This Video Game Could Change Business School Forever -- And It's Actually Fun

Imagine you are a new employee at a large airline. You walk into an airport one day and receive an email from your boss. He says the company needs a new strategy, and he wants you to come up with some options. You panic and scramble to find as much information as possible among passengers and employees at the airport before you board your flight.

This is the premise for a new video game called "One Day," developed for Hult International Business School to teach strategy to MBA students. The game is still in development and probably won't be ready for the classroom until next year, but early tests show promise. Not to mention, it's actually fun to play.

While it is now fairly common for video games to teach elementary concepts -- spelling, basic math, typing -- higher education has more or less resisted encroaching technology up to this point. Until recently, higher-level concepts have been harder to program because there may be more than one right answer. "One Day," which its creators say is the first game of its kind, poses some fairly new questions about learning in the digital age and the role of the professor in a modern classroom.

"I’ve been a business school professor for 30 years," said John Beck, whose educational consulting company, North Star Leadership Group, developed "One Day." He lamented that most MBA programs rely on teaching methods honed decades before the personal computing revolution. "For 30 years I’ve been thinking the system is so broken. The case studies model dates from the 1920s, and the lecture model from the 1850s."

In the new model Hult is evaluating -- teaching by video game simulation -- students actually interact with the material, rather than sitting in long lecture sessions or working through historical cases in class.

Hult recently conducted an experiment in London to see just how well the prototype game teaches. Students were given a test of their knowledge of strategy, then half were taught by a professor and the other half played the game, then they were tested again. The results showed "One Day" taught the students just as well, if not slightly better than the lecture professor did.

When North Star let me play the game for myself recently, I enjoyed it. The production quality and entertainment factor don't compare to, say, "Halo," but it's certainly more engaging than your average lecture. The graphics are fairly flat and almost look like they were drawn in MS Paint, but in a kind of pleasing way. It wouldn't be my go-to game on the weekend, but it was fun to spend a day exploring it.

The current version of "One Day," which, again, is just a prototype and only a fraction of what the full course-replacing game will look like, takes a couple of hours to complete. The player gets a task: figure out a new strategy for the fictional airline company by talking to customers and employees, who change every time the game is restarted. Players must also read through available information about the airline industry and company's performance. The player takes notes, and at the end makes a decision about the future of the company.

That said, it's hard. The game requires you to absorb new concepts while also sorting through which information is important and which is not. You don't really get any answers until you play it all the way through, so it's difficult to get right on the first try.

According to Adam Carstens, another of the game's developers, my experience was fairly typical. He told me people often don't do very well their first time playing, but do much better the second time through. 

The obvious question here is whether games are coming to automate professors' jobs. For now, it seems unlikely. 

This is an exciting new frontier in higher education, but Beck says he doesn't think this is the kind of automation that is going to put people out of work. On the contrary, it will free up professors from teaching low-level introductory classes to do more of the kind of work they enjoy, like research and teaching more specialized classed.

"It's a much more human role for teachers," noted Beck. "The rote learning, the basics, it’s pretty straightforward. Teaching to the test can be done by computers."

This Startup Offers Women An Amazing, Affordable and Thoughtful Perk

Not every company can afford to offer Netflix-level year-long maternity leaves. In fact, even Netflix doesn't offer that benefit to all of its workers. Still, there are creative ways to give perks to new moms. 

Domo, a 5-year-old startup based in Utah with a workforce of 600 employees, came up with something pretty innovative.

Every pregnant woman at the company gets $2,000 in gift cards to buy maternity clothes, according to an article by Claire Zillman in Fortune. 

If you've ever had to go to work in an office while pregnant, you will instantly understand why this is awesome.

For those of you who haven't, here's the deal: No one really wants to spend/waste money on maternity clothes -- you only need them for a very limited amount of time and they are expensive. Most of us just sort of muddle through, buying a few things, borrowing a lot of things and making do with stuff in our closet that is stretchy or big.

That's fine when you're home on the weekends, but it's a big bummer at the office, where you want to maintain a professional appearance and often wind up donning some pretty weird garments. Like, oh I don't know, a maternity shirt your cousin wore in the 1990s with a bow at the collar that seems like an OK idea in the morning but makes you feel like a sad, old Christmas present. (That may be something I know about firsthand.)

Domo's chief executive came up with the idea for the perk after his assistant became pregnant, Zillman told Fortune. 

The company, which helps other businesses manage their data, doesn't offer Cadillac-level maternity leave. You get one month at full pay and then six weeks at partial pay. Five or six people have used the clothing benefit so far, Fortune reports.

Would more paid leave probably be preferable to a new wardrobe? Yes, sure. Still, the gift cards are a nice idea and certainly signal to employees that they're valued at a time that can feel very uncertain to a lot of women. And small signals like that add up, making employees more loyal to companies, which are then less likely to have to train new workers because their current ones stick around. It's a win-win -- and nobody has to dress like a Christmas present.

 

J. Crew Will End On-Call Shifts For U.S. Workers

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — J. Crew has agreed to end on-call scheduling at stores nationwide, following similar moves by several other major retailers, New York's attorney general said Friday.

In April, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office wrote to 13 retailers questioning the practice of keeping workers on call for shifts on short notice. The letter also cited possible violations of New York's requirement to pay hourly staff for at least four hours when they report for work.

"Workers deserve protections that allow them to have a reliable schedule in order to arrange for transportation to work, to accommodate child care needs and to budget their family finances," Schneiderman said Friday. The company has agreed to provide one week of advance notice about schedules at all its New York stores, he said.

Senior Vice President Maria Di Lorenzo said J. Crew ended on-call shifts nationally this month. The on-call shifts had helped the company deal with unexpected staff absences and schedule changes for product deliveries, she said. The retailer began discussing possible changes 10 months ago, has disabled the on-call feature from its scheduling software and now will fill needed slots on a voluntary basis, which may present some challengers for managers, she wrote in a letter to the New York attorney general.

"Further, J. Crew has strict anti-retaliation policies," Di Lorenzo wrote. "Consistent with those policies, J. Crew will not retaliate against associates who do not volunteer to cover these shifts."

That follows announced agreements confirmed by Bath & Body Works and affiliate Victoria's Secret, Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap Inc. Williams Sonoma said it's also ending the practice.

Urban Outfitters has agreed to end on-call shifts at its New York stores, according to the attorney general.

 

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Even The Most Elite Women Are Subject To The Gender Pay Gap

A business degree, even from one from a top school in the country, won't be enough to protect women from the gender gap in compensation.

A report Bloomberg Businessweek published Tuesday found that the difference in pay for men and women swells as time goes by. Both groups leave their MBA programs earning about the same -- men's $105,000 to women's $98,000 -- but the split becomes more exacerbated years later. By the time they're six to eight years out of school, median compensation for men is $175,000, and $140,000 for women. For the latter, that rounds out to about 80 percent of men's paychecks, proving unfortunately that the roughly 78 cents women make to a man's dollar still holds up.

The study counters arguments that the pay gap between men and women results from a discrepancy in education and skills, Businessweek reporter Natalie Kitroeff told HuffPost Live on Wednesday. "We're looking at them coming out of the same schools, in the same years," Kitroeff said. "It was surprising to find that there was such a persistent gap, and we found this across every single industry."

Men gain the most ground in year-end bonuses. When those are excluded, the pay gap shrinks. Women who graduated Columbia's business school between 2007 and 2009, for example, earned a median of $170,000 in 2014, while men raked in $270,000. The difference in base salaries, though, was just $30,000.

The study's findings also reject the notion that the gap stems from women choosing to go into fields that pay less. Generally, men do enter the more lucrative industries, including consulting, real estate and finance, at higher rates -- 43 percent of men versus 32 percent of women -- but "even when women went into the highest-paying industries, they were paid less," Kitroeff said.

And let's not forget that the gender pay gap starts way before higher degrees. At the most elite colleges in the U.S., male alumni far outearn their female classmates, with Harvard men earning an average of $53,600 more than women 10 years after they start their undergraduate studies.

Even The Most Elite Women Are Subject To The Gender Pay Gap

A business degree, even from one from a top school in the country, won't be enough to protect women from the gender gap in compensation.

A report Bloomberg Businessweek published Tuesday found that the difference in pay for men and women swells as time goes by. Both groups leave their MBA programs earning about the same -- men's $105,000 to women's $98,000 -- but the split becomes more exacerbated years later. By the time they're six to eight years out of school, median compensation for men is $175,000, and $140,000 for women. For the latter, that rounds out to about 80 percent of men's paychecks, proving unfortunately that the roughly 78 cents women make to a man's dollar still holds up.

The study counters arguments that the pay gap between men and women results from a discrepancy in education and skills, Businessweek reporter Natalie Kitroeff told HuffPost Live on Wednesday. "We're looking at them coming out of the same schools, in the same years," Kitroeff said. "It was surprising to find that there was such a persistent gap, and we found this across every single industry."

Men gain the most ground in year-end bonuses. When those are excluded, the pay gap shrinks. Women who graduated Columbia's business school between 2007 and 2009, for example, earned a median of $170,000 in 2014, while men raked in $270,000. The difference in base salaries, though, was just $30,000.

The study's findings also reject the notion that the gap stems from women choosing to go into fields that pay less. Generally, men do enter the more lucrative industries, including consulting, real estate and finance, at higher rates -- 43 percent of men versus 32 percent of women -- but "even when women went into the highest-paying industries, they were paid less," Kitroeff said.

And let's not forget that the gender pay gap starts way before higher degrees. At the most elite colleges in the U.S., male alumni far outearn their female classmates, with Harvard men earning an average of $53,600 more than women 10 years after they start their undergraduate studies.

There’s A Shortage Of Cooks In America. Here’s The Simple Solution.

Despite what some viral videos would have you believe, there are too few cooks in America.

High-end restaurants are having trouble finding cooks who are skilled enough to prepare their dishes, according to a New York Times report published Wednesday. Restaurants have spent years putting off raising the pay at the back of the house, and it's finally catching up with them.

There's a lot of handwringing from established chefs about how kids these days aren't willing to submit themselves to the tough conditions to which junior members of the kitchen staff are traditionally exposed.

"Many chefs blame television for presenting unrealistic versions of life in restaurant kitchens, and they are outraged that the skills they have mastered over decades are viewed as optional by the new generation," the Times' Julia Moskin writes.

It's possible, though, that there is something much simpler going on: Would-be cooks don't think the work is worth the pay. Below is a chart showing the median annual pay of cooks and head chefs since late 2001. The orange lines show where that pay would be if it had kept up with inflation. Not only is pay for the average chef quite low, especially for the first few years -- it's actually getting worse. 

That said, the Times story itself is not exactly concerned with the average hash-slinging job. The real work shortage, according to the Times, is in the high-end kitchens:

The demand is up for chefs who can produce elegant food and know their way around a pair of tweezers, but many young cooks reject entry-level kitchen jobs -- with their harsh conditions, low pay and long hours -- where those skills are taught ... To effect change, [restaurateurs] say, they will soon be forced to raise prices.

What's happening is that foodie culture and celebrity chefs have vastly expanded both the demand for complicated food and the aspirations of chefs looking to make their mark on the industry. But every new trendy restaurant needs several line cooks who can execute an ambitious menu for a relative pittance. Outside of the truly exceptional restaurants with multiple Michelin stars, those worker bees are getting harder to find. This is particularly true in large cities with soaring rents, and in small cities where there just aren't enough experienced cooks to go around. The sweet spots, where things seem to be going OK, are biggish-but-not-too-expensive cities like Seattle, Houston and Portland, Oregon, according to the Times.

It's pretty clear the solution here is to raise wages. Making life better in the kitchen might help a little, but nothing attracts people to jobs like cash. The problem is that restaurant margins are nearly always thin -- so there's not a lot of room to raise wages without raising prices. And that risks giving loyal diners sticker shock, particularly in an economy where customers' paychecks aren't exactly getting more robust. You can see why restaurateurs might want to put off this course of action as long as possible.

But it looks like change is finally on the way. A number of minimum wage laws are coming down the pike, particularly in New York and California, that are likely to force restaurants to change. And the industry is making some moves of its own. 

Last week, restaurateur Danny Meyer made a splash by announcing in Eater that he's eliminating tipping from all of his restaurants in New York, joining a select group of restaurants in the city that have already done away with the practice. Instead, Meyer said, he will compensate his staff fairly by raising prices across the menu. The real winners in this new system will be the cooks, who don't share waiters' tips under the traditional arrangement.

Eater's Ryan Sutton explains the way things work at a fancy New York restaurant: "Some of the city’s top servers easily clear $100,000 annually. But the problem isn’t what waiters make, it’s what cooks make. A mid-level line cook, even in a high-end kitchen, doesn’t have generous patrons padding her paycheck, and as such is, on average, unlikely to make much more than $35,000 a year."

Meyer explicitly says in that story that his concern is the dwindling supply of talent in the kitchen. 

Uber Driver's Rape Sentencing Is Just The Latest Controversy For Company

A former Massachusetts Uber driver has been sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison after raping a female passenger, adding to a growing list of Uber drivers accused of sexual assault.

Boston native Alejandro Done, 47, who pled guilty, was sentenced last Friday on charges including kidnapping, assault and battery, and aggravated rape, according to USA Today.

On Dec. 6, 2014, Done picked up a woman heading to her home in Cambridge. Done told the woman that she would have to pay him in cash. The two went to an ATM to withdraw money, then Done drove her to a secluded location, reported the Star Tribune.

Done kept the victim trapped in the car as he strangled and sexually assaulted her. 

The felon has previously been charged with five other unsolved sexual assaults that happened in the Boston area between 2006 and 2010. That case is still pending. Uber told USA Today that Done had passed a background check, and had no prior criminal record.

"The defendant preyed upon a young woman who trusted that he was who he portrayed himself to be," District Attorney Marian Ryan said in a statement. "I encourage the public to take precautions when using any ride-sharing service."

In another recent case, in South Carolina, a sixth-grade teacher, who was moonlighting as an Uber driver was arrested on charges of kidnapping and forcible rape. Patrick Aiello, 39, allegedly assaulted a 23-year-old woman in August. The woman managed to escape from the car and was struck by another one in the process.  

A former Uber driver in India, Shiv Kumar Yadav, was convicted of raping a female passenger Tuesday. 

Many states in the U.S. are demanding that Uber ensure its background checks are more thorough. Last year, prosecutors in California filed a complaint against the ride-hailing service for failing to adequately vet drivers, some of whom have been convicted sex offenders, kidnappers and murderers.

Last April, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker proposed a bill giving his state oversight in background checks. Uber has backed the legislation proposal, and hosts a petition on its website in favor of the governor's plan, which has more than 30,000 signatures.

Uber faces a litany of other problems. Last weekend, drivers called for a strike and demanded better pay and higher fares. The service has been suspended in Spain for creating unfair competition and it is banned in Italy for not adhering to licensing rules. French taxi drivers, who were upset by having to compete with Uber, took to the streets last summer, smashing cars and setting tires on fire.