Business School, Continuing Education, and business educational options

Increasingly, employers are saying that 120 semester-hours of classroom work does not adequately prepare young men and women for careers in business. The reason is simple:  classrooms cannot duplicate the myriad of technical challenges that business grads must face.

Some universities have addressed the problem by offering dual majors in business and engineering. In other cases, business students are encouraged to take technical electives rather than electives in social studies or the humanities.

California State Polytechnic University at Pomona has instituted a third approach. With the help of corporations in southern California, it is now training business students in supply chain management and logistics through a "hands on" approach.

Cal Poly, which has highly regarded engineering and business programs, has created a technology and operations management (TOM) department which exposes business students to radio frequency identification tracking, enterprise resource management, warehouse management systems, transportation system planning, global positioning and global data synchronization technologies.

In addition to extensive classroom work, students spend time visiting warehouses and distribution centers of large companies to study "real world" logistic operations.

Michael Entzminger, CEO of one of the participating corporations, expresses it this way:  "Technology has made us more efficient. It's a hands-on business. The hands-on polytechnic practices at Cal Poly Pomona prepare students well for this business before they even hit the workforce."