Invest in education

According to the Macro-economic figures we've just been shown there's a 16% return on investment in education. Better than pretty much anything else over the long term. Makes me feel better about my big pile of debt.

Woodgate

It looks like Newcastle have signed Jonathan Woodgate, a young, english, talented central defender and one of Leeds United's crown jewels. Regardless of what happens this season it should ensure we're challengers next year. I should be delighted.

However Woodgate was convicted last year of taking part in a brutal attack on an asian guy that put the poor kid in a coma and left him with bite marks scarring his face. Regardless of whether this was a racist attack it was brutal and violent and while Woodgates conviction was for affray not assault - apparently he wasn't the one who did all the damage - he was there. He and his mates pretty much lynched some guy.

So what am I supposed to do? The guys done his time (well, his fine and community service - surely not nearly enough) and so maybe deserves a second chance? But its bloody hard to imagine supporting someone with that kind of record. Apparently some particularly senseless Rangers fans refuse to include goals scored by Catholic players when looking at match results - even to the extent of claiming that they didn't really win certain titles. This is clearly ludicrous, I can't edit Woodgate out of the team, I can't support ten out of the eleven men on the field.

Bloody hell this is difficult, god only knows what our black and asian fans make of it.

Don't try this at home

Macroeconomics should not be attempted with a hang over. In particular it should not be attempted if you are at the one MBA school that teaches economics differently. No money supply diagrams here, no sir. No, what we have is the Solow model of growth as a starting point, which requires you to get your head round some damn complicated graphs and some really interesting ideas about technology.

The perfect case study

Marketing rolled on today with another 3 case studies, all of which were written by the professor, a guy who clearly doesn't understand what makes a good case study. Having now observed hundreds of the things a good case study should be

1. Based on real companies but with the names cleverly changed. Thus a case about Microsoft should not start "Bill Gates, CEO of Microsoft sat back in his executive chair" but should instead read "Joe Fence, CEO of MegaSoftware sat back in his executive chair"

2. Add a little local color. One case study included the line "you can't make an omlette sans oeufs, without eggs!" to show that the person saying it was French. This had nothing to do with anything, but it shows how global and open minded the business school community is.

3. Include at least one instance of an unco-operative member of staff or a personnel issue. This is to prove that the case is in the real world. Thus we get 'Marco Baggio the production manager who passionately believed that increaing sales was the way forward'. In line with point 2 Marco should be Italian and the product should be pasta.

4. Leave room for the student - usually at the top. A good ending would be 'Following Joe Fences' resignation the board appointed Pete Jones, a recent graduate of Harvard Business School'

5. Open with something that makes the point of the case obvious. If it's about selling companies Joe Fence will lean back and 'ponder whether or not he should sell his company to Peach Computers for fifty pence and a packet of crisps' you now know what the case is about

The point is that case studies have evolved from being descriptions of the real world to being a type of creative writing practiced solely by business school professors. It's about as stylised as Haiku and its relationship to the real world is tangential to say the least.

Those exam results in full

The transcripts of our exams came through today, which means we now know exactly what we got on each exam and for the assessed coursework. So, how did I do?

Decision Science : 74.5
Financial Reporting : 60.0
Finance 1 : 80.1
Industrial Organisations : 63.6
People and Organisations : 65.7
Strategic Management : 69.8

Grade A is 70, B is 60 and C is 50. Anything below that and you have to retake.

Have to say these marks are almost exactly the opposite of what I was expecting, I am decidedly not what business school slang terms a 'quant jock' or someone who's good with numbers. However the results seem to suggest exactly that. The true story is of course that I spent most of my revision time fretting about the quant subjects because I knew I wasn't good at them and paid for it with weak performances in subjects where I thought I'd be good - Strategic Management and People and Organisations. Or perhaps my rather freewheeling essay style just isn't that suited to business school. Who knows?

Oh, and I can only assume I had some kind of complete failure of the brain in the Financial Reporting exam, I really did think I'd turned in three solid essay questions and a decent job of work on the company assessment. The technical 'how would you account for this questions' I thought were a mixed bag, but they're worth next to no marks. Really thought I'd done better than that. Still, I can now read the annual reports of premiership football clubs and use them to work out the likely state of the transfer market - short form, Leeds will really wish they'd sold a few players come June / July.

One of the single most annoying things about Oxford is that this is the first time we've been given feedback on assessed work. According to university regulations that can't happen until the complete course has been finished - so we were all forced to go into the exams with no indication of what was expected. It's a level playing field - but it's also extremely frustrating to say the least.