Update on Financial Management Class

Today we received our syllabus for the Financial Management class.  On the surface, it looks like a fairly standard finance class.  Lots of Cash Flow analysis, Net Present Value, Capital Budgeting, Cost of Debt & Equity, etc...

The one thing that jumped out at me is the grading model for the course.  55% is based on a final exam, and only 20-30% is based on team projects or class interactions.  While this might be fine for a full-time program made up of students with less work experience, but it doesn't seem to be in line with an executive program made up of experienced students that have knowledge to share. This structure seems to facilitate memorization rather than long-term learning.  It almost seems ironic that a finance class wouldn't be focused on "leverage", in this case the students leveraging each other.

If there is one thing that frustrates me about the program is the lack of consistency of how the courses are structured (case model vs. exams vs. lecture).  I've mentioned this before, but it came up a couple times this past weekend in class.  Several people mentioned that they would prefer to see the excellent cases presented across classes, so we can examine them from the different course perspectives (Operations, Marketing, Accounting, etc..).