Choosing a college is a big decision at any level, but choosing the right Masters of Business Administration (MBA) program can be crucial to your career. Whether you want the degree because you’re eyeing a high-powered position or you’d simply like to develop your leadership, management and entrepreneurial skills, you can’t afford to settle for second-best. Your competition won’t, especially now that the MBA has become one of the most popular degree programs in the nation. 

The obvious way to stay ahead of the competition is to base your decision on MBA program rankings – but how do you know which rankings are the most reliable and the most relevant for your personal purpose? Rather than flooding the market with another MBA ranking, we’ve decided to highlight the best MBA rankings out there, all in one place. Stay tuned to this space because the new year marks the beginning of rankings season and we’ll be adding new quality rankings as they become available.

Traditional MBA Program Rankings

U.S. News, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Financial Times release the top three sets of rankings for traditional MBA programs. 

US News MBA Rankings
U.S. News publishes rankings for the top three-quarters of MBA programs. U.S. News bases assessments on selectivity of students accepted into the program, career placement information (such as employment rates and salary) and quality as determined by deans and directors of schools and MBA programs and by corporate recruiters. To be eligible for a ranking, full-time MBA programs must be accredited by the AACSB International and must have graduated at least 20 students during the past year. 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek MBA Rankings
Bloomberg BusinessWeek ranks business schools from the United States, Europe and Asia based on recruiter assessments, graduate satisfaction and faculty research. Graduate satisfaction and corporate recruiter assessments each account for 45% of the total ranking, and faculty research supplies the remaining 10%. Though Bloomberg BusinessWeek rankings include schools and programs beyond the United States, the amount of schools ranked is selective, with a starting population of only 101 schools and final rankings published for 75 in the 2010 rankings. 

Financial Times Global MBA Rankings
Financial Times uses 20 different criteria in determining its Global MBA rankings. Different criteria are weighted differently, but assessments are essentially based on three areas of data: career success of alumni, international influence of the school and MBA program and research associated with the program. Unlike Bloomberg BusinessWeek rankings, Financial Times Global MBA rankings base the majority of alumni data off of survey responses from alumni who have graduated three years ago rather than a few months after graduation. 

Distance MBA Program Rankings

With professional and personal obligations keeping adult students from the classroom, online and distance-learning MBA programs are more popular than ever. If you’re considering an online or distance MBA program, your best bet for reliable rankings is to review the “Smart Choice” Awards Online MBA Rankings, BusinessMBA Online MBA Rankings or Bloomberg BusinessWeek Distance MBA Profiles. 

SuperScholar “Smart Choice” Awards Online MBA Rankings
Like rankings of traditional MBA programs, the “Smart Choice” Awards Online MBA rankings base their rankings partially on considerations like school and program reputation in the business world and selectivity of applicants. Only accredited MBA programs are ranked, and awards earned by those programs are also taken into account. “Smart Choice” Awards also considers the cost of attendance in their rankings, basing their evaluations on programs’ value as well as prestige.

BusinessMBA Online MBA Rankings
BusinessMBA.org ranks only the top 10 online MBA programs, taking into consideration the reputation of professors, the history of the institution and the demand for graduates of that MBA program. Each BusinessMBA ranking provides detailed information about the online MBA program, including tuition and a summary of positive qualities and pragmatic considerations like length of time required to complete a program. BusinessMBA rankings also state characteristics that distinguish each ranked online MBA program from others.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek Distance MBA Profiles
Bloomberg BusinessWeek evaluates online and distance-learning MBA programs in a different way than other college rankings sources. Rather than using a traditional ranking system, prospective students can view in-depth profiles of eligible online and distance-learning MBA programs. Profiles highlight admissions information, logistics of how a particular online or distance-learning program operates, graduation requirements and rates and career services offered. Profiles may also include numerical data about the institution and MBA program and financial data, like cost of attendance and financial aid prospects.

MBA Specialty Program Rankings

Within the world of the MBA is a wide range of specialties to help you develop your credentials in everything from accounting to marketing to entrepreneurship and earn specialty MBA degrees like the sought-after Executive MBA. For a broader spectrum of specialty MBA program rankings, consult U.S. NewsSpecialty Program Rankings or Bloomberg BusinessWeek U.S. MBA Program Rankings. If you’re looking for an Executive MBA program specifically, the Wall Street Journal’s Executive MBA Program rankings can help. 

U.S. News Specialty Program Rankings
U.S. News ranks specialty MBA programs according to reputation within the community of MBA academics. Deans of business schools and directors of MBA programs that are eligible for the U.S. News ranking of traditional full-time MBA programs are surveyed and asked to recommend as many as 10 MBA programs in each specialty. Ranking is assigned based on how many nominations a school or program has received, with the lowest-ranking schools having earned at least seven nominations. 

Bloomberg BusinessWeek U.S. MBA Program Rankings
Bloomberg BusinessWeek ranks eleven specialties of MBA programs according to corporate assessments. Specifically, recruiters evaluate the graduates of each program, taking into consideration skills like management attributes. In the most recent set of specialty MBA rankings published, a total of 57 schools were ranked. All 57 appeared in the rankings for each specialty, though their actual ranks in each specialty varied. Some schools with lower-ranked traditional MBA programs appeared competitively with higher-ranked schools in the rankings of specialty MBA programs.

Wall Street Journal Executive MBA Program Rankings
The Wall Street Journal publishes rankings for one ever-popular specialty MBA program, the Executive MBA. Based on graduate and corporate personnel assessments of the program and a joint assessment of graduates’ skills, The Wall Street Journal ranks the top 25 Executive MBA programs from a population that spans 18 countries. Executive MBA graduates evaluate the school and their skills improvement. Corporate figures, like human resources and management personnel, assess the quality of Executive MBA programs and the skills most required by their companies.

Reddit has grown to be giant community of people who’s individual decisions collectively and filter out irrelevant content. This process of crowd sourcing can have a huge impact on your life and our society as a whole. Here are five surprisingly simple things on reddit that could influence your education choices.

The State of Things

An online PhD in the management of nonprofit organizations can give the student all the tools needed to own and operate a successful nonprofit which will hopefully make a positive change in his or her community. The bored, apprehensive college student still struggling to decide on a major may be browsing reddit and come upon a great deal of articles regarding the state of things. ‘The state of things’ encompasses a lot of issues — the environmentally unfriendliness of giant corporations dumping into the ocean and refusing to pay retributions for their horrific mistakes, the political issues and turmoil in various countries around the world, the ineffective war on drugs, and more. One of the largest issues being discussed right now is Occupy Wall Street, the now nation-wide protests against the dysfunctional, corrupt system in which Americans live. Even if you’re from a tiny town in the midwest, all the news on OWS is enough to inspire a person to act — and possibly earn an online PhD in management of nonprofit organizations, becoming politically active all through the learning process and ending up creating a nonprofit which will somehow aid the plight of the 99%.

Food Section

The food section on reddit is huge. There are so many people perfecting their cooking skills and posting photographs of the delicious end results on reddit. The community of redditors who love cooking only inspire one another to get better at their craft with these pictures of friendly competition. The casual food enthusiast without any type of degree may browse the food section of reddit too many times whilst enduring the munchies, and therefore choose to pursue an online PhD in culinary arts. The more serious applicant, perhaps someone who already has a bachelor’s degree in culinary arts, may see the posts and submit to an irresistible urge to school all the other kids on what cooking is really all about. An online PhD can escalate a chef’s career from simple cook to kitchen supervisor, meaning all those snotty comments about what other people should be doing better may not have been for naught — call it training!

Clinical Psychology

A popular subreddit is psychology, which examines odd cases studied in psychology as well as new scientific advances in the field. After reading article upon article of weird, interesting psychology news, one may develop an urge to pursue a career in the field. A PhD in clinical psychology leads to a career in which the psychologist is responsible for evaluating, diagnosing, treating, and even trying to prevent mental illnesses in either a group or individual setting. One of the most interesting things about a PhD in clinical psychology is that even though the degree may be pursued online (with plenty of reddit psychology reading in the background), the learning process also requires the student to train in the field for a number of years. This
means that the learning process eventually becomes the student working in an environment they can expect to be in after graduation.

Criminal Justice

There are a large amount of posts on reddit in regards to and debating about criminal justice and the legal system. Videos of police brutality, basic ridiculous insanity involving the law, new laws, and injustices such as the lynching of Troy Davis are constantly hitting the front page and flooded with comments. Some of the debates may get you so heated that you’ll want to pursue an online PhD in criminal justice so that you can be a part of the fight against injustice, help create new laws that actually make sense, or expose an upsetting issue you think should be getting more public attention. An online PhD in criminal justice can turn a bachelors degree to a PhD in a few studious years, and the student can then work trying to prevent or correct criminal issues. Jobs with this online PhD are often with large organizations such as a consulting agency.

Design

Another large community on reddit are designers and artists, comparing work and promoting tips or artists that they think are interesting. All that art can make a guy with a bachelor’s degree want to take it further with an online PhD. Learning online allows for a lot of schedule flexibility, so pursuing an online PhD in design can be done while browsing the internet at your already-cushy design job. After graduating, the student will only move up in the world using their bright, shiny new PhD.

Should the real targets of the Occupy Wall Street protests be the fat cats in our institutions of Higher Education?

The fact is that it’s nearly impossible to untangle the causes of the economic mess we’re in. Whether the cause is government (according to the libertarians) or the financial industry (according to the progressives) or an economically ungrounded system of higher education and student loans (according to all of us with a degree, no job and big student debt), there’s a pretty clear message… everyday people are getting tired of getting jerked around.

From: Best Colleges

Students and professors have only just begun to make their way back to campus, but the college rankings season is already in full swing, with established players like Princeton Review and Forbes publishing their rankings in recent weeks and the 2012 U.S. News & World Report rankings were just released yesterday.

BusinessPundit wanted to take a look at how all of these rankings get put together, the sort of work that goes into it, and how they go about deciding what matters. To do this, we caught up with Jeremy Alder, Managing Editor at The Best Colleges, one of the newest college ranking publishers to enter the fray. The Best Colleges entered the rankings game with a splash a few weeks ago with a press release claiming to have created a ranking that “exceeds all others in focusing on what really matters to prospective students and their parents.”

While Alder admitted that the rhetoric in the press release may have been slightly overblown, he was adamant that there really has been something missing in the way other comprehensive college ranking systems have gone about ranking colleges. He sees the main problem as blindness to context. “The decision of where to go to school doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Given the worst economic recession in recent memory and sky-rocketing tuition rates, a primary concern for many students and their parents is how much is it going to cost and will there be a decent paying job on the other end.”

According to Alder, the way US News & World Report ranks schools takes into account each school’s tuition costs and financial aid, but fails to factor in the school’s track record of placing graduates in well paying jobs. Princeton Review puts out its own financial aid ratings for each school, but doesn’t take into account total tuition costs, and like US News, ignores post-graduate career outcomes. Alder said one way The Best Colleges ranking improves on these other rankings is that in addition to taking into account many of the same indicators of academic quality and student satisfaction (like student-teacher ratios and graduation rates) it also gives considerable weight to the overall cost of a degree and the income earning track-record of graduates. “We looked at the actual cost of a degree, after the average financial aid package was subtracted from tuition, as well as data on earnings in the years immediately following graduation and mid-career” Alder said.

Alder notes that the Forbes ranking does a much better job considering the economic angle, factoring in average student debt loads and post-graduate success, but it joins the other major ranking systems in missing out on another important context: a school’s location. In their rankings, The Best Colleges measured the social and economic quality of life offered by the city or town in which each school is located, something Alder claims no other ranking system has done up to this point. Given that students are taking longer to graduate and the recognized importance of social networking to long-term career success, Alder argued “A college town’s quality of life in terms of affordability and the opportunity for relationships with other young, successful and highly educated people is more important than ever, and a college ranking ought to reflect that.” When it was pointed out that Princeton Review published a quality of life ranking, Alder noted that it was based entirely upon subjective student surveys and wasn’t integrated into any kind of broader ranking. “We based our quality of life measurements on publicly available data on cost of living, population age, average income, and education levels and integrated it into a comprehensive ranking that also takes into account considerations of economic value, academic quality and student satisfaction.”

Despite his bold claims about The Best Colleges doing college rankings better, Alder made it clear that he didn’t intend to disparage the value of other college ranking systems and said he encourages students to consult as many different rankings as possible when trying to decide where to go to college. “Different rankings consider different things” he said, “The important thing is to familiarize yourself with the criteria each system is using and then deciding whether or not that lines up with what you actually value and care about.” Transparency is key. “If a rankings publisher isn’t up front about their methodology, that should give students pause” Alder said. “We published a detailed explanation of the methodology and sources we used and were clear and up front about where students could find it.” Asked if he thought other rankings publishers needed to be more transparent with their methodology, Alder said “Our goal is to make sure that we’re being as open and transparent as possible with our own rankings. Whether or not other rankings publishers are doing the same, students and their parents can judge that for themselves.”

We’ve just received a note from a reliable source that the US News college rankings for 2012 will be released this coming Sunday night at 10pm EST.

For many in the academic world, the rankings from US News & World Report are the gold standard. Despite the fact that a cottage industry has emerged for college rankings (including Forbes, Princeton Review and this year’s newcomer The Best Colleges), there is a general consensus that the ones that really matter, the ones that carry the bragging rights, are the rankings from US News. And 2012 will be no different. All the others are just a prelude, a figurative “preseason” to the main event of rankings season.

Each year the big reveal from US News & World Report, for many prospective and current students, as well as alumni, is sort of like the Super Bowl of academics. It’s the big event that everyone looks forward to. And the stakes are high. No one doubts the economic weight behind these rankings, as colleges depend on enrollment and getting recognized by US News effectively guarantees high application rates (students want the best education possible) and thus allows for more selective acceptance rates (thus inflating the perceived academic quality of the site). It’s a self-reinforcing system that allows the best schools to stay on top because they can turn away more students. But whether they admit it or not, it’s also the holy grail for school advertisement.

So even though there has been a lot of controversy over the years about whether rankings really mean all that much, and disputes over methodologies, no one can dispute the fact that people care about college rankings. It’s in our DNA as human beings. We like to get reliable recommendations from experts to make our decisions (think Consumer Reports). And for better or worse, the “experts” on colleges are the companies that do the rankings.

When the 2012 US News college rankings are released, we will post the top 10 here.

For the time being here are the results from 2011:

1. Harvard
2. Princeton
3. Yale
4. Columbia
5. Stanford
6. Penn
7. Cal Tech
8. MIT
9. Dartmouth
10. Duke

Source: U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges 2011

The NY Times recently ran an article entitled The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s in which it was argued that America has become overeducated and that to stand out one must acquire a Master’s degree:

Colleges are turning out more graduates than the market can bear, and a master’s is essential for job seekers to stand out — that, or a diploma from an elite undergraduate college, says Richard K. Vedder, professor of economics at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

Not only are we developing “the overeducated American,” he says, but the cost is borne by the students getting those degrees. “The beneficiaries are the colleges and the employers,” he says. Employers get employees with more training (that they don’t pay for), and universities fill seats. In his own department, he says, a master’s in financial economics can be a “cash cow” because it draws on existing faculty (“we give them a little extra money to do an overload”) and they charge higher tuition than for undergraduate work. “We have incentives to want to do this,” he says. He calls the proliferation of master’s degrees evidence of “credentialing gone amok.” He says, “In 20 years, you’ll need a Ph.D. to be a janitor.

So basically what we have in this country is a very Big Business (higher education) promoting the misapplication of resources for the sake of profit. Students are encouraged to earn unmarketable degrees. And it’s the students who bear the economic burden.

How do we fix this issue? By re-aligning education with economic need. By properly informing students of which degrees are most likely to lead to jobs (since most students get educated precisely for the sake of getting a job and earning a wage). By informing students that 6 out of the top 20 degrees that offer great job opportunities are two-year associates degrees.

I haven’t done the research, but I’m willing to bet that if you compared the actual distribution of majors in the United States with the ideal distribution (based on economic need) you’d find massive disparity. And solving the education bubble basically comes down to finding ways to get these two metrics more in line with each other.

Given that student debt is a massive economic issue, the Federal Government would be wise to engage in a public information campaign to inform the general populace of the information in their Occupational Outlook Handbook and to try to re-align the countries resources with it’s needs.

If there were to be a proper re-alignment, then I suspect we wouldn’t have so many people with generic Bachelor’s degrees or unmarketable Bachelor’s degrees. There doesn’t need to be a bubble. We just need more people getting educated to meet the actual needs of the economy. And an understanding that many good, high-demand jobs don’t even require a Bachelors degree. An Associate’s degree is sufficient for some positions.

In other words, let’s end the myth that everyone needs a Bachelor’s degree to find a good job. There are many people that would be happy with some of the jobs that one can get with only two years of college education.

Going back to school is a tough decision to make. You must consider how it will affect your life as well as the cost of tuition and other factors that may change. If you’re looking to get ahead and run your own business, going back to school is going to help you do that. Here are several ways that returning to school will help you run a business.

It Will Expand Your Knowledge

Going back to school is going to be a great opportunity to learn new things that will help you in every area of business. You will be able to learn about economics and business through the classes you choose to take. You can join classes such as a mergers and acquisitions class, which will expand your knowledge of large businesses, or you can take simple business classes to learn about small businesses. Taking classes to learn about every type of business is recommended.

Not only will you be able to learn about the business side of it all, but you will also be able to take classes to expand your knowledge on the type of business you are going into. For example, if you are planning on running a photography studio, you may want to take photography classes so you not only gain knowledge on how to run your studio, but also improve your talents to become more successful.

There are plenty of classes you can take that will help your business run better if you are more talented at what you do.

Access to Jobs

If you go back to school, you may not want to run your own business right away, but become experienced first instead. You will also be able to find a job you can do while in school if you need to quit your current one to attend school. Through your school’s career service office, you may find a job that works around your schedule and possibly one where you can gain experience in the field you are looking into and also build your personal brand.

When you approach graduation, you may find job openings in your field because businesses will be looking for college graduates to hire.

Connections

In college, you will have connections to so many people. People that work in your area of interest may attend college-sponsored events. You will want to take advantage of this and talk to them. You will also be able to talk to a career advisor that will help you accomplish your career goals by providing you with information and advice.

All of these are great reasons to go back to school. Going back to school is going to help you become more successful at running your own business because you will expand your knowledge not only by taking classes, but with the connections you have to other people. These people can help you make important career decisions and college is going to be a great experience. How has school assisted in running your business?

For-profit schools have taken a beating in the last few years. They have become the whipping boy for many of our economic problems, including excessive student debt. But what many people overlook in the discussion is the many economic virtues that For-Profit colleges introduce.

In her NY Times article The Merits of For-Profit Colleges, Judith Scott-Clayton points out three main ways that For-Profit schools are making higher education better:

1. Better job of securing financial aid for low-income students

2. Online innovation / Technological advance

3. Disrupting the status quo.

So the argument seems to be that For-Profit Colleges drastically change the higher education market and increase competition. They also seem to make higher education more available to the poorer student who otherwise would have to attend a community college or not attend at all. The big question from our perspective at BusinessPundit is whether the market can be trusted to meet the goals of higher education, or whether the market will transform higher education into something unrecognizable or something more like a corporate training ground.

“We don’t need no education” ~ Pink Floyd, “Another Brick in the Wall”

A college education is often touted as being a prerequisite to a good life and a high income. Unsurprisingly, college prospectuses promote the success of their alumni as a reason why you should choose to complete a degree at their particular campus. However, there are plenty of billionaires in the world who traded in their college degrees for a successful business life. In fact, the Forbes World’s Billionaires list 2011 actually identifies the most wealthy college dropouts on earth today. Proof if ever it was needed that slackers don’t always comes second, and that when it comes to business, the studious can’t always cut it.

10. Roman Abramovich

With $13.4 billion to his name, Roman Abramovich is joint 53rd on the list of the world’s richest people. Abramovich claims to have attended the Moscow State Law Academy, graduating in 2001, and has been linked with the Ukhta Industrial University and The Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in Moscow. Both of the latter universities deny that he attended, and it is rumored, but unsubstantiated, that he dropped out of the Russian capital’s law school. With sources conflicted about the precise course of events it seems somebody may be trying to change the record here – only in Mother Russia! Still, with an oil fortune, diverse investments and England’s Chelsea Football Club in his possession, all the hearsay surrounding his education is unlikely to bother the Moscow business magnate.

9. Mark Zuckerberg

Still only 26, Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest self-made billionaire in the world and, with $13.5 billion in his pocket, the 52nd richest person on the planet. As immortalized in the Hollywood movie The Social Network, he dropped out of Harvard, where he studied psychology and computer science, to head west to California, overseeing the rise of the social media phenomenon that is Facebook. Even though Facebook was originally targeted at a college market, it was by dropping out and seeking venture capital that Zuckerberg gained such huge success.

8. Steve Ballmer

The 46th richest man in the world is following in the footsteps of the 2nd (of whom, more later). The current CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer did complete a college degree (in mathematics and economics) before working for Proctor & Gamble but dropped out of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business to join Microsoft as its 30th employee. We think that qualifies him as a failing student of sorts, so he makes the grade for this list. That said, the savvy timing of his employment meant that his salary included a percentage share in the company which he has since parlayed into $14.5 billion of personal wealth, placing him 46th in the world in terms of net worth. So, if you’re an OTT ball of energy with a certain amount of business nous, it seems you can afford to drop out…

7. Michael Dell

It is clear that Michael Dell valued education only as a route to business success. At the age of just 8, he applied to take a high school equivalency test so that he could enter business sooner. What’s more, while attending high school he invested money from part time jobs in the stock market and successfully targeted newlyweds for newspaper subscriptions while working for the Houston Post, such that he made $18,000 that year – more than his teacher’s salaries. As a pre-med at the University of Texas at Austin, he founded the company that would become Dell. Unsurprisingly, he never completed his studies, but now has a personal wealth of $14.6 billion, making him the world’s 44th richest person. ‘Nuff said.

6. Azim Premji

Azim Premji managed to skyrocket the Indian IT company Wipro Ltd. from a worth of $2.5 million to one that is now valued at $1.4 billion. His 78% stake in Wipro along with other investments have generated him a personal worth of $16.8 billion, making him 36th on the world rich list. He took over the family business, which later became Wipro, after his father died in 1966. This unexpected tragedy meant he had to leave his course in electrical engineering at Stanford University. Azim Premji is nothing if not persistent, however, and he completed the degree 30 years later.

5. Sheldon Adelson

Precocious tycoon Sheldon Adelson owned his first business at the age of 12, making a career selling newspapers on street corners, and moved on through finance and charter tours to found COMDEX, a computer trade show that was first held in 1979. He briefly attended City College of New York, but dropped out before completing his studies. It seems to have been a good idea, though, as his acquisitions of Las Vegas casinos and hotels has brought him a net worth of $23.3 billion, making him the 16th richest person in the world.

4. Mukesh Ambani

Entering the top ten richest people on Earth now – so you know dropping out can’t always be a bad thing! – meet Mukesh Ambani, ranked 9th in the world, with a net worth of $27 billion. He joined his father’s business, Reliance Industries, in 1981 and now owns a 48% stake in the company. Reliance industries is India’s largest private sector company and has diversified interests in everything from communications to petrochemicals. Ambani enrolled at Stanford in 1979 but dropped out of his business masters in order to focus on his father’s business, a focus that has clearly reaped dividends. And while he had earlier gained a degree from from the University of Bombay, a dropout is a dropout, be they a billionaire or no…

3. Eike Batista

The son of a Brazilian mining executive, Eike Batista spent much of his childhood in Germany and studied engineering in Aachen University. However, rather than completing his degree, he started a gold mining company in the Amazon in 1980 – a move that took the shine off his educational record but would soon fill his pockets. In 2000, he sold his share of the company for a cool $1 billion; but he didn’t rest on his laurels, instead investing these funds into further mining ventures and oil and gas exploration. His business savvy and ability to take advantage of market trends have allowed him to amass $30 billion in personal wealth, making him the 8th wealthiest individual alive and giving him the number one spot in Brazil.

2. Lawrence Ellison

The death of his adoptive mother prompted Larry Ellison to drop out of his second year at University of Illinois. He then spent a single term at University of Chicago before dropping out again and moving to California in 1964. These two attempts at college certainly were not signs of a lack of determination though. In 1977 he founded the company that would become Oracle, a software firm specializing in data systems. His abandonment of academia to move to California put him at the heart of software and computer innovation, a move that has led to him amassing a fortune of $39.5 billion as of 2011, making him the 5th richest person in the world.

1. Bill Gates

The richest college dropout in the world is also one of the most well known. At number two in the world’s richest rankings and with a net worth of $56 billion, Bill Gates is a household name. He was the world’s richest person from 1995 to 2007 and again in 2009, unsurprising when you consider how ubiquitous Microsoft products are in homes and businesses across the world. Gates enrolled in Harvard as a pre-law major in 1973, but kept up the computer programming he had begun in 8th grade. It was these extracurricular activities that made him his fortune after the release of microcomputer design the Altair 8800 computer prompted him to set up a software company with Paul Allen. In 1975, he took a leave of absence from his studies at Harvard, only to return for an honorary degree in 2007.

A university education has grown so expensive that one college is lowering its tuition as a business strategy. From Brainz.org:

In a surprising turn of events, at least one university, Sewanee University of the South, is lowering its tuition. The cut isn’t trivial either. It’s a full 10 percent drop, and when you consider that most schools raise their tuition by 5%-7% a year, that’s like a 15% turn of events.

When asked about this interesting strategy by the University, one person at Sewanee suggested that the move was designed to increase the number of applicants to the school so that Sewanee could have a lower acceptance rate and thus appear more competitive, similar to the Ivy League schools it models itself after.

Right, and then jack the tuition back up again. Given the number of people attending school either out of high school or as part of a career change, coupled with the inflated cost of getting an education, this strategy just might work.