Back in the good old days, students attending business school would learn how to outsmart the competition, play the odds, and devise winning strategies. And they usually got into any class they wanted, no problem.
These days, they have to be experts in the laws of supply and demand just to get in to the classes that used to teach them those basics.
Wired News goes back to school- - - - - -
Call it eBay meets business school, where students plot graphs, crunch numbers, and devise strategies to win class seats with the most sought-after topics and professors.
The methods range from a random lottery to pure auctions -- where students bid against each other to gain admittance to classes -- to computerized bidding, to a true free market in which students can buy and sell spots in classes.
Some schools use Web-based auctions similar to the eBay model, while others require students to conduct transactions with non-graphic Unix interfaces.
Among the colleges whose business schools utilize true auctions or similar tools are heavyweights Stanford, Penn, Berkeley, MIT, and the University of Chicago.
"The course auction aims to transform what would otherwise be a random outcome into a deliberate outcome," said Anjani Jain, deputy vice dean and director of the MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.
The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business actually pioneered computerized bidding 15 years ago, creating a new way for students to get classes without standing in line or agonizing over waiting lists.
The frenzy begins about a week before the bidding starts, when students begin to identify which classes are the hottest or most important to get into.
"Anything with an 'e' in front of it is hot right now," said Dan Sullivan, director of student affairs for the MBA program at UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
