to grad or not to grad

Grad students are having to, in some cases, commit 15% of their future 2.5 decades or earning to escape the debt burden. Check out this article on Bloomberg. The stories are indeed sorry tales but nonetheless they are bets taken by adults.

Supply side:

The usual argument that providers of expensive grad education tend to make is that possessing a grad education yields higher earning power over a period of time. Students must not buy into such arguments. You can't drive a car by seeing the rear-mirror.

An interesting turn to this topic could be that of regulation in graduate education. There is no discussion about regulations at the supply end of such programs as the govt allows high-cost programs to advertise. Indeed, similar to qualified investor regulations, the govt must have regulation in the grad education sector. Nonetheless, the counter-argument is that prospective students for graduate education are in a position to make their own decisions accurately.

Demand Side

The usual reasons for students to sign up for expensive Masters programs are:

• A hope that the students will have better future as against status quo
• Laziness to work their way through in the industry and resultant escapism
  
• Genuine career switch needs (Finance professionals wanting to go to sectors such as Tech or Education as those have better job prospects than Finance).
  
• Genuine thirst for knowledge and/or upgrade of skills (this population knows what they are paying for and are usually not prone to be victims)
  
• Potential to enter a Ph.D. program after the Masters. This must be usually done if there is a intense need for intellectual stimulation.
  

Prospective grad students must be cautious to:

• conduct due-diligence w.r.t. placement statistics without undue influence by family or friends
• avoid succumbing to laziness - it will be an expensive escape :)
  

What's the solution?

1. Treat it as a business endeavor: Most of the Masters programs have a very extensive business plan by the schools. These programs are treated as cash-cows or in some cases, are rainmakers for the educational institutes. So should you! Create a thorough business plan complete with range of ROI, scenario-based risk management plan, and alternate paths in case things are not working out. See if you have support system in place for worst case scenarios.
   
2. Gain experience prior to enrolling for Graduate program. This makes the candidate more employable than without experience and allows the big jump in compensation post-grad. However, this goes out for a toss if you have a substantial gain in doing a fast-track combo (undergrad and grad in 5 years instead of just undergrad in 4 years).
   
3. If the prospective candidates decide to go for full-time, try finding fast-track options, unless you are a career-switcher. However, evidence suggests your odds are stacked in your favor if you are a part-time grad student.
   
4. Search for part-time options for the grad program
   

• This helps you keep your experience clock ticking
• This helps to keep the cash-flow
• This also allows you to pace up your studies.
  
• Allows tighter stop losses. For instance, if you are vouching for that MBA in Finance and figured that Dick Bove is saying there will be 150k-200k jobloss at banks, you can either suspend or completely drop out without significant loss

Rest In Peace Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs,

You will be missed. Several generations will be affected. Your contributions are peerless. I hope you inspired several other inter-disciplinary leaders in several spheres of the society, including but not limited to business.

Here's a tribute from Google at the most valuable ad-board of the world, their own homepage.



Here's a tribute from your own firm:


Bill Gates has noted his tribute here:
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Personal/Steve-Jobs

Here's a tribute from the educational institution, which you chose not to complete your education at:

http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Jobs.html

Eric Schmidt mentioned that you defined a generation. Particularly, I liked this part:

Steve was so charismatically brilliant that he inspired people to do the impossible, and he will be remembered as the greatest computer innovator in history.

Here's a tribute from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/05/123826622/apple-visionary-steve-jobs-dies-at-56?sc=fb&cc=fp

May your soul Rest in Peace.

biggest gift yet

A multi-faceted Mr. William Dietrich II announced a plan to provide Mellon University with the largest gift yet.

Given that most of the private higher education institutes in this country operate on the basis of endowments, such a big boost will provide significant financial flexibility to the future administrations. This gift becomes effective after Mr. Dietrich passes away. Also, this gift will bring CMU's $1 b fundraising campaign to the $950 m mark.

This puts Mr. Dietrich II in the elite category of being in top 10 largest gifts by an individual to any higher educational institute. The edited version of the event, which was held on Sep 7, 2011, can be seen below.



This is a big boon for inter-disciplinary education especially because Mr. Dietrich gave this gift to primarily support inter-disciplinary studies. He mentioned that it was inspired by the quality of faculty members and alums; in addition, he liked the global approach adopted by the institute.

I am particularly happy because these were the exact reasons why I chose to gather CMU for my graduate education. Given an opportunity, I would back to campus in a heartbeat.

service management and asana.com

If what Justin Rosenstein says here is true, then asana.com may end up becoming a great service management solutions suite. Large companies certainly need some platform similar to that of Asana.

I am yet to check out the beta version and present my review.
asana, IT Service Management, google, facebook

capacity management and twitter

Capacity planning at twitter has clearly come into question with recent whales, especially after allowing picture sharing !

waiting for iphone 5

So, I was at a Starbucks in midtown and overheard the couple next to me speaking about iPhone release date. I was surprised that they came out with such a news on Saturday morning. Anyways, I checked up and found that it was still rumored to be available from Sep 7, 2011.

I've been waiting for iPhone 5 (or whatever the next version is called) myself so I could upgrade. I've thought of trying the Windows phone for a while but could never work towards that. This time around, I will not wait for Apple to fix it's problems. I am not one of the jailbreak junkies and so, I don't care about the jailbreak version of the OS being available. I just want to try the next version.

rendezvous with dara birnbaum

On July 27, CMU NY Alumni Chapter organized an evening rendezvous with Dara Birnbaum, a United States Artists Fellow Award winner and a CMU Alumna.

The press release for the Marian Goodman gallery can be found here. Her prime piece of Arabesque was very thoughtfully done. We got to meet with her Editor as well. The one video work missing a mention in the article but present in the South Gallery is 'Addendum: Autism', which is interesting and it caught my particular interest. I did get a chance to discuss it with her in person and she presented an interesting perspective to it.

She epitomizes the inter-disciplinary interests, which CMU alumni carry. She studied Architecture at CMU and later, moved to Arts and became a dignified personality in it.

Her seminal well-known work is:

• Kiss the Girls: Make them Cry, 1979
• Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978/79 (video) and

At the meet, there was a guest (with someone) who has a NYC foodie blog and he performed some instant magic tricks with people's business cards (such as floating them between his two palms).

Overall, it was a nice evening which was followed by a dinner at Brasserie 81/2.