The business school world is constantly buzzing with change and innovation. Each week, in addition to our regular news posts, we briefly touch on a few notable stories from this dynamic field in one roundup. Here is what caught our eye this week:
- The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will offer a new online specialization, titled “Business Analytics,” the school announced recently. The specialization, which will begin its first course on September 15, is part of the Business Foundation series that is currently available to students through the Coursera online learning platform. The school will offer four courses in the Business Analytics specialization: “People Analytics,” “Accounting Analytics,” “Customer Analytics,” and “Operations Analytics.”
- Harvard Business School (HBS) is well known for its extensive and largely successful alumni pool, but one field filled with HBS grads could be a surprise: fashion. Such fashion entrepreneurs as Gilt cofounder Alexandra Wilkis Wilson and Rent the Runway bosses Jennifer Fleiss and Jennifer Hyman graduated from HBS, Boston.com reports. “Having access to genius [HBS] professors who had run retail businesses or large logistics-intensive operations was invaluable,” Fleiss commented in the article.
- Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a polarizing figure, but his alma mater is undoubtedly prestigious—the real estate mogul graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics. “I’m going to be the king of New York real estate,” he announced to one of his classes in true Trump style, the Boston Globe reports. Trump, whose former classmates describe him as “different” and “a little into himself,” would flip houses in Philadelphia throughout his time at Wharton.
- MBA hopefuls tend to use persistent stereotypes of business schools to help them decide where to apply. “If I want to work in marketing, I’ll go to Kellogg,” one might think. If that is the case, those hoping to work at Facebook should pay attention: Business Insider took a closer look at the company’s staff and compiled its findings into a list of the 20 most widely represented schools. Perhaps surprisingly, only two were business schools: the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business at number 16 and the Stanford Graduate School of Business at number 18.
