This review of the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business’ Early Career Masters (ECM) program has been a long time coming. Originally, I had intended on finishing it in time for posting a few days after convocation, on Wednesday, May 27th, but that kept getting pushed back by 6:30am shifts and most importantly, feedback on the draft. The overwhelming consensus: it read like a polite, neutered PR piece. Time to put away the “safety pencil and circle of paper”. This has been sitting in my tasks for weeks, but between my desktop being out of commission, Windows 7 Beta expiring on my laptop and trips to Ottawa, I’ve finally finished it.
One of the pieces of advice that I was repeatedly told was that if I ever had to write an angry email, to write it, save the draft, have a good night’s sleep and then, in the morning, if I still felt that way, then to send it.
Well, it’s been 10 months and as a handful of classmates friends can attest to, I still feel strongly about what I (and 55 others) went through.
Although it’s said that time heals all wounds, that doesn’t mean the scars go away… and these are not the “chicks dig scars” variety, but the “tripping down the stairs because you’re a klutz but you’re too embarrassed to admit it so you tell people it’s a sports injury” variety.
There are multiple reasons why I’m writing this:
- to vent
- to bring to light the treatment of the inaugural class by Sauder
- to provide anyone who might be considering this program details about what to expect and how to prepare so that they can make a more informed decision
Understand that this was my experience, my perceptions and my issues. While many parts of this experience were shared by other classmates, each person going through this program will undoubtedly have different things to say about this program and what value (if any) that it had for them.
The $24,290 question [2009 tuition] is “Is the program worth it?” That is something that each applicant has to consider for themselves. Their goals, career aspirations and circumstance dictate their individual answer to that question.
For me, the question is “Knowing what I know now, would I still have accepted the offer?” After careful consideration and admittedly, a lot of hesitation, I would still answer “yes”. A few classmates would vehemently disagree with me. To them, they’ll never get back the past 8 months of their lives.
To their credit, the school has made quite a few changes and the 2010 class should have a much less turbulent experience. This however, doesn’t excuse the gong show that Sauder put the inaugural class through. It was largely their apparent inability to foresee these issues and their lack of communication that bothers me.
It was actually my chat with Dean Dan Muzyka at convocation that dulled some of the bite of this review. Knowing that our concerns had not completely fallen on deaf ears made it seem that at least someone, somewhere was listening and trying to fix the mistakes and shortcomings that the inaugural class suffered through.
I would have finished writing and posting this earlier, but as what follows will detail, I was genuinely concerned about how the school (and some classmates) would react. All I have to say to that are two things: with respect to the school, if a vaunted institution like Sauder cannot withstand the writings on a blog, it has bigger issues; to any classmates, it takes 3 minutes to set up a blog and voice your opinion/rebuttal for the world to consume.
So without further ado, let the bridge burning begin…
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