Greg Hallman
How are MBA programs preparing finance-focused students for working in a crisis and its aftermath? We asked Greg F. Hallman, finance lecturer at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.
What are some ways the current financial downturn has affected the content and teaching methodology in finance at McCombs?
In my view, the financial downturn has actually made teaching finance a little easier. At its core, finance is the study of risk and return. The past couple of years in the market have given todays students a perfect illustration of risk and the downside to investing. Now when we teach them that expected return is a payment for risk, I believe they can better understand the risk/return relationship.
The market’s performance has also made very clear the fact that no matter how good our models are we cannot see the future. This has, of course, always been true, but the troubles suffered by the big and generally smart banks have shown that even with a decent model of the market’s behavior unlikely events can and do occur to wreck the best laid plans.