MBA News You Need: NYU Stern Expands Alumni Learning Resources, and 2019 in Review with Stanford GSB, HBS, Berkeley Haas, & Washington Foster

Each week we collect MBA news from leading business schools to give you a quick overview of the latest trending topics.

In your first MBA News You Need digest for 2020, we delve into the new lifelong learning resources provided to NYU Stern alumni, 2019 in review at Berkeley Haas, the top ten research papers of the decade at Washington Foster, and the top articles and research papers of 2019 at Stanford GSB and HBS.

NYU Stern Highlights Alumni Benefits in Continued Education

NYU Stern alumni have always had access to lifelong learning resources provided by the school – now those resources have expanded even further. In addition to an auditing program for select classes, NYU Stern has made the following resources available to alumni:

• Two tuition-free executive education short courses each year
• 50 percent off tuition for online certificate courses
• Video library of curated content

The goal of these offerings is to provide Stern alumni with a range of opportunities to develop their career, post-graduation. The new short courses—offered over two to five days—cover increasingly relevant topics such as business analytics, marketing, finance, fintech, entrepreneurship, sustainability, global economy and society, and leadership.

“We are excited to meet the growing need to retool skills and gain knowledge in new areas as the job market constantly shifts,” said Erin Malone, senior director of alumni relations.

Read the full press release here.

Stanford GSB’s Most Read Stories

The start of the new year offers us an opportunity to reflect on what happened in the previous 365 days. For Stanford GSB, 2019 was filled with a plethora of insightful publications. Here are their top eight most-read stories on healthcare, artificial intelligence, leadership, and more:

1. Five Common Communication Mistakes: This article looked at how to avoid prevalent pitfalls of communication.
2. Our Misplaced Fear of Job-Stealing Robots: While AI is booming, that doesn’t mean it’s going to take over the world. However, some trends predict a decrease in labor.
3. Find Your Door, and Push Through It: This article about fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg delves into the highs and lows of her career and what you can learn from her.
4. Why Hospitals Underreport the Number of Patients They Infect: Learn why hospital infections cost Medicare an estimated $200 million a year.
5. Explain Career Gaps and Transitions on Your Resume: Career gaps and transitions are common. The key is how you explain them in your interview.
6. On Social Media, Sell Your Brand, Not Your Stuff: Making your brand sound human is the key to success on social media. This article talks about how to make that possible.
7. How the Great Recession Influenced Today’s Populist Movements: Three Stanford scholars discuss how financial hardship has weakened trust in the U.S.
8. Controversial Kaepernick Ad and Nike’s Never-Give-Up Attitude: Phil Knight ’62 talks about the many lessons that have stuck with him throughout his career.

To read any of the aforementioned articles, head over to Stanford’s website now.

HBS’s Most Popular Stories in 2019

Harvard Business School is a reliable source of cutting-edge research each year and and 2019 was no different. As a helpful guide, the school released its list of the top 15 most-read stories published by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge last year.

The most popular stories for Harvard in 2019 focused on helping readers become better managers and leaders. In fact, those two topics cropped up in nearly all of the top ten most-read stories. Topics of the top articles included:

• Attracting, motivating, and keeping top talent.
• Gender stereotyping and women’s self-confidence.
• The benefits of working remotely for companies.
• Being productive during your commute.
• Four key steps to becoming a better sales leader.
• The new standard of leadership.

As for Harvard research papers, here are the five most downloaded working papers in 2019:

1. Corporate Sustainability: A Strategy?: Common and strategic practices for sustainability.
2. The Economic Effects of Private Equity Buyouts: A study of 6,000 buyouts and their impact.
3. Experimentation and Startup Performance: Adopting A/B testing to improve performance over time.
4. Managerial Quality and Productivity Dynamics: What skills matter the most for productivity?
5. Going Digital: Does going digital improve firm value and performance?

You can read all these articles by visiting Harvard’s website and checking out the blog here.

Berkeley Haas Year in Review

2019 was a big year for Berkeley Haas. The school welcomed new dean, new boundary-spanning programs, and continued to rank in the top ten. Here are the top 11 highlights from the year:

1. Ann Harrison became the first new dean of Berkeley Haas in a decade on January 1, 2019.
2. Groundbreaking research was published on hedge funds, the brain’s dopamine receptors, and opioid use in families.
3. Three Berkeley Haas energy economists were called on to provide insight into Pacific Gas & Electric and the safety of its lines.
4. Four faculty members passed away, including Mark Rubinstein, Raymond Miles, Leo Helzel, and Rob Chandra.
5. The Berkeley Haas MBA program was among the first to receive its STEM designation.
6. All Haas programs continued to earn a top 10 ranking across the board.
7. Haas’s newest building Chou Hall became the greenest academic space in the U.S., earning the WELL Certification.
8. David Porter became the school’s first Chief DEI officer.
9. The school launched a new Sustainable and Impact Finance program focused on sustainable investment, impact investment, and impact entrepreneurship.
10. Launch of the concurrent MBA/MEng dual degree program with the College of Engineering.
11. Berkeley Haas launched a pioneering conference in January focused on cultural awareness.

Get full insight into what happened last year at Berkeley Haas here.

Washington Foster Faculty’s Most Popular Research of the 2010s

Before Washington Foster dives headfirst into the coming year, they wanted to take a look back at the top ten research papers of the 2010s that all had world-class impact:

1. 2009: The impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on investors.
2. 2010: The link between moral intuition and moral behavior (i.e. ‘automatic ethics’).
3. 2010: How to detect fraudulent accounting using a comprehensive measure called the F-Score.
4. 2011: A study offering empirical proof that passion is the key to creativity and innovation.
5. 2012: The competitive advantage of humility (i.e. humble leaders are the most effective).
6. 2012: A look at why we invest irrationally due to biases and our own DNA.
7. 2013: Digital piracy encourages greater innovation, better products, and moderated prices.
8. 2014: The importance of arriving bright and early when it comes to earning the esteem of your managers.
9. 2018: How to get away from an abusive boss and flip the power dynamic.
10. 2018: The psychological effects of toxic smog and the toll on the bottom line.

To read each research paper for yourself, head on over to the Washington Foster website.