I recently posed a question to my LinkedIn network requesting opinions on which US universities had the top supply chain and logistics programs. The answers I got weren't suprising. Stanford, University of Tennessee, Michigan State and Penn State featured predominantly.

The article below from Logistics Management Magazine highlights an increasing desire by senior supply chain managers to grow their own internal talent rather than hire newbies straight out of the academic halls.

The University of Michigan has a Master of Supply Chain Management degree that takes seasoned employees from other parts of a business, and combines their manufacturing or engineering backgrounds with an advanced supply chain degree. The thought is that these cross trained employees will bring a faster ROI than younger "supply chain only" employees whose background is only based on university learning.

Whats your opinion? Is it better to cross train from inside than hire new grads?