Higher education in Chile is blowing my mind.

I can't decide if it's because my undergrad college choice was as poor or if my undergrad major was poor. Perhaps it's a combination of both. What's clear to me now is this: I'm in my first year of a Masters in Marketing here in Chile and I've learned more in the past three months than I learned in my entire four years of college back home.

The marketing program I'm doing is divided into two years: the first year results in what is called a "Diplomado" which is a mini-degree of sorts. Not quite a Masters but definitely considered post-graduate studies. Upon completing the second year, you're granted a Masters. The good thing is that I can finish my first year and decide to return for my second year FIVE YEARS from now and I'll still be able to follow the initial rhythm. For obvious reasons, I wouldn't wait that long (I might forget everything!) though I'm still debating if I'll do my 2nd year right away.

Anyway, in short I'm very happy I decided to do this because I'm learning things I never knew! And now that I think about it, I wonder how many of my friends knew things I now know, but back before I didn't know them? For instance, and the most basic of all concepts, when I imagine the word "marketing" I imagined the advertisement of a certain product or service, the commercial, the little picture you saw in the grocery store, the slogan or the Buy-One-Get-One-Free gimmicks associated with a product. But that's not it at all. Marketing is as simple as this: creating a need in the mind of the consumer and satisfying that need, all the while reaching sales goals established by your company. And that pretty much sums it up.

Education here (as I've experienced it thus far, mind you) is much more structured than I remember undergrad in California to be. There's a process and an evolution and the idea that one thing is connected to the other. First we learned about Marketing as a concept in general; creating added value for the consumer, the internal client and the external client, what's involved in a sales strategy vs what's involved in a marketing plan. We talked about how different products in the same company can mean different things to that company and that in and of itself, require completely different strategies (think toothpaste, dental floss and mouthwash, all under the umbrella of the Colgate-Palmolive company. All three mean different things to them.)

This was then followed by more detailed business concepts in general. Examples: overview in Statistics (for the purposes of market studies), Finance, the mind of the consumer and what propels him/her to purchase something, and finally, an overview on the different kinds of Market Research tools available to companies. We're in Module III now (the year has 4 in total) and from what I can tell, we're looking at things from an eagle's eye view with the purpose of applying everything we learned in Modules I and II and honing them.

While I had heard and read about SWOT analyzes, I had never done one until Module I when we had to read a case study on the car company, Renault (unheard of in the States, I know.) I was on my mini-moon in NYC and I had to work remotely with my assigned group for the year to deliver on what was expected of us the following week. I bugged G a lot during that time because NOTHING made any sense to me. The 4 Ps? What'sthat? (Now I know). SWOT analysis - um how do I begin do that with this car company I've never even heard of? I was convinced I was the dumbest person in class.

We've read and done analysis on topics such as Harley Davidson (you tell me: what do they sell?), an XYZ Argentine textile company, Hummer and their H1 model, Mattel and their marketing of toys to boys vs. girls. We've seen examples of how different products aim to strike at the different motivators within people (i.e. are you motivated to be a good mother? Are you motivated to belong? Are you motivated with the idea of a certain status?) and learned how the Coca Cola company has been able to target all IN ONE COMMERCIAL, one message. And coming up soon, we'll all be behind computers, with our groups, doing a Product Management Simulation game which will supposedly drive home the 4 P's of marketing, all the while teaching us about brand equity and marketing planning for a product/product lines. The objective of this simulation "game" is to have the highest net worth and highest company stock price compared to the other groups in our class.

And the cherry on top is this: we have a year-long project where we have to present a marketing proposal for a business or product of our choice. And I cannot tell you the amount of research and work this involves. Let me just say that I know way more about our chosen topic than I ever cared to know ....

Wait, what?? I sound all professional and sh*t.

But that's the point, right? That's why I'm paying over US$800 each month and that's why I deal with having to write PAPERS and work with my team to produce presentations that demonstrate things we've been learning since early April. So that tomorrow (whenever that may be) I'll be an added value myself to whatever company I'm working for at the time.

It does make me wonder if undergrad in Chile is just as structured as Graduate school seems to be. If it is, then it would result in candidates who are a million times more prepared and better educated than those of the United States. I wonder this recognizing that I have absolutely no basis for comparison on either, really. I never attended undergrad here and didn't attend Graduate school there. But should my theory be correct, and Chile does produce people better equipped to enter the work force, it would explain why the labor market (at an executive level) is so competitive here.

I'm even more inclined to think that the public undergrad education I received back home was less than stellar (and I repeat, this could be due to my poor choices on institution and matter) when I hear my fellow Grad School classmates complain about the low quality education we're currently receiving at one of the most expensive, most prestigious universities in Chile (and in Latin America for that matter.) To be fair, I do agree that too much information is being crammed into a period of time that is much too short. After all, I do believe that an "overview" of Finance should entail more than 7 hours of class and that said overview should include more than the Balance Sheet and General Ledger. But if many of my classmates feel and truly believe that in some ways we're being "cheated" of a good education right now, what does that imply about their experiences in undergrad? Here I am just amazed at how structured and plentiful the education is and they're saying that what we're learning - and mainly how we're learning it - is a crock! Certainly an example of looking at two different sides of the same coin.

In the end, there IS one thing that remains consistent with what I believe about higher education in the States. The name - the BRAND, if you will - truly matters. Can we deny that there are many who choose Stanford, Duke, Harvard, Brown, Berkeley and on, primarily for what that name implies to others once they've graduated? I believe the majority of us followed the same road when choosing where we'd receive our graduate studies. We looked at our options here in Chile, figured out the top three and opted for the best in this particular field (Marketing/Business.)

So even if some would argue that the system is a crock (as you read, I don't agree), aren't we truly then just paying for the name of the university and all that it implies? Discuss.

Labels: Masters program