We're really excited about our MBA groups for this fall. We have a bumper crop of students, so I'm expecting some really interesting classroom discussions.
This fall I'll be teaching Managerial Econ for the incoming MBA and PMBA classes, and I've already started getting inquiries about textbooks and readings and the like.
I figured I'd direct incoming students here for textbook information in the hope that they'll read some blog entries, get engaged, and get a head start on their MBA.
The recommended textbook is Besanko and Breautigam's Microeconomics
The text is NOT required. I will not say things like "Turn to page 442 in the text and work problem 3." I do think it is extremely useful as a reference for students taking this class. In class, I will be working hard to illustrate the applicability of economics to management problems. As a result, I'll sometimes go FAST through some of the more technical details, so I can get to the interesting applications. If you have the text, then you have a resource in case you miss some details. And this will come in handy when working homework problems.
But the text is not required, and I won't be asking you any exam questions that are only discussed in the book.
Yes, I do know that textbooks are frightfully expensive. While I can't pay your textbook bill for you, I promise I will teach you why textbooks are so expensive. (And it's not that the professors who assign the books get a kickback.... I'll get to this the second or third week of class.)
And in the meantime, here's an article about a new business model for textbooks... Tell me... What do you think???
We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks?
If you have more questions about the structure of the course, I'll have the course web page posted by mid August, and students can reach it through WebCT. But in the meantime, I invite incoming students to read this blog and think about economics and how it relates to our everyday lives. I'll be commenting on lots of business and economics news here, and I'd love to get an active conversation going even before fall begins.
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3 comments:
So you're allowed to teach managerial economics to new students, but not advanced managerial economics to returning students? What gives?
At Cal we had online cases that from HBR for Marketing and Strategery that had limited shelf life. We could print them and read them but 3 months after the class ended, DRM kicked in and they 'expired.' The "cost" of the reader in this case was absorbed as part of the $22k a year in tuition.
Renting Books? Sure looks like a great idea. I checked out the website and the prices are phenomenally low. But with new editions coming out at regular intervals, I bet the cost of keeping up to date would be very high as the short term profit margin doesn't look very good in this case. But the bright side is that the segment targetted is very flexible and tight on the pockets so they can accomodate. But leaving all that aside, its great news for us! Maybe our libraries could take a few hints.
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