Tag: Forbes



Forbes released its 10th annual ranking of  America’s Top Colleges  Aug. 2, and Washington University was #4 among the Top 25 Colleges in the Midwest for 2017. Nationally, Forbes ranks WashU at #36 on a list of 50 schools dominated by universities located on the east and west coasts.

Methodology
The FORBES Top Colleges ranking has always placed its focus solely on the direct benefits a college or university provides its students. Favoring output over input, Forbes eschews common metrics like acceptance rate, endowment and freshmen SAT scores – numbers that say far more about a school’s “prestige” than its actual effectiveness – and instead favors variables like alumni salary, graduation rate and student satisfaction.

The ROI-centric logic behind this year’s ranking is no different, but part of the methodology and some of the data sources have been reexamined and revamped to better align this list with what FORBES values most: entrepreneurship, success, impact and the consumer experience.

“Before you become a college student, you need to think like a graduate. Our goal is to showcase the colleges and universities that deliver the best return on your education investment dollars: low student debt, on-time graduation, quality academics, high earning potential and career success,” said Caroline Howard, Digital Managing Editor, Forbes Media.

Link to the Forbes list here

Source: Forbes news release




This blog post was originally published on Forbes.com
Patrick Riche is Director of the Business of Sports Program at Olin.

“As a Microeconomics professor, one of the topics covered is a discussion of the “utility” (or satisfaction) which consumers derive from their various purchasing decisions.

Invariably, one of the universal truths in the study of economics is the law of  Simply defined, this law suggests that the additional satisfaction we obtain from consuming the next unit of some good or service (i.e. marginal utility) will eventually decline as we consume more and more of the same good/service.

…Going back to late October, Sports Illustrated reported that Monday Night Football was down 24% from 2015, Sunday Night Football was down 19% and Thursday night was down 18%.

But to this economist, there is no question that diminishing marginal utility has to play a significant role as well.With games on Thursday, Sunday, and Monday night, and with games all day Sunday, is it possible that we’ve reached a tipping point in just how much NFL football we can consume?”

Link to article: 2016 NFL TV Ratings Decline: Has Diminishing Marginal Utility Finally Set In?




Alumni in the news

Ryan Rakestraw, MBA’13, Venture Principal at Monsanto Growth Ventures, is featured in a Forbes column discussing his AgTech Hype Curve that puts new technologies used in farming in perspective for investors. It’s a work in progress, but clearly caught the attention of the “The Mixing Bowl” a group that connects the food and agriculture industries with IT innovation.

The Mixing Bowl: So, what compelled you to put this curve together? What’s the background on this document?

ryan-rakestrawRyan Rakestraw: It was mostly for the team at Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV) to think about the investment landscape, think about where technologies are in terms of their maturity levels, and think about some new technologies that are just emerging. We wanted to capture some of the more mature technology that is seeing farmer adoption, and some of the less mature technology that has yet to experience any significant adoption. This is a useful representation to remind us that some of these technologies have a little bit further to go before they get to a level where they see wider adoption.

Link to the complete Q&A with Ryan Rakestraw on Forbes.com




The opening ceremony for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games is set for Aug 5. But Olin’s Director of the Business of Sports program, Patrick Rishe, says these games may be tainted by more than doping scandals and fear of the Zika virus. He blames the International Olympic Committee’s bidding process for the many inefficiencies and failures of recent games to benefit the cities where they are held in a recent opinion column on Forbes.com:

“The great irony of the Olympic Games over the last several decades is that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) wants bidding host cities to express in their bids how hosting the Games will have venue legacy impacts, yet the legacy in practice (more often than not) has been the wasteful erection of white elephants whose future community benefits are significantly less than the costs of construction and upkeep.”

Link to Rishe’s column on Forbes: The Inefficiencies Of The International Olympic Committee And Olympic City Site-Selection Process




Olin Business School’s MBA program moved up four spots to #31 in the biennial Forbes ranking of Best Business Schools. The rankings will be published in the print edition of the magazine Sept. 11, 2015 and available online. Link here.

Forbes’ rankings are based on the return on investment over the five years post graduation. This year’s survey is based on data provided by the school’s full time MBA class of 2010

Kurt Badenhausen, senior editor at Forbes, explains the methodology, “We compared the alumni earnings in their first five years out of business school to their opportunity cost (two years of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees). We measure total compensation, including salary, bonuses and exercised stock options.

“We assume that compensation would have risen half as fast as their post-M.B.A. salary increases had these alumni not attended business school. The ‘5-year M.B.A. gain’ represents the net cumulative amount the typical alumni would have earned after five years by getting their M.B.A. versus staying in their pre-M.B.A. career.”

The schools are all ranked based on their 5-year M.B.A. gain. Schools were not included if alumni response rate fell below 15% or the ROI was negative after five years.