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Published: September 30, 2013
Career Services Director Q&A: Javier Muñoz of IESE
Our interview series with career services directors at top business schools takes us this week to Barcelona’s IESE, where we spoke with Javier Muñoz, assistant dean and director of career management. Muñoz knows IESE from many angles. He began there in 2001 as an MBA student himself, completing his degree in 2003. Upon completion, rather than return to banking, which had been his career path before business school, he accepted a position in the IESE admissions department.
“The offer [to join the admissions team] was very surprising at the beginning, but IESE is famous for bringing in MBAs [to its administration] every year,” he told us. After eight years in admissions, including five as head of the department, IESE offered Muñoz an opportunity to lead a different department – career services. He accepted and took over as assistant dean and director in 2011.
Muñoz had no idea when he came to IESE for an MBA that he would find himself working there for the next decade plus. “The only thing that I knew was that I wanted to explore different options apart from finance,” he says. He got several other offers, but when IESE came calling he answered. “I fell in love with the school, the MBA was such a great experience for me, they offered me a great position and I went for it,” he says.
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Published: August 1, 2012
One-Year MBA? Two-Year MBA? Pros and Cons
Preference for one-year MBA programs – common at European business schools, but traditionally less so at U.S. schools – is growing among prospective U.S. and Canadian applicants, according to an article this week in the Wall Street Journal. Lean economic times make the benefits of shorter programs, including lower tuition and less time and earnings lost while studying, appealing. But the WSJ article argues that these accelerated options may carry other costs that students considering them should bear in mind.
In 2009, 71 percent of U.S. and Canadian respondents to a survey by business-education research company QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd. preferred programs lasting 19 to 24 months, the WSJ reports. This year, that figure fell to 57 percent. Meanwhile, preference for programs lasting between 10 and 18 months rose, up to 29 percent of respondents from 21 percent in 2009. Some U.S. schools are responding to this increased demand, such as Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, which announced earlier this year that it plans to double the size of its one-year option. (Check out our Admissions Director Q&A with Kellogg’s Kate Smith for more on this.)
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