Here is my, honest review of the summer “semester” as it relates to the Evening MBA program at Georgia Tech. Firstly, let me say, for the program to be completed in the very feasible and allotted time frame of three years, students taking two classes at a time MUST take classes during three summers. With that simple fact stated, the summer term was a shortened and very abbreviated version of the courses we signed up for. Because of the shortened classes, I felt like we missed out on some material.
The Economics class was divided into two classes of five weeks each; one Micro and the other Macro Economics. Five weeks: let me just say that five weeks is about 17 hours of material learned. The normal semester is 15 sessions or 45 hours of material. Now, Economics has been split into two courses for the entirety of the program, so half the normal time, or 22.5 hours would be expected to learn the same material as would be expected during the normal Fall and Spring Semesters.
I love Economics, the principles and Game Theory is exciting and very informative. The course felt rushed and with only one grade, the final exam, it was difficult to gauge my grasp of the material as we progressed. The professor was great. Professor Higgins was the kind of guy you would want to grab a scotch with, light up a stogie and chat about life and all of its infinite mysteries. Because he was so darn personable and easy going some of the people in the class (just one person) always found a way to ask pointless questions that derailed the train of knowledge. I know you have to answer student’s questions, but this isn’t a one on one learning environment. The rest of the class just zoned out when the kid talked, which made the focus and attention of an evening MBA very difficult, and at times frustrating. With that said, I don’t know how Professor Higgins could have altered that one person’s behavior, even though I feel the class’ frustration was evident.
Teaching, and learning, economics involves a lot of graphs and complicated equations and movements. The sheer nature of the subject makes Power Point presentations extremely difficult to follow. Professor Higgins understood this difficulty. He even came to one class two hours early to re-teach complicated topics to those of us who wanted to learn it. In this smaller group environment, he used the white boards and made “live” changes to graphs. When he taught in this fashion, the material clicked extremely quickly.
The course grades were assigned based on only one grade for each class. Because of the difficulty of the material and the short time frame, the professor gave us the opportunity to take the test in groups of two, to ease the burden. Boy, am I glad he did, because my partner had a much better grasp and understanding of the material than I did, he was able to help supplement the material taught in class. I ended up with an “A” in the Micro Economics class and a “B” in the Macro Economics class. Overall, I was quite pleased with my grasp of the material and the amount I learned in a short period of time.
Based on the limitations of the timeframe of a summer Evening MBA course, I give Professor Higgins a solid B+. Though, his willingness to extend the reach of his material to those of us who really wanted to learn it was just fantastic, the time frame limitations really hurt the class. Overall the Courses, both Macro and Micro got a “B” from me.
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