Class in the NYU Stern School of Business – Ethan Baron photo
What do CEOs fear most? Economic downturns? Disruptive innovations? New taxes and regulations? Cyberterrorists? You can bet each of these has left top brass with wide eyes and boiling bellies at 3:00 a.m. However, there is one nagging fear that tops them all: Their customers aren’t sharing what they truly want – or they’re just “satisfied” with the experience.
In business school, you can swap “customer” with “student” or “alumni.” Their value extends far beyond their tuition. On campus, the happy ones engage, volunteer, and champion; they embody their school’s ideals and elevate the experience for their peers. After hanging their diplomas, they are the ones who refer prospective students or hire recent graduates. They act as role models, mentors, champions, and patrons. They understand that the value of their MBA ultimately comes down to the exuberance of their community.
GRADUATES GET TO PLAY “DEAN FOR A DAY”
To say this year’s Best & Brightest MBAs were bullish on their b-schools would be an understatement. They were the standard bearers who ran the clubs, organized class trips, shared their experiences, and tutored their peers. Often, they were the go-to members of their classes, the voices with the courage to speak out and the conviction to follow through. These virtues also made them the perfect group to ask how business schools could be better.
Dartmouth Tuck’s Alen Amini
This year, as part of the Best & Brightest nomination process, we asked 2018 graduates to answer this question: “If you were dean for a day, what one thing would you change about the MBA experience?” Sure enough, the class brought plenty of insight into the fallacies and gaps dogging full-time MBA education.
That starts with the recruiting processes, which often commences while students are still wrestling with the nuances of capital markets and cross-functional integration models. To help students focus on core courses, Dartmouth Tuck’s Alen Amini urges schools to adopt a “moratorium on recruiting activities” early on – a sentiment shared by the University of Chicago Booth’s Rodrigo Studart.
RECRUITERS HIT CAMPUS TOO EARLY
“I feel like students miss a great part of their MBA experience because they are absolutely desperate about finding a job,” he explains. “I know recruiting is important, but most of us are going to change our jobs in a few years. The MBA is a once-in-a-lifetime experience and the learning and development part outside recruiting are what makes business school one of the best experiences of our lives.”
What would the Best & Brightest encourage administrators to adopt instead? Studart, for one, would start the first year earlier or make more career resources available before recruiting opens. Hosanna Odhner believes one alternative is implementing what she calls a “self-discovery week” before recruiters hit campus. “Two years go by so quickly, and especially in the first semester, trains start leaving the station so quickly, it’s hard to find time to stop and ask yourself which train it is you really want to be on,” says Yale SOM grad.
NYU Stern’s Mahum Yunus takes a longer view, which is why she would tack a “Dream Career” planning session with the career office onto the end of the program. “While the MBA program is great for getting students up for their dream job right out of school, I would make sure each student has a clear idea of what they would want to do 15 or 20 years out, and what is needed to get there,” she says. “Hopefully, this can encourage us to think about the long-term journey, and make sure we continue to seek learning.”
ARE ‘TACTICS’ UNDERVALUED BY FACULTY?
Inside the classroom, the Best & Brightest also identified several opportunities to enrich the MBA experience. At the University of Michigan Ross, Kristen Steagall, a tech maven slated for McKinsey, would require every student to author a business plan. She calls it an “illuminating process” – even for peers who have no intention of ever starting a business. In contrast, Ariana Almas, Steagall’s classmate and an aspiring entrepreneur, calls for greater attention to intrapreneurship.
“A majority of students will be joining big corporations or organizations, at least in the immediate short-term,” she observes. “I believe strongly that there are multiple ways to make an impact, and we need just as many individuals to challenge the status quo in existing institutions as there are individuals who are out there forging new ground. We must empower students with the knowledge, tools, and resources needed to make that change as future business leaders in all contexts.”
The entrepreneur-intrapreneur divide wasn’t the only gap that the Best & Brightest witnessed in their programs. Northwestern Kellogg’s Carr Lanphier hails business schools for excelling in teaching frameworks and strategy. However, he points to one area where he believes they fall short: Tactics. “Sun Tzu said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” The future’s top MBA programs will be those that teach students a faster route to victory through hands-on application of tactics.”
TEACHING THE TEACHER
It isn’t just what students are taught that might need some tweaking, but how they’re taught as well. Prior to business school, Babson College’s David James taught for Teach for America before launching an academy that ranked as the State of Massachusetts’ fastest-improving middle school in just its second year. If James were a business school dean, he would foster a culture where teachers regularly offer feedback to each other on their teaching – a practice that fueled the success of his middle school.
“I would require business school faculty to observe at least three other faculty members per semester and engage in some type of debrief after the observation,” he asserts. “I would also hire instructional coaches to observe classes, provide instructional recommendations, and act as an instructional thought-partner for professors.”
The biggest need in MBA programs, according to the Best & Brightest, involved issues surrounding diversity, be it gender, race, equity, or inclusion. In fact, U.C.-Berkeley Haas’ Liz Koenig considers these subjects to be so central to business that she’d build them into a core course called “Leading Across Lines of Difference.”
VALUE OF NAVIGATING DIVERSITY RISING
MIT Sloan’s Faye Cheng
“We are stepping into an increasingly diverse and global workforce,” she observes. “Our ability to operate and communicate across lines of difference – whether it be gender, race, country or origin, etc. – is critical to creating high-potential companies and organizations that reflect and meet the needs of a diverse customer base.”
Similarly, MIT Sloan’s Faye Cheng, who starts with Bain & Company this summer, would embed more opportunities for greater discussion on gender parity and unconscious bias into the core curriculum. Doing so, she believes, would send an unambiguous message to students. “Gender issues are human issues. Bias issues are human issues,” she declares. “If the mission of MIT Sloan is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world, our curriculum must put a stake in the ground declaring these as management priorities that every leader must tackle head-on.”
This learning doesn’t always have to come through the faculty, however. At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Tomer Meir believes MBAs bring a “wealth of knowledge” and “incredible experiences” that programs can better tap “in a more structured way.” He cites his experience teaching scuba diving to the disabled as an example.
“I have learned very valuable lessons on the power of persistence and perseverance in face of great challenges,” he reminisces. “I would love to have a school-wide platform to share my experience with my classmates and learn from their stories as well. Every semester I would create a week-long curriculum taught completely by students, for students.
Georgetown University’s Erika Studt
GO GLOBAL OR GO HOME
The Best & Brightest wouldn’t just promote diversity inside the classroom. If Georgetown University’s Erika Studt replaced Dean Paul Almeida for day, she’d make a week-long international trek mandatory – noting that “nothing bonds people better than travel.” The University of Minnesota’s Ashley Ver Burg Soukup has even cooked up an idea so every class member could enjoy a global experience: Create a scholarship fund
“I traveled to the UAE and Oman for a two-week course and spent a partial semester as an exchange student at the Stockholm School of Economics. In today’s world, all business is global business. There’s no way to understand this better than studying outside of your home country.”
Scholarships aren’t the only solutions, says the University of Illinois’ Brandon Byers. As dean, this Best & Brightest would focus on boosting the numbers of African Americans in business schools. To do this, he would forge partnerships with institutions like historically black colleges and universities. “This program would be similar to our early admit program, where college seniors receive early admission based on the condition that they work for two or more years, achieve a certain GPA, and have a competitive GMAT score. Reaching this students early on will guarantee a strong African American population for our MBA student body.”
Byers’ plan may attract students, but Ivey’s Jay Kiew would be looking to make life easier for his classmates – namely international students and their families – once they arrive. His big idea is beefing up support for this vulnerable population so they can focus on being students instead of completing paperwork. “We had some classmates who went eight months without seeing their young children, which I imagine is really tough as a parent,” he admits. “Having an immigration consultant on standby for a month or two would really help decrease stress as international students settle down in a new country.”
INCLUDE THE REST OF CAMPUS INTO THE EXPERIENCE
How else would the Class of 2018 improve their MBA programs? The University of Maryland’s Erin Moore believes she gained the most valuable skills through case competitions. That’s why she champions every student being required to compete in one. “Through my experience in case competitions,” she stresses, “I enhanced my presentation and storytelling skills so that I am confident in my presence and thoughts in front of a variety of audiences. I learned how to navigate difficult conversations and conflict within teams to achieve outcomes and recommendations that everyone can support. I built my analytical skills to solve business problems with strategy and creativity. These are all skills that successful MBAs need on the job and in life.”
Emory University’s JP Ortiz
Such competitions also introduced Moore to new people in the full-time program – and beyond. That “beyond” is what many Best & Brightest MBAs are seeking in building a deep and powerful network. For Emory Goizueta’s JP Ortiz, that would mean greater interaction between full-time MBAs and the school’s 1-year, evening, and executive MBAs (and even undergraduate business majors). To do this, IESE’s Jieqiong Xu suggests a regular channel where the whole business school community could come together to “exchange ideas and potentially business and job opportunities.”
Some would even expand this beyond the business school confines. In the never-ending searching for finding peers who can bring fresh ideas and serve as mentors, some 2018 Best & Brightest members reached out to the entire university community. One way to foster that across the board, says Duke Fuqua’s Page Swofford, would be to require MBAs to take a class outside the business school.
“As a dual degree student, I’ve benefitted from having the opportunity to take classes at other graduate schools within Duke,” she says. “It has expanded my appreciation for how interdisciplinary perspectives challenge and expand your way of thinking and approaching problems.”
ENGAGE WITH THE COMMUNITY
For some, even the university itself was too small. At the University of Oxford, Elly Brown calls for experiential learning to step back from the flashy projects with big name companies and high level executives. In their place, she urges MBA candidates to step forward in their adopted communities and engage with people from all walks of life.
University of Oxford’s Elly Brown
“One of my biggest concerns about my generation is that we don’t spend enough time out in the community, meeting and working with people from different organisational levels and backgrounds,” she explains. “With the decline in membership of churches, unions, and community groups, so many of us are now more segregated by class and job type than ever. We are in danger of detaching from the reality of how people live, work, and what they want. Graduate schools have a real opportunity to connect their students with worlds they may have drifted away from, or may not have explored yet. They also have an obligation to remind their students that leadership should never be divorced from the community one aims to lead.”
To better immerse MBAs in their communities, the University of Wisconsin’s Linda Liu suggests that schools sponsor more volunteer opportunities for students. “I would take one full day at the end of the MBA experience for students to volunteer,” Liu says. “We do this at the start of the experience, during orientation, but I would like to add one at the end, to bookend our time here and as one final act of gratitude to the community that has been our home for two years.”
BRINGING FIDO TO FINANCE
Alas, some Best & Brightest posed suggestions that some might consider heretical (or hysterical). Exhibit A: Northwestern Kellogg’s Kathryn Bernell. Her game-changing concept? No classes starting before 10:30 a.m. Before dismissing her as a late night slacker, consider the method behind her supposed madness.
“I am surprisingly a relentless morning person,” she stresses. “I wake up most days at 5:30, workout, eat breakfast, read the news, and then dive deep into the work ahead of me. My mornings are my most productive time of day and I really dislike having to cut short this window with class if I can avoid it!”
Think 10:30 is a stretch? Just wait until you hear from Georgia Tech’s Declan Nishiyama. “I would allow dogs on campus,” he proposes (apparently mistaking Georgia for Google). “After the initial distraction of them going around sniffing everyone, I imagine that dogs would help relax us from the long days of classes, group meetings, and presentations.”
Notre Dame’s Kyle Verash
While Lassie lazing in the lecture hall is probably a non-starter, Kyle Verash makes a pitch that’d stand a great shot at sticking at Notre Dame…since it’d probably attract a new crop of MBAs. “Although the program does a great job of including the spouses and significant others of students in extracurricular activities, I would expand the outreach by allowing spouses to audit classes.”
A THREE YEAR MBA? BANKERS APPROVE!
Of course, some ideas might be anathema to students themselves. Think 21 months is a long time for an MBA? Well, the University of Virginia’s Catherine Aranda would extend it to three years. Sadistic? Maybe, but her reasoning is hardly an excuse to pore over another 200 Harvard cases. “[Another year would offer] the flexibility to interweave core academic classes with more inspiring, self-selected elective seminars,” she outlines. “The third year will feature an experiential learning component that enables all students to develop consulting skills within a start-up company. The 10-week summer internship will be replaced with a mandatory global business immersion experience. Also, every student will have a thoughtfully assigned academic advisor and career mentor.”
Sound overwhelming? Well, the two-year and one-year programs can be pretty nerve-wracking too. That’s why Indiana University’s Gregory Toupalik helped to launch a Resilience Week to spotlight mental health issues related to eating healthy, reducing stress, staying in shape, and keeping perspective. If Toupalik were dean, this is the area where he’d devote greater resources. Make no mistake: he wasn’t alone in viewing this as opportunity for improvement among business schools.
“An MBA comes with the intensity of classes, recruiting, and extracurriculars,” adds Dartmouth Tuck’s Sravya Yeleswarapu. “Often times, we as students, forgot to take care of ourselves in the midst of this intensity—I know I am definitely guilty of that. I think every MBA experience in some way should help promote better personal living as part of the program.”
How would you improve the business school experience? We welcome your insights in the comments section below.
DON’T MISS:
BEST & BRIGHTEST MBAS: CLASS OF 2018
BIGGEST REGRETS OF THE CLASS OF 2018
MBA BUSTERS: MBAS DISPEL THEIR SCHOOLS’ WORST STEREOTYPES
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