Media Coverage

You’ve got a full hour until your next meeting. But you probably won’t make the most of that time, new research suggests.

In a series of eight studies, both in the lab and real life, researchers found that free time seems shorter to people when it comes before a task or appointment on their calendar.

“We seem to take a mental tax out of our time right before an appointment,” said Selin Malkoc, co-author of the study and associate professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business.

Malkoc conducted the study with Gabriella Tonietto, assistant professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, and Stephen Nowlis, professor of marketing at Washington University’s Olin Business School.

The need for governmental accounting education has never been greater in the United States, as governments at the federal, state, and local levels face a wave of impending personnel retirements.

As the director of the Rutgers Master in Accountancy in Governmental Accounting Program, the author is increasingly aware of the need for the academic training of governmental accounting and auditing professionals in the public sector.

The need to academically prepare the next generation of government accountants and raise interest among students in serving in governmental accounting positions should be a priority for the accounting profession as a whole. Given the financial challenges that all levels of governments currently face, this is truly an urgent task.

There are specific reasons why students enter the Hult Prize. “They are looking for careers that focus on more than the bottom line,” says Ahmad Ashkar, founder and chief executive. “They want to produce economic return and sustainable, social impact. Entrepreneurship is a way for them to do that.”

One example is Roshni Rides, a rickshaw transportation business that helps refugees in south Asia get to important locations, such as hospitals, using pre-paid transaction cards. It was founded by Rutgers Business School students, who won last year’s grand Hult Prize — $1m in funding.

By the end of May 2018, thousands of extraordinary students will have received bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degrees from Rutgers University–Newark. Here is an introduction to a few of them.

Sheila Zegarra
Rutgers Business School
At a young age, Sheila Zegarra questioned everything and never took “no” for an answer. She continually uses her passion and drive as motivation to be her very best in all aspects of her life. As a result of her hard work and excellent academic standing, Zegarra was able to take college courses as a high school senior. She always had an entrepreneurial spirit, and through her exposure to college business courses, realized her aptitude for management and leadership. Unsurprisingly, in May she will be graduating from Rutgers Business School with a bachelor’s degree in business management and global business

Digital Transformation will ultimately affect every company in every industry because of almost every customer – and certainly every consumer – becomes predominately digital with time.

The Digital Transformation is a term that can be used throughout the organization, but if businesses need to adapt to the ever-changing digital consumer, I would argue that the digital transformation of their sales and marketing organization should be the first priority.

H. L. Mencken, the famous early 20th century newsman, said the primary objective of news is entertainment. The public wants dramatic stories, clashes between good and evil, not an analysis of the pros and cons of policies. Picking up on Mencken, a catchy story doesn’t have to rest on facts. Possibilities are far more intriguing. So far, the debate over the T-Mobile-Sprint merger proves how right Mencken was. Both sides are already composing stories of what might be if this merger takes place.

Victor Glass, Ph.D., is a professor of professional practice in finance and economics at Rutgers Business School. He is also the director of research at the Center for Research in Regulated Industries.

Rutgers Business School Marketing major Kelsey Huber, 22, of East Brunswick is proud to be a member of the Class of 2018, and thankful to her mother and father, Nancy and Fred Huber, for their support over the years.

"It's been one of the most rewarding experiences to attend Rutgers University," said Huber, who decorated her cap with a crescent moon and the saying "May your hats fly as high as your dreams." "I've met my best friends, found my dream job, and had an unforgettable four years that I'll never forget. I can only hope to continue learning and growing in my personal and professional life as a new Rutgers alumni."

Members of the university community who have made outstanding contributions in the classroom, to their disciplines or for the benefit of the community or world were honored during a May 3 reception at the Rutgers Visitor Center.

Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research honors faculty members who have made distinguished research contributions to their discipline or society. Recipients receive a $1,000 honorarium.

Benjamin Melamed, distinguished professor, Department of Supply Chain Management, Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, was recognized for his seminal contributions throughout his four-decade research career in the areas of applied probability, analysis and simulation, and systems modeling and performance evaluation.

“My dream in life is to make movies and having my film shown at Cannes really validates that I could be a film writer full time,” says Daniel Reji, who graduated last year from Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick. Reji was a senior when he wrote the screenplay for Opal, a fictional account of a writer who becomes infatuated with a woman in the Somerset Diner.

Trade offers many benefits for economies, and the outlook for the United States is not as grim as some political leaders suggest. Still, there are challenges for the US-Chinese trade relationship, explains Farok J. Contractor, professor at Rutgers Business School.

The United States does have a hefty trade deficit with China in goods, but is also the world’s leading exporter in services and enjoys a surplus in services with China. US companies are innovative and entrepreneurial, recognizing they must guard their technology secrets in any trade relationship. The United States has operated with deficits against the rest of the world for decades because the country resists curtailing spending or increasing saving. Such patterns contribute to ballooning government debt, about half of which is held by foreign investors.

Contractor warns the US pattern of deficit spending can continue only as long as three conditions hold: foreign and domestic Investors continue viewing the US dollar as a safe haven, foreign workers keep working for low wages, and the United States continues to create jobs. – YaleGlobal

But before judging the response to the refugee crisis by some EU countries, consider the existing social conditions in the Europe, where this wave of displaced people seek sanctuary. Across much of Europe, youth unemployment is already at an all-time high, with one in five young people ages 15 to 24 being idle. In countries like Greece, Spain and Italy youth unemployment ranges from 40 percent to over 50 percent. "In Greece youth unemployment is 50 percent, but in Germany youth unemployment is only 7 percent, with overall unemployment well below 5 percent and jobs going begging,” says Farok J. Contractor, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School.

There are organizations on campus that support hundreds of students' creative endeavors, such as The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED) and organizations like the Rutgers Entrepreneurial Society, said Jeffrey Robinson, associate professor of management and entrepreneurship in the Rutgers Business School and director of CUEED.

Make no mistake that the avalanche of e-commerce and evolving consumer market is knocking the traditional brick-and-mortar business model to the ground, taking commercial retail real estate with it.

Kevin Riordan, executive director of Rutgers Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School, said he’s not surprised stores such as T.J. Maxx, HomeGoods, and TJX’s relatively new-to-the-U.S. store Homesense are weathering the storm because their pricing makes them
“almost like the brick-and-mortar version” of Amazon and many people still seek the “tangible, physical retail experience.” They are willing to go to them knowing “it’s hit-and-miss.”

Why did you choose this business school?

I chose the Rutgers Business School for a number of reasons. While researching MBA programs with supply chain management concentrations, I discovered that U.S. News & World Report ranked RBS’s graduate SCM program eleventh nationwide, which I found particularly impressive. However, what really sold me on the institution was its rankings as first and third in the nation for job placement and employment, titles respectively given by Bloomberg Businessweek and U.S. News & World Report. Rutgers knows what it takes to prepare students to compete for highly sought after positions in multiple industries. My personal journey can attest to that fact.

Re “An Overdue Reckoning for Apu,” by Vikas Bajaj (Editorial Observer, April 30), about an Indian character on the animated TV series “The Simpsons” that some South Asians find offensive:

This is a ridiculous commentary on a self-made, hardworking Indian who happens to own and work in a store where his accent won’t hurt him. Indians come in all stripes, from the chief executives of Google and Microsoft to the Apus of Deli Marts and Kwik-E-Marts to the taxi drivers of New York City.

I myself am Indian and a professor at Rutgers Business School, and I am not in the least offended by Apu’s accent. Mr. Bajaj, smile and get over it.

In this article, I will cover everything I learned about AI and its impact on marketing. We’re just getting started down a new and disruptive path in marketing and it’s very exciting.

This new technology will make it easier for brands to not only manage its’ big data and get actionable insights, but will drive marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) to new heights. They’ll also usher in a new level of transparency never seen before in ad tech.

As marketers, we all need to ask ourselves, “Are we prepared for marketing to be fundamentally disrupted?”

A recent survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council found that the vast majority of full-time MBA alumni – 90 percent – say their degree enhanced their earnings power. One way to gauge future income potential is to look at a school's salary-to-debt ratio. That rate of return is calculated by dividing the average salary and signing bonus of recent grads by the average student debt of those who borrowed. Here are 10 ranked business schools where full-time MBA grads earning more than $100,000 on average within three months of graduation received the highest return.

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey—Newark and New Brunswick
U.S. News business school rank: 44 (tie)
Average salary and signing bonus within three months of graduating (2017): $117,265
Average debt (2017): $40,550
Salary-to-debt ratio: 2.9-to-1

For a market that is seeing an extended growth period, it isn’t all that complicated to sum up what exactly is driving the major trends in commercial real estate lending:

Fierce competition.

At least, that’s according to panelists at a recent conference hosted by the Rutgers Center for Real Estate, where lenders and other experts gathered to discuss the state of commercial real estate finance in New Jersey and beyond.

According to stats released by Rutgers Business School, it’s not uncommon to find between 1-5 doctors in a typical EMBA class. This is largely due to the new reality of the medical profession, which has increasingly required that doctors “transition from medical practice to running hospitals, managing hospital finances, heading-up HMOs, working for pharmaceutical companies and becoming Chief Medical Officers.”

To the Editor:
Re “Don’t Fear Classical Music,” by Miles Hoffman (Op-Ed, April 19):

But thank you, Mr. Hoffman, for aptly describing my lifelong struggle with Classical Music Insecurity Complex (your term), and for confirming the validity of the delight I feel at the end of a concert, or at the sound of my own piano, assuredly far short of what the composer intended but, in my mind’s ear, pure joy.

Rosa Oppenheim

Ellen Kolodziej reports on the New Jersey State housing market and talks to a millennial who is having a hard time buying a home in NJ and Larry sits with Kevin Riordan, Executive Director of Rutgers Center for Real Estate.

As content marketers, we are all more or less familiar with the term ‘content disruptors’. In short, content disruptors have, for better or for worse, turned traditional content conventions on their head.

The following individuals have broken content marketing boundaries, spearheaded new technology, and have taken the reins on new trends and made them their own. They have taken these disruptors and turned them into something magical but more importantly, they have shown us how to leverage this tech without skimping on authenticity and creativity.

Why do workers in the financial industry get paid so much? There are many possible explanations, none of them completely satisfying.

So what do managers get paid for? Another recent paper, by Galit Ben Naim and Stanislav Sokolinski, offers one possible answer. Ben Naim and Sokolinski looked at Israeli mutual funds, using extremely comprehensive data collected by the Israeli government. Like Ibert et al., they found that market-beating performance was only weakly related to compensation.

Interestingly, Ben Naim and Sokolinski found that manager pay is more strongly related to overall fund performance, without the benchmark subtracted.

Ben Naim and Sokolinski found a larger effect of fund size on manager pay -- about 30 percent, or roughly twice the size of what Ibert et al. found. Furthermore, they found that managers captured 40 percent of the fee revenue that comes from investors putting more money in the fund (rather than increases in size that come from market returns, or from the company handing the manager more assets to manage).

These findings suggest that mutual-fund managers are paid less for beating the market than for marketing -- i.e., the ability to collect assets.

We look to understand a passenger’s stress points, their way of finding preference, physical movement and emotional connections with space.

While stress points in airports are an element of contention, there are many ways to alleviate this factor. A research document published by Rutgers Business School in 2016 (Kristina M. Durante and Juliano Laran (2016) "The Effect of Stress on Consumer Saving and Spending." _Journal of Marketing Research_: October 2016, Vol. 53, No. 5, pp. 814-828. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.15.0319) shows that consumers in a state of stress are far less willing to spend than consumers in a positive state of mind, specifically feeling in control of their environment.

So, as designers it is our job to create that positive feeling and reduce stress in order to encourage passenger spending, amount of dwell time in an airport and their likelihood of a return visit.

The County College of Morris won first place in the annual New Jersey County College Case Competition.

The competition was held between students from across the state at the Rutgers Business School.

The teams were asked to analyze Keurig's single-serve coffee business and identify its challenges.

The third annual New Jersey County College Case Competition presented by M&T Bank at Rutgers Business School in Newark last week had scenes straight out of “Shark Tank.”

Seven teams of students from community colleges across the state had to present a five-year business plan for Keurig Green Mountain — and to do so under the assumptions that the company’s popular K-Cup package was a year away from losing its patent and that the company was under fire from environmentalists because its product was not easily recyclable.

Rutgers Business School graduate Gary Cohen is giving $1 million to establish the Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation.

The institute’s mission is to “embed interdisciplinary coursework into the Rutgers Business School curriculum to prepare students to drive successful business results in sustainable organizations that are financially, environmentally and socially responsible.”

The stock market ended this week the same way it did last week — with extreme volatility based on the latest headlines about trade. Late in the week, President Trump threatened China with $100 billion in additional tariffs, after China issued its own tariff threat against the U.S. Meantime, both countries are holding ongoing trade talks.

Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of the headlines and the politics behind them, but it’s easy to look at the numbers, which tell their own story.

According to the U.S. Commerce Department, New Jersey exported $34.5 billion in products in 2017. Of that amount, $1.6 billion was exported to China, which is the fourth-largest export market for New Jersey products, behind Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom. The business of trade supports thousands of jobs in the state. New Jersey’s top export is chemicals, which is a product targeted by China. Arthur Guarino, a professor at Rutgers Business School, talked about how tariffs would impact the state.

The Rutgers Business School in Newark announced recently it hosted its 2018 annual business plan competition, attracting a total of 44 entries.

The judges narrowed the entries to five finalists and awarded cash to all five teams who made it into the finals.

“The five presentations here were the five best in 15 years or more that we’ve been doing the business plan competition,” said Richard Romano, the foundation’s president who helped to judge the entries.

Anyone who has bought the beauty products that the Internet deems worth our time in 2018 — from brands like KKW Beauty, Too Faced, The Ordinary, and Pat McGrath Labs — has probably spent a late night online hitting refresh.

But when products sell out in minutes, customers are left empty-handed and bare-faced. That may or may not be part of the plan.

"Branding, especially in fashion and beauty, marches to the beat of an entirely different economic drum," says Farrokh Langdana, professor at Rutgers Business School.

"While initial sell-out is great for generating consumer interest and creating a strong PR talking point, if this situation continues over time, the brand may lose customers who will look to competitors who offer comparable products that are in stock," says Dimitri Koumbis, professor at the Rutgers Master of Science in Business of Fashion.

In a world of over 7 billion people, can individuals really make a difference in combating climate change and other environmental impacts?

Dr. Kevin Lyons of Rutgers University, who studies the local and global impacts of how products move from raw materials through consumption, will discuss his research on supply chain archaeology and the practical solutions that can be implemented on the local level at the East Brunswick Public Library at 7 p.m., Thursday, April 19.

Lyons is an associate professor of Supply Chain Management and director of Public-Private Community Partnerships at the Rutgers Business School in Newark. He also is associate director of the Rutgers Energy Institute and the Rutgers EcoComplex.

He developed the Supply Chain Environmental Archaeology research program and lab at Rutgers, which studies the entire life of a product from its creation to consumption and its contribution to climate.

What has surprised you most about majoring in business?
I was surprised most by how much of business isn’t just numbers. Coming from a family of accountants and computer scientists who worked in business, I assumed that all of business involved technical analysis. Through my education I’ve learned that while those numbers are important, the story they tell, the impact they have, and how they create change are really what drives businesses.

A key challenge for activist investors is convincing other shareholders that the activist agenda will increase the value of a target firm. Accordingly, activists commonly release public disclosures through traditional and social media, news wires, or their fund’s website. These disclosures are often formatted as open letters aimed at the target’s board, management, or existing shareholders.

In our study, we hand collect a sample of activists’ disclosures and systematically analyze their consequences. We find that they are associated with significantly positive stock returns of 2.4 percent at the target firm around their release dates. These disclosures are also associated with decreased investor information asymmetry and are leading indicators of several activist-campaign outcomes, including proxy contests, directorships, and proxy adviser recommendations. We also find that managers respond to activist disclosures through increased disclosure of their own. We find no evidence that activists release disclosures simply to manipulate a target’s stock price.

Facebook’s ongoing privacy scandal could engulf one unsuspecting sector of the economy — the mom-and-pop businesses that rely on it for their marketing outreach.

“Businesses like the fact that there’s such a wealth of information that’s available through Facebook,” said Glen Gilmore, a digital marketing consultant and an adjunct professor of digital and social media marketing at Rutgers Business School.

“The things that creep us out about Facebook are the things that give it the ability to be so valuable to businesses,” Gilmore said.

Gary Minkoff, who teaches entrepreneurship at Rutgers Business School’s Department of Management and Global Business in New Brunswick, is seeking 40 college students to spend June 7 to 17 in Israel, studying its reputation as a “start-up nation” and meeting entrepreneurs from many parts of the country.

“This is a great opportunity for students to learn not only how to do business in another country, but to learn how the entrepreneurial and start-up ecosystems work in Israel,” he told NJJN. Students do not need to be business majors or enrolled at Rutgers University, and students of all faiths are encouraged to apply.

Minkoff insists “this is not a trip. It is a 10-day course called ‘Doing Business in Israel.’”

Its intent, he said, is to “create mechanisms for students to understand the different perspectives of start-ups and innovation in general. They will get to meet people involved in start-ups and to learn about their motivations, their successes, and their failures.”

The course will introduce the students to “a wide variety of Israeli entrepreneurs” — those who conceive ideas, those who fund them, those who launch and grow them, and those who are users of their products.

"The competition may have been a big factor, but they did not ‘cause’ the company's demise. The fundamental reason was that the company failed to give consumers a good reason to choose its online and physical stores instead of its competitors," said S. Chan Choi, a Rutgers Business School professor and chair of the school's Marketing Department. "Some of the reasons they could have offered could include lower prices by improving its supply chain and distribution system, as opposed to Walmart, superior product experience and convenience, as opposed to Amazon, or customization with superior service, as opposed to Target."

At first glance, omnichannel lead generation might also look like the multi-channel sales approach, but there’s a big difference. Stacy Schwartz, adjunct professor at Rutgers Business School and a digital marketing expert, defines omnichannel as customer-centered rather than company-centered.

“Omnichannel,” she said, “acknowledges that mobile and social have enabled customers to not only quickly switch between channels but use channels simultaneously. For example, they check out product reviews on their mobile phone while evaluating a product on a physical retail store shelf.”

In other words, the strategy inter-relates each channel so they can engage with their customers holistically and make sure that they have an excellent user experience no matter what channel they use.

The online master’s in supply chain management degree program from Rutgers University is a 30-credit hour accelerated offering that can be completed in just one year at Rutgers Business School, Department of Supply Chain Management chaired by Professor Lian Qi. Students choose ten courses from a list of thirteen offered, such as Supply Chain Risk and Disruption Management, Lean Six Sigma, Operations Analysis, Supply Chain Law and Governance, and Supply Chain Management Strategies, for example. The program is offered completely online, and there is no residency requirement. Online master’s in supply chain management students may opt to pursue graduate certificates while working towards their degree.

The award-winning Entrepreneurship Pioneers Initiative (EPI) is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Since its inception in 2008, the companies that are owned and operated by EPI’s participants have created 200 local jobs and generated over $46MM in revenue.

EPI is an education program created by Rutgers Business School’s Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development that offers training, financial and business coaching, and peer learning for first generation business owners,

“Over the past 10 years, we’ve helped almost 400 entrepreneurs from across New Jersey to generate growth, build their brands, accelerate strategic alliances, and focus their finances,” says Lyneir Richardson, Executive Director of CUEED. “Their businesses are key drivers behind the revitalization of their communities, and we’re proud to have contributed to their enduring success.”

The latest ranking of top graduate schools is out, and New Jersey colleges cracked the list in each of the major categories.
U.S. News and World Report this week released its 2019 Best Graduate School Rankings, an annual list watched closely by many college administrators. Though colleges often dispute or dismiss the rankings, they also know a good or bad ranking could influence prospective students.

Taking the step to buy your first home may feel like a leap — across a canyon.

To make matters worse, 2018 presents a new set of problems for rookie home buyers: a new tax law whose full effects have yet to be felt on homeowner taxes or property values; record low inventory; tough credit; and rising mortgage rates.

Morris A. Davis, chair of real estate and professor of finance at Rutgers Business School, warned of another factor that could keep housing inventory low, or pinch it further: millennials.

“There’s a massive slog of potential first-time home buyers about to hit the marketplace,” he said. “Many of them are in prime childbearing age, and the single most predictor of whether or not you buy a home is whether you have children.”

“A first-time home buyer is taking a bet on a metro area, and the first thing I’d ask the first-time home buyer is: Are you willing to commit to this metro area and this school district for the next 10 years,” Dr. Davis said.

Regardless of whether you’re pursing an MBA to broaden your current skill set, climb the ladder or launch a start-up, it’s probably safe to say that you’ve done a lot of thinking, weighing and measuring: time, money, effort, outcomes etc.

So, having decided to take the plunge, all you have to do now is choose the right school which, in theory, shouldn’t be that difficult.

However, not all MBAs are created equal, which makes putting together a shortlist a lot more challenging, but this is the point at which we can help.

Our objective is simple: to identify schools which marry exceptional quality with great ROI.

“More great news arrived today! Our Full-Time MBA Program was ranked #44 in the U.S. by the U.S. News & World Report, the highest ever ranking for Rutgers Full-Time MBA by U.S. News & World Report," Dean Lei Lei said .

"In addition, our Part-Time MBA Program was ranked #39 and continues to sustain a strong Top 50 position in the nation. Supply Chain Management was ranked #6 in the U.S. moving up three places from #9 last year,” said Dean Lei Lei.

The nontraditional virtual accelerator, TechLaunch, held its seventh BullPen pitching event at the Piscataway campus of Rutgers Business School at the end of January.

The BullPen program added a new feature this year: The startup that wins the investor choice vote will be eligible for $20,000 worth of in-kind services offeredby the law firm Gibbons P.C. (Newark and Trenton), investment-banking firm ND4 Advisory (New York), accounting firm WithumSmith+Brown (Princeton), micro-VC company Casabona Ventures (Kinnelon) and Gearhart Law (Summit)

BullPen events always include a student contestant, and this time it was Rutgers-based SULIS, which stands for “solar ultraviolet light-induced sterilization.” Presenting for SULIS were Sarah Pomeranz, Rutgers Business School, and Ari Mendelow, School of Engineering.

“What we want to do is provide people who don’t have access to sterile water the ability to sterilize the water that they do have,” Mendelow told the audience.

“Part of our business model is that in the long run we’d like to be able to manufacture it locally,” Pomeranz said.

For approximately a decade, the Hult Prize has been awarded to masterminds and innovators that understand the power of a single idea. This year, Rutgers has set a new record by having two teams from the same university​ as titleholders of the Hult Prize Regionals Competition.
The two teams, SULIS and LivingWaters, are collectively comprised of eight Rutgers students who were tasked with the 2018 Hult challenge — employing the power of energy to transform the lives of 10 million people by 2025, said Sophia Zhou, the campus director of the Hult Prize at Rutgers.
Four Honors College students joined forces to create SULIS — Yuki Osumi, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, Sarah Pomeranz, a Rutgers Business School sophomore, Anurag Modak, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore and Arye Mendelow, a School of Engineering senior.
Joshua Kao, a Rutgers Business school junior, Jane Peterken, a School of Engineering senior, Thomas Irving, a Rutgers Business School senior and Shrey Ghate, a School of Engineering senior, make up the second team from the University, LivingWaters, whose work is focused on the global water crisis.

Sources say Toys 'R' Us will close all of its remaining U.S. stores and leave us for good.
And so we asked the experts: Who is responsible for killing Toys 'R' Us? Here's what they had to say.
Competition -- and a lackluster in-store experience
"Plus both Walmart and Target sell toys and other essentials," says Kristina Durante, an associate professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School. "Walmart has the lowest prices. And at Target, you can get a coffee. But there is nothing that's driving people to Toys 'R' Us."
Durante, a mom herself, also points to a lackluster experience inside Toys 'R' Us stores.
"It would be great if Toys 'R' Us had a capital infusion to make the store more than just looking at the shelves, but an experience," she says. "What can you do there that's unique? That would motivate you to go to the store? They could have thought of a possible reinvention if they had smaller stores that were more experiential."

There was a lot of uncertainty about withholding in the early days after the bill passed, said Jay Soled, a professor at Rutgers Business School specializing in taxation.

There's a possibility that too much money was withheld for some people in February, he said.

"But at the end of the day these are withholding payments not actual tax payments," Soled said. "It could be a little off and not matter at end of day. You just get more of a refund."

Sharon Lydon, executive director of the M.B.A. program at Rutgers Business School, said that when she considers the popularity of the Rutgers program with women (and many men), she considers factors that go beyond traditional B-school ranking methodologies.

Lydon described a scene she saw last week: two students (both men) who were getting ready for interviews the next day with the same company, knowing only one of them could get the position. "They were sharing information and helping one another," she said. The environment is intellectually demanding, she said, but collaborative at the same time, in a way that many business schools are not known for. "Many other environments are more cutthroat," she said.

Lydon also noted the impact of having women in leadership roles, such as her dean, Lei Lei, and ensuring that women are well represented on the faculty.

Bloomberg Businessweek released its “Best Graduate Business Schools of 2017” survey recently, and a New Jersey school was featured highly on its list.

Rutgers Business School in Newark was ranked No. 1 in the Northeast in placing full-time MBA students in jobs after graduation. Overall, Rutgers finished No. 2 in the nation for job placement.

“Our strong specializations in finance, marketing and supply chain management make our students very attractive to employers,” said Dean Vera, director of the MBA Office of Career Management.

The closing of the 20,000-square-foot store on Route 35 is part of a bigger trend. Bricks-and-mortar retailers are under pressure as more consumers shop online, making it tougher to meet landlords' demands one expert said.

"An organization like that . . . is going to find they can't do it," said Marc Kalan, a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick.