UCI Management Students To Play with Borrowed Money
UC Irvine – The New University
Feb. 2 – Charles Martin, co-chair of UC Irvine’s Graduate School of Management will take a $1.5 million gamble to give students some real-money experience in the world of investing.
Martin, a venture capitalist from Laguna Beach, will select five teams to invest $300,000 in the stock market each. Teams of four to six students will present investment proposals to Martin before he chooses who will participate in the project, called Polaris Investment Lab.
“They will have to hurdle high to make their case,” Martin said. “They’ll have to be able to sell their ideas to me.”
Any changes to the teams’ portfolios during the yearlong investment period must be pre-approved by Martin. After a year, the teams would be ranked by the amount of profits their investments made. Profits will be split between Martin and team members, with first-place team members receiving up to $12,000 each, $10,000 for second, $8,000 for third, $6,000 for fourth and $4,000 for fifth.
Should students’ investments fail, they would lose only their $200 entry fee to the program.
“Students will have a practical opportunity to learn what makes a good company by studying real companies in real-life situations where something significant is on the line,” Martin said. “Their focus will be much sharper than when they are competing for grades in a classroom.”
Sand Flies at Planned UCR Palm Desert Campus
UC Riverside – The Highlander
Jan. 28 – UC Riverside officials held an event marking the start of construction of a new campus on seven acres of land donated by the city of Palm Desert. The site will be home to UCR’s Richard J. Heckman Center for Entrepreneurial Management, expected to be complete by spring 2005.
Ricardo Duran, UCR officer of marketing and media relations, said the center would mainly accommodate graduate programs in entrepreneurial studies and business management, but would also offer some interdisciplinary studies.
“We’re filling a niche that needs to be filled for residents of the [Coachella] Valley,” Duran said. “We will cater to those interested in arts management, people who want to lead dance troupes and museum owners.”
Duran said the facility would accommodate 250 to 300 students when it opens, but that that number could eventually reach 1,000.
The campus is named after Richard Heckman, a Coachella Valley entrepreneur who donated $6 million to its construction in 2001.
Cal Might Get the Drop on Students ‘Gaming the System’
UC Berkeley – The Daily Californian
Feb. 6 – Administrators say students who are ‘gaming the system’ by dropping certain classes after their first midterm are hurting other students by blocking them out of needed courses.
“That doesn’t seem to be a good pedagogical reason to take a course,” Undergraduate Dean Robert Holub said. “The goal of education is not to maximize GPA.”
As a result, the university is considering moving the deadline to drop classes from the eighth week as far up as the third week. The change would also thwart students who enroll in classes to receive financial aid for a full course load, then drop the classes after the fifth week, Holub said.
Holub has not set a timetable for when the policy might be changed.
Berkeley’s Associated Students are planning to circulate petitions to oppose the change.
“This is a troubling time for them to do this, when there is a decrease in financial aid, increase in fees and tons of budget cuts,” A.S. Vice President of Academic Affairs Gustavo Mata said.
– Compiled by Travis Hunter
