Does having an MBA mean you are a professional business manager?
Harvard MBA Devi Vallabhaneni doesn’t think so. Vallabhaneni believes that new MBAs should have to pass a 4-part, 16-hour, 400-question Certified Business Manager (CBM) test, a veritable bar exam for business managers. Only then, can they, like doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants, be truly called professionals.
Two years ago Vallabhaneni founded the Association of Professionals in Business Management, a nonprofit credentialing organization and professional association offering two separate certification tests–the CBM and the Certified Associate Business Manager test (CABM).
The goal of the Association and the tests is to establish standards of business knowledge that make it possible to gauge whether working managers and new MBAs have mastered curriculum covered by most top B-school programs.
The CBM is billed as a masters-level professional certification based on an MBA curriculum, including a Harvard Business School case study. The CBM Designation can be earned while pursuing an MBA, after completing an MBA degree or in lieu of an MBA.
The tests are fairly rigorous (pass rate is 45%-50%) and expensive ($1,600 per sitting), and the study materials cost $675. Certified professionals must pay an annual maintenance fee of $48, and complete 20 hours of continuing education per year. This seems a smidge rich until you consider that a Berkeley MBA will cost you up to $58,000 per year.
Thus far 3,000 people have become certified, IBM is piloting the certification in it’s internal audit group, and Vallabhaneni is out there spreading the word.
So, what’ll it be? MBA or CBM, or both?
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