Introduction

I’m a 5th (yes 5th) year student at Wilfrid Laurier University (B. Business Administration) and University of Waterloo (B. Computer Science) and I’ve been through some rough times and some good times. My worst term was 2B but 5A is in second place and actually prompted (EC 250 ONLINE) me write this post.

I’m going to divide my thoughts based on main sections.

This is always a work in progress so comment below with anything I should add.

Housing

One of the biggest issues I have with this university is how there is a housing shortage and this school decides to not take responsibility of the housing of students and instead leave it up to the private industry where what ends up happening is that in the buildings right behind campus, there are non-students living under rent-control with neighbors being students paying $300+ more per month.

The second thing I hate about the school is that it doesn’t advocate for student’s quality of life. We have a double road going through campus.

Culture

I simply cannot claim to be proud to be a golden hawk. I feel like after second-year, I didn’t care too much about parties anyways. I ended up solving my mental health issues and would rather hang out with friends I can count on. After I solved my mental health issues, I realized culture is about a mindset, and whatever mindset I have is not valued here at Laurier.

Miscellaneous

OneCard Credits and Food Court

Screw this monetary system. Thank fully I’m almost done using the money on Subway bowls.

Academics

WileyPlus and Timed Textbooks or Access Codes for Marks is Unethical

• If ethics matters at all, the last thing to do is to turn around and subject students to similar unethical practices
• if unethical practices don’t matter when students are on the receiving end, why would students care if a minority is on the receiving end?

Micro-Economics 1 Should be Combined with Micro-Economics 2

When I took Microeconomics 2 over the summer of 2020, my notes were condenses to 76 lines. This was after I started writing my notes in Word files and before I started writing my notes on my blog. My micro-economic notes were a continuation of my notes from high school which was a word document for each chapter. Clearly, with notes like mine, micro-economics 2 should just be a chapter in microeconomics 1. On top of this, the only reason we had to take micro-economics 2 or macro-economics 2 was that you had to take one to graduate plus they are pre-requisites to 4th year finance courses that can be overridden by an academic advisor. Additionally, micro-economics 1 is similar to managerial accounting. So if anything, micro-economics 1 should be combined with managerial accounting 1.

MR = P_e (1 + 1/η)
η = dQ/dP * P_e/Q_e

Price is elastic when 0 <= Q < a/2b where a and b are coefficients of the demand function

INPUT MAXIMIZATION
MR / Product of input a = Marginal Expenditure of input a

MP_L / P_L = MP_K / P_K

Elasticity of output for Cobb-Douglas equals the exponent of the respective input
E.g.
Q_1 = 100 * L^0.7 * K^0.4
increase labour by 1%: Q_2 = 100(1.01L)^0.7 * K^0.4
Q_2 = 1.006989(100L^0.7 * K^0.4)
Q_2 ~= 1.007Q -> 0.7% increase (exponent)

Economies of Scope
When it is cheaper to produce quantities of two products together
How much is saved as a percentage of the new cost
(OLD COST - NEW COST) / NEW COST

In PC, profit maximizing level is when P = MC

markup equal to −1/(1 + η)
markup % = P / MC

in fixed proportions, MC = MR_A + MR_B as long as either MR is > 0

Cournot solution
Set dProfit/dQ_a/b = 0 for both companies where Q_a/b is the respective Quantity for each company (e.g. TR_a = XQ_A + m(Q_a + Q_b)Q_a )
Substitute equations and voila
Price leader
Using the Q_b = ... equation, sub into P= equation
e.g.  Q = Q_a + Q_b where Q_b is the substituted equation

Advertising expenditures are optimal if an additional dollar spent on ads
increases net profit (NOT MR) by one dollar.
MR from $1 of advertising should equal elasticity of demand curve

Price Discrimination Optimal
MR_1 = MR_2
P_1(1 + 1 / ped_1) = P_2(1 + 1 / ped_2)
P_1 / P_2 = [1 + (1 / ped_2)] / [1 + (1 / ped_1)]

First degree
Charging at demand curve
Second degree
By usage. Less/q as q increases
Third degree
Discounting distinct separable markets
set MR_1 = MC = MR_2
Peak load pricing

Pricing Strategy (Coupons)
MR_R = MR_S = MC
P(1 + 1 / PED_R) = (P - X)(1 + 1 / PED_S)= MC.
X is discount value
PED_R for those who don't use coupons.
PED_S for those who use coupons.

Two part tariff
Entry fee = consumer surplus where P = MC
Per use fee found by P = MC

Profit = R - Fixed Costs - Dis-utility of Manager as $

When calculating utility with probabilities, first calculate utility of all wealths
and then multiply by the probabilities

When there are big firms and small firms,
set MC_i = P to first find q_i and then * by # to get Q_small
Then do Q - Q_small to get Q_big which you can use to find P

variance = weight * (val_1 - weighted_mean)^2 + ...
std_dev = sqrt(variance)

EC 250 - Macro-Economics 2 is Crammed

First, defraying the costs that low-income workers face when entering the labour force costs money.

This is headache of a sentence straight from the textbook. So much redundancy and it’s so hard to parse. What does it mean? It means it costs money to subsidize low-income workers when they enter the labour force.

I’m in 5A and I’m taking EC-250 because it’s a pre-requisite to fixed income but I’m also interested in macro-economics. This is one of the few times where I have felt constant pressure and burnout throughout the term. Maybe only 2 weeks of breathing room and this course was responsible for the stress. The expectation was to read an entire chapter, sometimes two, then do homework, and then do a quiz. When things got tough, I just resorted to reading the instructors “summaries” which were also filled with word vomit. My notes are most definitely filled with word vomits. Somewhere along the line, conceptual teaching was thrown out in favour of memorization. I suggest Macro-Economics 1 and 2 be taught in first year where the load is balanced between the two.

The difference between the courses is that Macro Economics 1 is abstracted whereas Macro Economics 2 answers where the abstractions come from which is just as important and more enlightening. Generally speaking, macro-economics 1 and 2 should cover the following:

• Macro Economics 1 (What are we playing with)
  • Output (GDP and what are Real Prices)
  • Labour
    • Unemployment
  • Investment and Savings
    • Interest Rates
    • Currencies
    • Open vs. Closed Economies
  • Money
    • Central Bank
    • Reserves
    • Fractional reserve banking
  • Inflation
• Macro Economics 2 (How to play)
  • Business Cycles
    • Shocks
  • Monetary Policies
    • Money Supply
    • Overnight interest rates
  • Fiscal Policies
    • Government
    • Taxes
  • Inflation and Unemployment
  • Economic Growth
    • Purpose
    • Factors

BU 111 - Introduction to Business Organization

BU 111 is super generalized and should not cover time value of money. Time Value is an important concept that belongs in finance 1 where students should be taught how to start creating Excel templates that can be used for Finance 2, Investment Management, and Futures, Swap, & Options.

I’ll have to revisit my notes to improve this critique.

BU 121

Don’t have much criticisms of BU 121 as it is more of a practical application of BU 111 and should focus on either extending or applying said courses.

BU 288 - Organizational Behaviour 1

These courses are very subpar. First, I vaguely remember the content but remember the professors well since they had personalities. The first course mentions Dunning Kruger even thought the “effect” is autocorrelation (i.e. the effect isn’t psychological but statistical and “tells us nothing about the people it supposedly measures”).

The course is a bunch of theories that the take away is to manage people based on evidence proven to work. It’s more of a psychology course and the one takeaway is that my locus of control is 5/10 (fence-sitter). In my opinion, anyone who thinks they solely can determine their behaviour/actions is dumb and so are the people who think they cannot take responsibility for themselves. This course should instead be called and focused on pitfalls of groups and ethics. Takeaways:

• Limit group membership to 10 people (e.g. committees, board of directors)
• Group polarization: sometimes an idea that is unpopular to even all members can be agreed upon just because of it being the only suggestion
• Biases in decision making: heuristics (snappy solution), self-interests, information availability
• Jargon is for insecure people
• Negotiation: needs improvement
• Ethics: needs more

BU 398 - Organizational Behaviour 2

This course focused on the behaviour of the organization itself. It’s definitely an information overload.

• Porter’s Competitive Strategies (cost vs. quality, targe market size)
• Organizational culture: implicit (e.g. tacit knowledge), integration of new members, adapting
  • Culture picked for a strategy (needs to talk about pitfalls in real companies)
• Whistlblowing: what should you do when corporation does not have a whistlblowing protocol
• Organizational structure and reporting relationships
• Interorganizatitonal relationships: resource dependence, collaborative, competitor…
• “Life cycle”: give us examples though
• Bureaucracy and why organizations don’t change and what to do about it
• International Organizations even though this is discussed in more details in BU 489

The only good thing about the second course is that it was in person and people actually showed up to class.

BU 362 - Building and Managing Products, Services and Brands

This was a case based course which was okay and got reworked anyways so I won’t talk about it. Basically a way for laurier to get more money from us and make us pay $100+ for the articles.

BU 375 - Operations Management

Useful course since it’s an intro to project management. Pairs well with Waterloo’s Algorithms which goes over a graph algorithm. Two assignments that were a burden. For the second assignment, I even created a python program to draw the graphs for me using networkx and matplotlib.

Integrated Case Exercise (ICE)

My group members recommended the company to innovate in creating digital humans that have the same genetic reactions as actual humans to be used in clinical trials. Make with this what you will but in my opinion, a BBA holder is not a good consultant if the average person can’t even critically think of a good solution. I think the BBA program needs to seriously promote intra-organizational case solutions more.

BU 481 - Strategic Management (Policy 1)

Disgusting course. Never focused on failures, only successes. Talks about strategies from OB 2. Had to read cases every week. Content was very boring.

• Porter’s 5 forces
• PESTEL
• Industry Value Chain
• Resource based view
• Leader analysis: refuses to acknowledge that leaders are picked by luck not merit and can fool shareholders like with Jack Welch
• Frameworks

BU 489 - International Strategy (Policy 2)

What this course should focus and teach: when to expand outside of a country, when to start outside the country, how to create a strategy to expand outside of a country, how to maintain and/or manage an organization with a presence in more than one location, when does an organization transcend it’s nationality (Transnational), and when should organizations exit a market?

• Worldwide scope of organizations
• Midterm was not fun at all since it required memorization and was under lockdown browser
• Discussions were nice
• Don’t really think it taught us how to get into the position where we can make these decisions
• Jargon heavy, just read my comments on the deglobalization article

What I wish these courses would do as they are in an academic setting is bring something like “degrowth” into the picture. University should be about exposing people to new ideas not just incumbent ones.

A person who takes this course should know when and how to start exporting goods they produce in Canada to America and Europe.

Closing Thoughts

Maybe in the future when I don’t have to worry about money, I can develop a business programme that does shape people into becoming holistic critical thinkers who can come up with and implement strategies.