Offshoring company looks to make programmers obsolete
One of Indias biggest offshoring players has launched software that converts legacy applications to modern programming languages.

Mahindra British Telecom (MBT) said the software almost completely automates the process of converting legacy applications written in languages such as Cobol, Pascal, Delphi and Smalltalk to modern languages such as C, C++ and Java.

The company is a joint venture between Indian technology group Mahindra & Mahindra and BT Group. It has development centres in the UK and India and specialises in applications outsourcing and offshoring for the telecoms industry.

Such a system would help many companies still lumbered with software from the 1970s and 1980s, which has to be maintained by specialised staff familiar with the legacy systems. MBT cited Gartner Group figures estimating that 70% of all business and commercial applications are based on Cobol.

MBT claims its automated system reduces the human factor of converting legacy code by 90% and ensures "zero-error" quality. This is possible because any programming language can be abstracted to a few fundamental principles, MBT said.

The company said it carried out an automated conversion for a Scandinavian telco in six months, for a project that ordinarily would have taken 75 man-years. The automated conversion took less than a day, with the rest of the time devoted to tweaks by a small team of 10 specialists, MBT said.

In theory automated conversion is feasible, but in practical terms the code produced is so bloated as to be useless, according to John Harvey, lecturer in computing science at the University of East Anglia.

"This type of technology has been around for years, and it is only any good if, for example, the Java produced is quick and usable," Harvey said. "It could be unstructured garbage which is impossible to maintain and slow."

The system is designed to convert one procedural language to another, for example Cobol to C - or one object-oriented language to another - for example Delphi to C++. Converting from one paradigm to the other can only be semi-automated, MBT said.

MBT said the converter had completed initial trials but didn't give a launch date.

The Impact of Indian Boom
Pros and Cons of Indian Economic Boom

While the growth in offshore business service imports is beginning to cause a stir in the United States, it's leading to dramatic changes in the Indian economy and society.  Professors at Emory University and its Goizueta Business School who know India well say that they have seen tremendous economic and social changes in this huge nation since the service boom began just a few years ago, and they predict even greater changes and challenges in the years ahead.

 

India today feels a bit like the U.S. during the dotcom boom, Goizueta’s India-watchers say, where a small class of young people are suddenly making much more money than most people had ever dreamed. Although the new industries don’t employ all that many people – most estimates say IT and business process outsourcing employs fewer than a million workers in this nation of over 1 billion – this sector’s success has had an enormous impact not only on the economy but on the country’s culture and self-confidence.

 

One key indication of the magnitude of the shift: India’s foreign exchange reserves have grown from almost nothing to about $100 billion in just two years – a huge number for a country whose gross domestic product is forecast to reach $650 billion in the coming year. “Things are changing very quickly, and the pace of it does surprise me,” says Joy Mazumdar, an Emory economist in the Department of Economics.

 

In the cities, the boom is changing the texture of daily life. “When I lived there, there were no such things as malls and now there’s a new one opening every month in the big cities. You can go in and get almost anything you get in the United States, which even 10 years ago wasn’t possible. Even five years ago in my hometown of Calcutta there wasn’t anything like this,” observes  Sudipta Basu, a professor of accounting at Goizueta.

 

Another indication of change in the subcontinent’s zeitgeist: ten years ago, the top-rated shows were serials based on Hindu religious themes –  the Hindu equivalent, Basu says, of Mel Gibson’s film about Jesus. These days, he notes, the big hit is the Indian equivalent of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

 

And all this may be only the beginning.  In a November 2003 interview in an Indian business newspaper, the Business Standard, Y.V. Reddy, governor of the Reserve Bank of India, India’s counterpart to Alan Greenspan, said that the country is “on the threshold of a high growth trajectory.” His best guess: 8% growth over the next two to three years.

 

Western companies are drawn to India today as a way to cut costs in all kinds of business processes, from IT development to claims-processing, and from call centers to tax-return preparation. But Richard Metters, a professor of decision and information analysis, cautions that the cost savings is not as dramatic as one might expect in a country where the latest government figures peg average per capita income at 10,964 rupees – about $243.

 

“The wage comparison is misleading,” Metters says, because low wages create other expenditures Western companies typically don’t consider. “You can get a worker for a tenth of the wages in the U.S., that’s true, but somebody who makes $3000 a year can’t afford a car, so they can’t get to work. So you have to hire drivers to pick them up and bring them to work. And somebody who makes $3000 a year can’t go out to lunch, so you have to have a subsidized employee cafeteria that feeds them.” Also, Metters says, the weak infrastructure means that companies need to spend more on telephone lines and backup generators, and the country’s ongoing political tensions with Pakistan mean greater expenses on security than is typical for a Western company. Extensive training, such as accent neutralization classes and crash-courses in American geography, increase costs as well.

 

The upshot: a savings of only about 25%, he estimates. But the quality is often good, he says, as college graduates typically take the call center jobs, which are considered good and even prestigious posts. And 25% is a significant savings for companies that watch every penny.

 

It’s probably also just the beginning. After all, these college graduates can do much more than answer phones. In services, Goizueta professors say that India has tremendous numbers of skilled professionals. Consider accounting, for instance. India’s accounting schools produce about 50,000 new accountants every year, according to some reports. By comparison, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants estimates the U.S. turns out about 35,000 new accountants. And not only are the numbers large, but the quality is good:  Basu says that the exams Indian accountants take are tougher than the U.S. CPA exam. 

 

The situation is similar in other professions. Indian nurses and doctors take jobs all over the world. India produces about 290,000 engineers every year, roughly the same as the number that graduate in both science and technology in the U.S. The largely Hindu country even exports Catholic priests, according to Jagdish Sheth, a professor of marketing at Goizueta.

 

Sheth, who maintains close ties to India and serves on the boards of several leading Indian companies, sees many areas in which there are huge opportunities for India’s skilled workers, particularly in science, pharmaceuticals, and agricultural science. In science, for instance, scientists are paid about a tenth of what they are paid in the U.S., says Sheth. This is more than double the differential between call center employees in India versus the U.S.

 

But most professors expect growing pains as the country develops. While most Indians now feel that the country as a whole is benefiting from the service boom, Mazumdar says the growth in income inequality could lead to social trouble down the line, as software developers receiving salaries approaching Western standards try to live side by side with people getting along on several hundred dollars a year. “In certain cities, especially in cities like Delhi and Bombay, it does create this big discrepancy between people,” cautions Mazumder. “It drives up real estate prices and things like that. It has not exploded, at least not yet.”

 

Sheth says that the numbers of women entering the back office outsourcing is also likely to create major social challenges in a country where educated women traditionally did not work outside the home. “Now they have become a significant part of the workforce, especially in call centers, which is creating enormous cultural challenge and change,” he says.  His analogy: Japan in the late 40s, when the U.S. and Emperor Hirohito drove a complete change in women’s role in Japanese society.

 

For its neighbors, India’s growth may be leading to massive changes as well – some positive and some not. Nazrul Islam, an Emory economist originally from nearby Bangladesh, says that Bangladeshi IT firms look to India as a model, and are now even hiring Indians to train their programmers. “That’s the hopeful side,” he says.

 

However, Islam does see one worrisome trend: he fears India’s success may be going to its head. “For the small [neighboring countries] India was always perceived to be a sort of a big brother – not in a benevolent sense…and India’s economic success will probably accentuate that.”    One example: the Indian government’s national river-linking project, a plan to divert many of the country’s eastern rivers to the drier western and southern parts of India. “And they’re going ahead with this project with total neglect of what will happen to Bangladesh, which is the lower riparian country and a smaller country,” he says.

 

Infrastructure remains a key problem, despite gains in recent years. As the prominent emerging markets investment guru Marc Faber told an Indian newspaper recently, "Infrastructure has improved from horrible to very bad."  Electricity, roads, and even such basics as the quality of paper money  (the Reserve Bank of India recently began a campaign to replace notes that have been stapled together in bundles) remains a problem. Metters says that most development is concentrated in self-contained campuses, in which each company has its own security, back-up generators and telecommunications systems. The number of these “islands” is growing, he says.

 

“You see this gleaming office tower housing all these people, and right outside of that gleaming office tower is garbage in the street and a dirt road and an ox pulling a cart," observes Metters.

 

Mazumdar notes that the lack of infrastructure is probably one reason the service exports have grown more quickly than manufactured goods.  For example, goods that might ship out of China in hours can take up to 18 days to leave India, he says. “But with service exports, things were very, very different because you did not have these transportation hurdles. All you had to do was send it along on a phone line or a satellite link.”

 

The growth of cities, which generally occurs as a country industrializes, could also create difficulties. Sheth says that he is now trying to encourage companies to keep workers from migrating to India’s gigantic, crowded cities. One positive aspect of the service boom is that it should be possible, through local governmental incentives, to locate call centers and other plants in smaller communities.

 

Wage inflation will be a challenge as the number of educated, English-speaking workers is absorbed, says Sheth. Negotiating a new role for women is also likely to be contentious, he warns.

 

Finding jobs for India’s billion plus people is another key challenge that the service boom has thus far not addressed.  To employ its young and growing population, Sheth says that country needs to look outside its service-sector base and export more manufactured and agricultural goods. He says that there’s a lot of potential in these sectors. For instance: India has the largest dairy industry in the world, but doesn’t export any of its dairy products. However, things may be changing. Now, he says, a farmer’s cooperative he spoke to last year about the idea has just concluded a contract with Wal-Mart. 

 

Mazumdar says he expects that the current neat division between India as a servicing hub and China as a manufacturing powerhouse will change. “If these had been fairly small countries, I would say, this specialization is going to continue in the future, but given that these countries are large, there’s enough of a variety of talent that they should actually be able to have a very diversified export portfolio.”

I want to be an MBA

Graduates today want to be an MBA, but have little idea what a manager really does.
“I want to be an MBA," is probably one of the most hackneyed and trite comments of the graduating youth of recent times.

Graduates today want to be an MBA, but have little idea what a manager really does.

Most students are attracted to a management education at top business schools because of the high pay packets they get at the end of it.

Sure, it is a brilliant career to pursue, but if your ultimate aim is to stuff your pockets, you might just cut a sorry figure in your future life or, for that matter, even in your Group Discussions or interviews.

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American Visa Hurdles for International B-schools aspirant
Business schools are doing their best to help foreign students through Americas tougher visa process

After Nadim Saad got his MBA from INSEAD in France last year, he planned to go to the Wharton School in Pennsylvania on a two-month exchange programme. But Mr Saad, a Mexican national who was born in Lebanon, never made it. As his classmates left, his visa was still being processed at the American embassy in Paris, forcing him to reschedule his flights to America every few days. Mr Saad says he was told that his visa would arrive on time, but it never did. In January, the embassy told him that because the exchange programme (whose dates he had already rescheduled) was over, it would not grant the visa.

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Fresh engineer at wipro ? Pay Rs 75,000!
Bangalore-based Wipro Technologies has a novel way of keeping its employee attrition rate under control.
While most infotech companies ask their prospective employees to sign bonds, Wipro wants new recruits to plonk a Rs 75,000 refundable deposit on the table before they can collect their appointment letters.

Such a drastic measure was warranted by the fact that nearly 50 per cent of new recruits were flying the coop after their training programme.

"The Rs 75,000 deposit will discourage those who join us only for our training programme," said Bijay Sahoo, Wipro's vice-president and global human resources head.

The deposit system, which works through a tripartite agreement between Wipro, the candidate and a bank, requires the employee to deposit the money in the bank directly.

The deposit, along with the interest on it, is refundable when the engineering graduate completes 12 months with Wipro after the three-month training period. Science graduates, who undergo a six-month training period, have to wait 18 months to claim their refund.

Those unable to put down the deposit have the option of taking a Rs 75,000 loan from the bank, for which they will have to pay interest. At the end of the period, they can claim the deposit amount as well as a retention bonus as compensation for the money they lost by way of interest.

The agreement was introduced in April 2004 and has been used for two placement seasons now. Wipro claims it has had no impact on its campus recruitment.

"All other companies in the industry get their employees to signs bonds and other agreements. So we are not doing something that nobody else is. Our placement has not suffered at all under this tripartite agreement," said Sahoo.

What i think about it ? It is Just another example of slavery in modern world.

Forbes top 40 richest indians

Forbes has announced its maiden list of the top 40 richest people in India in its upcoming issue (December 20).

Steel titan Lakshmi Mittal tops the list with wealth of $11.2 billion. His Ispat International aims to become the world's largest steel company. He currently resides in UK and is also known as Britain's richest resident.

In second place is Indian software supreme, Wipro's Azim Premji with wealth of $10 billion. Premji owns 84 per cent of Wipro, India's second biggest infotech company by revenues. 

The 40 Richest Indians
1	Lakshmi N Mittal	Mittal Steel
2	Azim Premji	Wipro
3	Mukesh & Anil Ambani	Reliance
4	Kumar Mangalam Birla	A V Birla
5	Pallonji Mistry	Tata Sons
6	Sunil Mittal	Bharti Group
7	Shiv Nadar	HCL
8	Adi Godrej	Godrej Inds
9	Malvinder & Shivinder Singh	Ranbaxy
10	Dilip Sanghvi	Sun Pharma
11	Anil Agarwal	Sterlite
12	Shashi & Ravi Ruia	Essar
13	Om Prakash Jindal	Jindal Group
14	Rahul Bajaj	Bajaj Auto
15	N R Narayana Murthy	Infosys
16	Subhash Chandra	Zee Telefilms
17	Yusuf Hamed	Cipla
18	Brijmohan Lal Munjal	Hero Group
19	Habil Khorakiwala	Wockhardt
20	Vivek Burman	Dabur
21	Nandan Nilekani	Infosys
22	S Gopalakrishnan	Infosys
23	N S Raghavan	Infosys
24	Narendra Patni	Patni Comp
25	Ajay Piramal	Nicholas Piramal
26	Vijay Mallya	UB Group
27	Pankaj Patel	Zydus Cadila
28	Baba Kalyani	Kalyani Group
29	B Ramalinga Raju	Satyam
30	Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw	Biocon
31	Karsanbhai Patel	Nirma
32	K Dinesh	Infosys
33	Uday Kotak	Kotak Mahindra
34	S D Shibulal	Infosys
35	K Anji Reddy	Dr Reddy's
36	Narottam Sekhsaria	Gujarat Ambuja
37	Jaiprakash Gaur	Jaiprakash Inds
38	Shyam & Hari Bhartia	Jubilant Organo
39	Keshub Mahindra	M&M
40	Desh Bandhu Gupta	Lupin

 Mukesh and Anil Ambani are ranked third with wealth of $6.4 billion, inherited from their father, Reliance Group's founder Dhirubhai Ambani. The two brothers are reportedly feuding over control of the group today.

Ranked fourth is Kumar Mangalam Birla with $3.5 billion. He is the fourth generation head of Aditya Birla Group, India's largest cement producer.

Construction magnate and real estate developer, Pallonji Mistry is fifth on the list with wealth of $2.9 billion.

India's biotech pioneer, co-founder of Biocon, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is the sole female on the list with $455 million.

Sunil Mittal of Bharti Group with $2.6 billion is sixth, Shiv Nadar of HCL with $2.3 billion is seventh, Adi Godrej of Godrej Industries is eighth with a net wroth of $1.9 billion, Malvinder & Shivinder Mohan Singh of Ranbaxy are night with $1.5 billion, and Dilip Shanghvi of Sun Pharma is tenth with $ 1.4 billion.

With India's economic liberalisation, its people are capitalising on this trend in wealth creation.

New star does not only include the technology sector, but also the pharmaceutical sector. Half of the top 40 richest come from these two sectors -- 11 from technology and 9 from pharmaceutical.

While some of them are inherited wealth, it is interesting to note that 19 of them are entirely self-made billionaires and millionaires.

In terms of cities, 16 of them live in Mumbai, 8 in Bangalore and 8 in Delhi. The average net worth was $1.5 billion.

The net worth of the individuals is calculated based on the current share prices, exchange rate and in some cases, recent dividends for those with publicly traded fortunes, and for privately held fortunes, they were estimated based on the value the companies would be worth if they were public.

Forbes has honed over nearly two decades of tracking world wealth and is renowned for its ranking of billionaires and celebrities. This is the third in a series of such Asia Pacific rich lists that will appear in the coming months.

This series is sponsored by SG Private Banking (Asia Pacific), the private wealth management arm of the Societe Generale Group.

"We are delighted to be associated with Forbes in their series of Asia Rich list. SG Private Banking is fully part of the wealth creation cycle in Asia, meeting constant evolving high net wroth individual's requirements. To that respect, SG Private Banking has set in Asia a global worldwide hub both for Asian clients as well as European and other regions' customers. Considered as one of the fastest growing Private Banks in Asia, SG Private Banking became a major partner in building, managing and structuring high net worth individual's wealth. We fully share Forbes philosophy in the power of free enterprise. SG believes that this association is synergistic as it reinforces SG position as a global leader in cultivating fortune," said Daniel Truchi, CEO of SG Private Banking

Tips on Applying to Business School in the United States

During the past several years, international students have been flocking in ever larger numbers to U.S. business schools, where they’re greeted with open arms by admissions officers. Schools have been making a conscious effort to secure global perspectives for their classrooms by diversifying their student body. “We try to enroll at least 30 percent of our class from overseas,” says Kate Coffman, associate director of admissions at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. Indiana is in good company: MIT Sloan admits upwards of 40 percent of its class from outside the United States, and Purdue’s Krannert, around 44 percent.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, however, prompted the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to revisit its policies on foreign students. Notably, the INS is implementing the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which, according to Danielle Sheahan, a spokeswoman for the government agency, essentially “enables us to make sure students who apply to school in our country are attending all their classes on a full-time basis.” American business schools will be required to use SEVIS by January 30, 2003, or else forfeit the right to enroll international applicants.

Liz Reisberg, executive director of The MBA Tour -- a company that helps U.S. business schools reach out to overseas applicants by arranging and promoting recruitment fairs in their respective countries -- is skeptical about the new service. “I fear that SEVIS might make our country a less welcoming destination,” she says. “Some of these precautions seem a bit unnecessary, considering that of everyone in the United States on a visa, students represent only around 1 percent. Many of the schools we work with were disappointed that we canceled our tour to the Middle East this year.”

As a result, many admissions offices are taking the initiative to make sure students from foreign countries—especially those where U.S. embassies and consulates have been more hesitant to hand out visas—feel welcome to apply. The University of Michigan Business School's Kris Nebel, director of school admissions, and Jim Hayes, director of academic services, say, “We’ve been more proactive in reaching out to the embassies in China and India” -- two countries singled out by several admissions officers as having the most problems with students' obtaining visas.

Although the transition to SEVIS might make it more difficult to get the necessary documentation, applicants shouldn’t be too worried. Most schools say there will be no change in the admissions policy for international students, and that their presence in the classroom is as important as ever. So if you're considering an MBA in the United States, here are a few tips.

Speak (and write) the language
According to several school officials, class participation and interaction are becoming ever more important in order to excel in business school. For this reason, all international applicants must be fluent in English. Those with another native language must take the Test of English as a Foreign Language (visit TOEFL.org for more information). Note that if you were schooled in an English-speaking institution or country, or have work experience in the United States, you might be eligible to have the TOEFL requirement waived.

If you do have to take it, don't stress. Recent Wharton graduate Marcio Boruchowski, who hails from Brazil, says, “The TOEFL really isn’t difficult if you know the language. The more arduous tasks are writing your essays in English and studying for the GMAT -- which is a much harder test.” Indeed, mastering the language is a must for both of these since they require you to think in -- not just translate into -- English.

Don’t expect admissions officers to be too lenient on this point. “We admit our international students much as we do our domestic ones,” says Tammy Greco, assistant director of admissions at the University of Texas-Austin's McCombs School of Business. “We expect to see all parts of the application in correlation with one another.” In other words, besides an equivalent to a four-year U.S. bachelor’s degree (a three-year degree will suffice in only some cases), you need to make a serious effort to write and revise your essays and study for the GMAT, especially the verbal section. Keep in mind that GMAT scores are usually required to be no more than five years old, while TOEFL scores are valid for no more than two years.

Make sure you can pay
To get the green light for entry, you’ll have to prove that you can pay tuition for one -- and sometimes two -- years. Grant-based financial aid is not plentiful at American business schools, and admissions and aid officers alike often maintain that most of their international students pay their own way. Ann Richards, director of financial aid and associate director of admissions at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, offers this advice: “Students often get loans or sponsors in their own country and pay for themselves.” If these options aren’t available, Cornell and a few other schools offer loans that can be used toward your financial statement, provided you have verifiable resources to pay them off. Cornell’s loan – administered in conjunction with Citibank -- doesn’t require a U.S. co-signer, unlike some others. International students often find it easier to get extra funding after they’ve established a credit history in the U.S. But if you do try to borrow money for the first year, make sure you give yourself the time to find a co-signer who will assume the risk.

Apply as early as possible
Johnson’s associate director of international admissions, Kim Killingsworth, explains why this is necessary. “Because schools will be functioning with a new data collection system in SEVIS for the first time, processing the necessary documentation will take longer this year… so we strongly encourage our international applicants to apply no later than our second round (of three). ” Every school we spoke to echoes her advice: Apply early, not only so you can get your visa in time, but also to be considered for any merit-based financial aid.

“By our last round, we don’t have as much money to give to our students,” notes one financial aid representative. Additionally, students typically need this extra time to find a co-signer, since they’re notified about most loans when they find out they’ve been admitted.

Certain schools require their admits to attend special summer programs that emphasize improvement in English and communication. In such cases, it's even more crucial to give yourself plenty of time. So when researching schools, find out all of the requirements well in advance -- and be sure to put your hat in the ring as early as possible.

Try not to worry
A native of China, Wharton graduate Florence Hu recalls, “I spent the most time on my application. There’s really not much I could do after that.” Of course, the INS holds the cards, since it determines whether you get to enter the U.S. or not. On the whole, however, U.S. embassies and consulates have been efficient in distributing the necessary permits. “Our students are pretty much getting their visas,” says Maria Graham, the director of public affairs for Columbia Business School.

Michigan’s Nebel agrees: “Aside from more background checks in India and China, things have been running pretty smoothly.” And although the implementation of SEVIS might make the process of obtaining a visa a little longer, U.S. business schools are still determined to enroll a substantial part of their class from overseas. So after you’ve applied early, been accepted, and followed the instructions of the schools, U.S. embassy, and INS, you can savor your extra fifteen minutes of spare time, relishing the fact that you’ll get to work even harder next year.

Cracking CAT is a lot harder now

The common admission test for entrance to the six Indian Institutes of Management will be a tough nut to crack this year. The number of aspirants for the test has gone up by 20 per cent to 150,000 from 125,000 last year. The number of seats, however, remains unchanged at around 1,150.

The IIMs added 200 seats last year. This is a pittance, considering the fact that the number of students appearing for the CAT has more than doubled in the last five years.

The test will be held on November 21 at 24 centres across the country. Of the 165,000 applications forms printed this year, a little above 150,000 are expected to be sold.

"The rush is too much. Even the two new IIMs at Indore and Kozhikode have not helped matters. The ministry is planning to set up another IIM," says D Chakraborty, administrative officer (admissions), IIM Lucknow.

Aspirants need to clear the CAT for admission to post graduate or fellow programmes in management offered by the IIMs. IIM-Ahmedabad offers the maximum number of seats, 290. This comprises 260 seats for the master in business administration programme and 30 for the agri-business management course.

The IIMs have allowed 54 other business schools to use the CAT for shortlisting candidates. Only 10 of these institutes feature in the A-category of B-schools, offering around 1,400 seats.

Last year, only 3,500 of the 130,000 candidates who appeared were called for the next stage, which consists of group discussions and interviews.

Finally, around 2,500 candidates, including 1,850 at the top 15 B-schools, were shortlisted. The success rate for the CAT, therefore, works out to less than 2 per cent.

The changing profile of B-schools in India
A number of working men and women are now joining B-schools About 40 per cent of the students are graduate engineers. That's natural because the number of engineers is so high. A whole lot of people from other professions are also taking to management .

WITH SO many B-schools around how does a student choose the right one? "In India there are more than 1,000 B-schools now. Students have to know all the details about the school in which they intend to join.

Many professionals take a break to study management. Since, two years will be too long a period, the course duration was reduced

In a year the total contact study time at ISB ( Indian School of business at Hyderabad ) is about 700 hours whereas it is about 740 hours in schools having a two-year programme. So there is not much of a difference.

The Ever-Costlier MBA Degree in US

Average tuition for a two-year program is now more than $60,000. Still, most students remain convinced that the rewards are worth the expense

Times were good when Sarah McNeilly earned her MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1998. She paid $51,000 for her two-year degree and then tripled her salary in her first post-MBA job as a consultant. Her partner, Nicolas Ioos, started the same MBA program in 2004, except two-year tuition had risen to $70,000. And, with the dot-com craze over, Ioos isn't guaranteed a big-bucks job when he graduates. "There's a certain window in which you do an MBA to have that positive financial [return on investment]," McNeilly says.

 

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