ivey, since it's known for its general management approach. Some of the other big names are HEC Montréal, Laurier, Rotman and Ottawa.

Indeed, one of the most popular courses in the general management stream at HEC is Being a CEO, taught by Bertin Nadeau, who sits on the board of Sun Life. "The idea is that a student understands these jobs," says Benoît Tremblay, academic supervisor of the stream. "Many from general management have to work close to these people. This is the basic idea." Tremblay says HEC sees many students from subsidiaries of large companies being asked to sit on global committees of those companies, which demands they have transferable skills--exactly what the general management stream provides. "People from one role may be asked to play a different role on the board of another subsidiary--say, the product committee for the subsidiary of another country," says Tremblay. "With these courses, you can do that."

Total enterprise perspective, developing corporate strategy and the ability to move laterally through a company with one set of tools--that's what the general management stream provides. "MBAs should not be specialists," says Tremblay. "We have masters in science for that." J.S.

Science, Technology and Information
It's often been said that managing technology, information and the people who work with them is like herding cats. Yet providing MBAs with these management skills is exactly what the Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ont., Simon Fraser University In Vancouver, the University of Saskatchewan and Carleton University promise to do.

At Queen's and Simon Fraser, the emphasis is on giving tech-familiar people the necessary business and management skills. The 12-month science and technology MBA at Queen's, for engineers or those with science or technology backgrounds, aims to provide students with a comprehensive and multidisciplinary perspective. The program relies heavily on teamwork to create a collaborative environment and hone leadership skills. Grads end up getting jobs in areas such as information systems or information technology management, and product or project management. But, ironically, many decide to leave the science world behind for careers in such fields as investment banking, communications and health-care management.

At Simon Fraser's management of technology MBA program, students typically come from the technical or scientific side of biotech companies and want greater management skills geared toward their industry. The one-year program allows them to choose whether they want to specialize in managing technology or biotechnology, which gives them a solid business background in topics such as bioethics and regulatory affairs, as well as familiarity with emerging technologies like genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics.

Biotechnology management is also offered as a specialization at the University of Saskatchewan. Created in 2003, the 12-month MBA looks at the issues facing biotechnology management at the industrial, national and international levels, including intellectual property, regulatory obligations and the costs and benefits of technological progress.

At Carleton's Sprott School of Business in Ottawa, managing innovation, technology and change in a global context is emphasized. The technological core of this 12- or 16-month program focuses on digital business, enterprise development, managing transformational change and innovation management. Grads are often hired by high-tech companies and global organizations, such as the Canadian International Development Agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, or the International Development Research Centre. Who says you can't be taught to herd cats? B.G.

International business
Competition is fierce in the global village, and the business leader who doesn't pay attention to international issues might soon be out of a job. No wonder, then, that MBAs specializing in international business have such appeal these days and why so many of these programs offer internships overseas.

At the University of New Brunswick- Saint John, students learn about the fundamentals of business within an international context, focusing on cross-cultural organizational strategies and international business issues. Near the end of the 12-month program, Canadians can go on an international internship, while international students gain placements with Canadian companies and government agencies. Grads typically work as executive directors, international marketing executives, division managers or management consultants and earn, on average, $62,880 after graduation.

The University of Saskatchewan also emphasizes the importance of developing a global mindset and experiencing the international market first-hand. Students can participate in a six-week international internship through the college's partners in Japan, the United States, central and eastern Europe, or China and India. Saskatchewan's 12-month program focuses on strategic aspects of global business management, such as the dynamics of international trade and global entrepreneurship.

Multiple international opportunities are available during Dalhousie University's 16-month MBA, such as the Pan-American Partnership for Business Education. The partnership between Dalhousie University in Halifax, HEC Montréal, Pace University in New York and Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico focuses on NAFTA and key business issues involving Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. It culminates in a trip to New York City, where students meet with senior executives. They can also go on international internships at the trade section of Canadian embassies and consulates around the world, or participate in the Foreign Business Program, in which they travel overseas and represent Canadian companies trying to develop foreign markets. Graduates often find work at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade or in the private sector in areas like strategic planning and business development, trade finance and export marketing.

The University of Victoria hopes its MBA students will acquire a deeper understanding of global business through a program that integrates course work with language training and cultural awareness. The 17-month MBA offers an opportunity to use this knowledge on a one-month unpaid internship overseas, typically in Malaysia, Korea or possibly Mexico, to work on an international business-related project.

For those who plan to assume leadership positions with internationally competitive organizations, Carleton's Eric Sprott School of Business's 12- or 16-month MBA claims to be the program of choice. The theme of international business flows across the entire program, and courses offered specifically for international business address managing multinational enterprises and international business strategy.

At Laval University in Quebec, students come from Europe, North Africa, Asia and South America to attend the 16-month international business MBA. Part of its allure is the opportunity to do a double specialization in international business with a traditional field, such as marketing. Additionally, Laval prides itself on its dynamic international business faculty, half of whom are not originally from Canada. A four- to six-week internship is also available to roughly 30 students who are split into two teams and sent to different foreign countries to find work with local companies. Graduates are typically hired at international organizations, government agencies or small- and medium-sized enterprises.

There are no magic bullets when it comes to business, but armed with global knowledge and experience, grads of these programs might just have the next best thing. B.G.

Entrepreneurship
There's nothing quite like starting something new and being your own boss. But getting there is a challenge. Fortunately, there are four MBA programs tailored to entrepreneurs that can help: the Queen's School of Business, Laurier, the University of Calgary's Haskayne School of Business and the University of Victoria.

There's a greater emphasis on entrepreneurism these days--and you don't have to look any further than Laurier to see it. Two years ago, it unveiled the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship. The centre does much more than support the courses taught at the school. Part of its work involves matching students up with actual entrepreneurs and acting as an incubator for student ideas. What's more, the truly ambitious can start up their own business while still in school and get credit for it.

Hands-on experience is great, but MBAs in the Queen's School of Business's New Venture Management stream have cash to back them up. It's the brainchild of Elspeth Murray, who has spent the past eight years developing the specialty. Next year, students will have the chance to manage a $3-million venture capital fund. Considering 20% of Queen's students go on to start their own companies, Murray and the rest of her team must be doing something right.

The entrepreneurship stream at Haskayne is also focused on growing a new venture, with courses that examine many of the pricklier challenges dealing with commercializing new technologies. Students can also learn how to develop a legal plan for new ventures, to deal with the messy world of intellectual property rights and to set up a share structure.

While Queen's and Laurier take a more generalized approach to entrepreneurship, the University of Victoria's team-taught entrepreneur niche steers its MBA students to pursue opportunities in business ventures that are socially conscious. So if you have a real passion for "green" opportunities, this could well be the right fit for you.

Anyone can be an entrepreneur if they have the right skills. But remember, even Bill Gates had a little help. M.B.

Human Resources
Some people pooh-pooh it as a "soft skill," but human resources management is becoming an increasingly strategic part of any successful organization. In today's competitive business environment, training is often done online, employees may be from all corners of the world--or in all corners of the world--and employees contract out more and more job functions.

Although you'll encounter human resource cases or theory in almost every MBA program in Canada, both Saint Mary's University in Halifax and Victoria's Royal Roads University are two outstanding examples of schools that spend a good chunk of their energy researching and teaching the discipline.

At Saint Mary's, about 15 out of 90 students specialize in HR, and all MBA candidates must take two core human resource courses. The specialist program focuses on the nuts and bolts--recruitment, selection and compensation--but also looks at HR strategically. For example, students don't learn about performance appraisal (assessing an employee's work after the fact) but instead examine ways to proactively manage performance. "It think it's a real forward-looking view of the whole discipline, as opposed to what it was five, 10, 15 years ago," says Ramesh Venkat, director of the Saint Mary's MBA. Because of the strategic nature of the program, many students get jobs as consultants once they're through. Others work as junior or middle managers in human resource departments in all sectors.

The human resources management stream at Royal Roads is targeted at those who are already HR practitioners. They come from all levels of organizations, from junior to senior, but have one thing in common: they want to take their knowledge of the discipline to the next level. All students in the HR stream must take the following courses: Strategic Rewards, which examines the power of organizational rewards and compensation; Transformational Change, which helps them develop an understanding of the nature of organization power and politics and expand their own roles within their organization; Managing Organizational Change, which looks at students' own leadership capabilities vis-a-vis organizational change management; and Strategic Implementation, which teaches MBAs how to implement human resources policy. Students enrol in the program with a view to getting a promotion, working as a consultant or just to improve their current job performance. Considering that human resources management is becoming increasingly important, that might not be a bad idea at all. C.G.

Marketing
There's always been more to marketing than writing catchy slogans or dreaming up flashy ads. With increased interest in the Internet and a heightened emphasis on brand identity and return on marketing investment, however, the job has become even tougher. And if you want to break into a senior position in the $51-billion Canadian industry these days, you'd have a much better shot if you have your MBA.

While all MBA programs cover marketing to some extent, students who want to specialize in the field will likely find themselves doing it in southwestern Ontario. That's where you'll find three of Canada's four most finely tuned marketing programs: York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto, the Michael G. DeGroote School of Business at Hamilton's McMaster University and Brock University in St. Catharines. The Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary is a top choice outside of Ontario.

For over a decade now, Schulich grads have been sought out by the giants of the consumer goods sector, including Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson. But in recent years, the school's reach has expanded beyond consumer products to include pharmaceuticals and financial services. To meet demand, Schulich MBAs now have the option to focus their marketing degree on a specific industry, says Joseph Palumbo, executive director of the school's career development centre. "That gives them more opportunities," he explains.

DeGroote tries to give its students real-world experience before they leave the classroom. For example, as part of the school's knowledge management course--which focuses on ways to get the best out of employees while ensuring that ideas are not lost through turnover--a large Ontario software developer gave one student team a new application that it wanted to sell. The team's task: to help the company understand its target market and develop a pricing strategy. They delivered. After poring over every detail of the software, the students presented their ideas directly to the company's executives.

Canada's newest MBA program--at Brock in St. Catherines, Ont.--is also striving to be strong in marketing education. To get students solving real-world problems, this past spring Brock began offering them the chance to work as consultants for local businesses. One task was conducting research for a health-care provider in the Niagara region looking to increase its range of services and broaden its clientele.

Debi Andrus, an assistant marketing professor at Haskayne, is the first to admit Calgary is not a mecca for advertising, since the school is far from Toronto, where most of the country's marketing decisions are made. Nevertheless, the field is one of the school's strengths. What distinguishes Haskayne's program is its focus on business-to-business marketing, with a strong emphasis on the industrial sector and project-based learning. The goals include ensuring grads know how to purchase advertisements and understand consumer behaviour.

If you want to make it in the cutthroat business of marketing, a degree from one of these schools can definitely point you in the right direction--and may just improve your own marketability. M.B.

Finance
It may be too obvious to mention, but nothing happens in business without money. Nothing gets built, nothing transacted. Maybe that explains why graduates of MBA finance streams are so valuable.

Of course, you'll need a head for numbers if you're considering a career in finance. "There's a large quantitative element to this course," says Karen Theriault, director of the MBA corporate connections center at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, "so we find a good proportion of the people coming into the program have some kind of background in that." Some 30% of those entering the program, she says, are engineers and computer science grads who have decided to step into the business world.

Rather than building bridges or developing software, these and other graduates of MBA programs that focus on finance will find themselves working in wholesale banking or investment banks on the research side, while others end up in portfolio or risk management. Some will go into institutional sales and trading, where they might work on a trading desk, while others end up--no surprise--in corporate finance departments.

If that's where you want to end up with an MBA, then take a look at the University of Alberta's School of Business, the Sauder School of Business at UBC, Brock University and McGill's faculty of management, all of which are strong in finance.

Where else can you get your head around the numbers? One of the newest and most innovative programs is the MBA in investment management offered through the Goodman Institute at Concordia's John Molson School of Business in Montreal. It's the first in the world to combine an MBA with a chartered financial analyst designation. "We've done what no other school in the world has done," says Alan Hochstein, director of the Goodman Institute of Investment Management about the course. Combining an MBA with the CFA--one of the pre-eminent designations for anyone hoping to work as a fund manager or analyst in financial services--offers students double accreditation. But it's a difficult program: the majority of those who write the Level 1 CFA exam fail--the pass rate hovers at about 30%.

The Goodman Institute claims it can help students get through it, however. Just three years old, the program is offered simultaneously in Montreal and Toronto, with the instructor rotating cities every second week. Students study CFA material through all three years and take part in a one-week prep course each year just before the CFA exam. They take nine additional credits outside of the CFA to get their MBA. "It's a tough course, so you have to work at it," says Hochstein. "But our pass rate has been phenomenal." In fact, it couldn't be better: 100% of the recent graduating class passed their Level 3 CFA exam.

That remarkable success rate is getting noticed. The CFA Institute has called Goodman to ask about using the model as a template for other schools, while officials at Beijing Normal University have set up a course there, which sees Chinese students studying with the Goodman Institute. J.S.

Zen and the art of management mastery
Edmonton may not seem like much of a haven for New Agers. But stressed-out MBA students at the University of Alberta flock to the business building's rooftop Zen garden, which features stone pathways and cedar benches--and the best view of the city.

Most street smarts
At Carleton's Sprott School of Business and McMaster's DeGroote in Hamilton, MBA students learn the ups and downs of the stock market on each school's real-time trading floor. Carleton says it's a "safe and fun" way to experience the trading environment. In other words, you're off the hook if you mistakenly execute a million-dollar trade. At Mac, a trader-in-residence visits the Allen H. Gould Trading Floor weekly to provide expert advice to future market makers.

Best bar scene
George Street in St. John's, Nfld., boasts the most densely populated bar and restaurant district in Canada. But Memorial University's business school is quick to point out that doing your MBA on the Rock isn't all about partying: "Far too many people see us as a bunch of booze bags," says Tom Clift, the school's associate dean.

Mind your manners
Sure, hitting the books is important. But let's face it: a lot of business goes down over lunch, and slurping your soup or sending a cherry tomato hurtling across the restaurant could be enough to scuttle a deal. The Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ont., and the University of Calgary's Haskayne School both offer etiquette courses that teach MBA students the fine art of sealing the deal while eating spaghetti (and other tricky lessons on how to do lunch).

The inside track
Winter in Ottawa isn't exactly pleasant: the average low in January is -15¡C, with winds that can make it feel like -40. But don't let harsh weather in the nation's capital turn you off of doing an MBA at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business. Thanks to a series of heated tunnels that connect all the buildings on campus, you can trek to class without ever setting your Gucci shoes outside.

Dubious honours
At Queen's, the student who makes the most "obtuse, curious or ridiculous" comments during class is forced to tote around a foot-high garden gnome, dressed in a green sweater and red hat, for the rest of the day. At the University of Western Ontario's Ivey School of Business, the class turkey gets stuck with a rubber chicken.

Speak easy
Two-thirds of MBA students at McGill University in Montreal (ranked first out of 357 North American colleges by the Princeton Review for "racial harmony") speak three or more languages. One-quarter speak four or more.

For the foodies
If your stomach churns at the thought of cafeteria slop, take a look at York's Schulich School of Business in Toronto. Schulich's 220-seat dining hall features a gourmet menu that includes escargot, braised oxtail with carrots, and roasted salmon with teriyaki sauce. For students with less meaty tastes, the University of Victoria's cafeteria carries a wide selection of sushi and vegetarian options.

Mickey mouse course
Students at the University of Manitoba's Asper School of Business travel to EuroDisney near Paris to rub elbows with the Mouse himself--and to learn about international marketing and branding from the company that does it best. Each year, about 20 students cross the pond to spend a morning with Disney execs. They spend another week in France studying cross-cultural marketing, before travelling to Switzerland to take a closer look at global financing.

Jock heaven
Whether it's surfing in Tofino, skiing at Whistler or hiking up the Grouse Grind, students who want adventure will find it at UBC's Sauder School of Business. An 18-hole golf course on campus means MBAs can practice their swing between classes--arguably just as crucial a skill as reading a balance sheet.

Most monkeying around
As part of a weeklong orientation for first-year MBAs at UBC's Sauder School, students spend a full day swinging 40 feet above-ground from ropes suspended from trees. The Tarzan antics continue at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., where MBA students literally climb the walls as part of a team-building exercise.

Walk on the wild side
Nestled on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, Victoria boasts the warmest average winter temperatures in Canada--a balmy 4¡C in January. The University of Victoria and its hometown rival, Royal Roads University, are the place to go if you hate the cold. At Royal Roads, students can jog year-round on forest trails or stroll through the on-campus Japanese, Italian and rose gardens. Don't be surprised if you bump into a peacock along the way--they're everywhere, and their early-morning squawks have been known to wake many a sleepy-eyed student during mating season, in the spring and summer. Beware: cougar warnings are also common.

Work hard, play hard
Both Queen's and Ivey claim to be the hardest-partying schools in the country--but they never let their grades slip. At Queen's, students in the Point Four club hit the local watering holes (including the Grizzly Grill and Tango) every Thursday till the wee hours. What's behind the club's name? The professor who started it theorized that students who go out only risk decreasing their grade-point average by 0.4% compared to those who stay in. At Ivey, where students spend up to 14 hours a day slogging away at their intense, case-based curriculum, there's still plenty of time for wine tasting, salsa dancing and gourmet cooking classes.

Keep that day job
By day, Tim Craig is the suit-wearing director of the University of Victoria's MBA program. By night, he's the, um, suit-wearing lead singer for the Faculty of Business Band, popularly known as FOB. Hits include "Mustang Ali," a send-up of dean Ali Dastmalchian, and "Fa-fa-fa Faculty of Business," a sort of recruitment anthem for the MBA school to the tune of "My Sharona."

tks for sharing

辛苦了，非常详细，thanks!

非常感谢