They go by different names: disruptors, rising stars, upstarts, and catalysts. A decade ago, you would’ve found those labels slapped on Facebook, YouTube, Tesla, and Hulu. They were the up-and-comers, fresh and flashy and daring and dynamic. The experts celebrated them as clear breaks from the status quo – a glimpse into the future where solutions were faster and cheaper or more all-inclusive and personalized. In other words, these firms held the promise to upend what people should expect…and ultimately how they lived.
You won’t find that same mobility in graduate business schools – not on the surface, at least. The industry could serve as a case study on barriers to entry. Infrastructure and accreditation are just two hurdles. In reality, the MBA landscape is driven by branding where a moniker like M7 serves as a status symbol. Such schools draw the most talented students (on paper) because they boast the most respected names, widest resources, and deepest pockets. This creates a virtuous circle, one where their graduates land the best jobs with the highest pay.
THE INNOVATORS THAT RANKINGS OVERLOOK
The MBA market is a battle for inches – or rankings, if you will. That has created an arms race of sort, a push to refurbish facilities and enhance programming that drives up expectations and costs for everyone. In the process, every innovation is mimicked and codified across the spectrum. Once upon a time, hands-on learning was the cornerstone of the MIT Sloan and Michigan Ross experiences. Now, team-based, employer-supported projects are embedded in every business school core. Required international excursions? That spread like mad from USC Marshall as markets exploded and the globe grew increasingly interconnected.
That begs the question: Which business schools will produce the next innovations?
Chances are, they will bubble up rather than trickle down. That’s one reason why Poets&Quants creates an annual list of the “10 Business Schools To Watch.” While inputs and outputs slot rankings, substance and soul set the bar. This year’s list features MBA programs that have distinguished themselves in two ways. Not surprisingly, many have launched curriculum experiments or made investments that are spurring a momentum that can’t be measured in incremental instruments like rankings. At the same time, others are wrestling with issues that are increasingly defining national discourse.
Here are the business schools that are expected to dictate the pace and agenda for other programs to follow in 2019.
A relaunch of the MBA program at Washington University’s Olin Business School is announced
Washington University, Olin Business School
Dean Mark Taylor isn’t afraid to make bold pronouncements. That includes making clear that he wants Olin to become “the most international program in the world.” Hyperbole? Not when you back it up– and Taylor will be doing exactly that in 2019.
Want to know what a business school truly values? Just look at the activities and courses that open its MBA program. In Olin’s case, it is a global immersion for the Class of 2021…and beyond. This isn’t just any stale voluntary excursion that happens during their second year. Here, it starts in June, back when most MBAs are wrapping up work, boxing up belongings, and jetting off to Melbourne for some R&R. Instead, Olin first-years are meeting up in St. Louis for orientation before heading to Washington DC, where they receive intensive training from the Brookings Institution, the most cited think tank in the areas of foreign policy and global economic development. From there, candidates spend the next month in Barcelona and Shanghai, taking classes, conducting research, and delivering projects on behalf of corporate partners.
Oh – and Olin is doing all this without increasing tuition.
Taylor, who joined Olin in 2016 after serving as dean of Warwick Business School, views this curriculum revamp as a “boot camp” – one that provides an opportunity for students to build camaraderie while being exposed to a diverse set of business practices and cultural mores. “They will work together and travel together and the international students in the cohort will naturally show their colleagues around in other parts of the world,” Taylor notes. In that time, it will be more than academic tourism. It will be a chance to begin to understand doing business in Europe and Asia.”
That’s not the only wrinkle being added by Olin, which was supported in this initiative by the Boston Consulting Group. To offer great flexibility, students can also choose from durations ranging from 14 months to 2 years. The former accommodates students looking to cut opportunity costs and return to their careers sooner, while the latter supports career switchers seeking for a transformative experience and Olin’s trademark close-knit community. At the same time, Olin invested in its strengths. While its MBA program consistently produces placement rates among the best, Olin still restructured its Weston Career Center. That included boosting its staff by a third and placing staffers on the east and west coasts – as well as China.
In other words, this program “re-launch” (as Taylor calls it) offers a larger menu of options and opportunities to students. However, the underlying message is this: The experience matters – and must be differentiated to continue attracting the best candidates. “Prospective MBA students are searching for value for money,” Taylor adds. “You are not just buying an MBA as a way to get you the next job. You have to really think about what you want.”
Students in the Ross School of Business Winter Garden
University of Michigan, Ross School of Business
Sometimes, it doesn’t pay to be first. Let’s face it: would you rather be Netscape or Google? It’s a story as old as business. The early birds perform the design and distribution dirty work…only to be outflanked by younger, faster, and better-funded upstarts.
In the part-time online MBA space, the market is dominated by Indiana Kelley, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, and North Carolina Kenan-Flagler. They’re great programs, but they’re not Top 10 business school brands. That’s about to change in 2019, when the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business enters the market. You can bet this entry is bound to create a ripple. Question is, will it spawn a wave that deluges the market (SMU’s Cox School of Business and UC-Davis’ Graduate School of Business will also debut online MBAs this year) -– or encourage bigger players to make their jump into this space too?
“Ross isn’t the only school innovating on the online frontier — everybody’s doing it to some degree,” says Wally Hopp, Michigan’s associate dean for the part-time MBA and director of the new Part-time Online MBA. “The question is, What’s going to shake out to be the right way? What are the best practices? And here at Ross, we’re committed to finding the best practices to serve our students, to train future business leaders.”
Chances are, it won’t take Ross long to crack the code. A pioneer in experiential learning, Ross is best-known for across-the-board excellence – with the full-time MBA program again ranking near the top of every MBA specialization according to U.S. News. Looking back on 2018 leaves the impression that Ross will enjoy a banner new year.
Take rankings. Last year, Ross rose to the 7th spot in March’s U.S. News MBA ranking – the first time it has cracked the top 10 in 14 years. At the same time, it jumped from 12th to 7th in The Economist ranking. The school could continue its climb in 2019 as well. For one, the Class of 2020’s GMAT scores rose four points. For another, the graduating class’ starting pay inched up as well. On top of that, the percentage of women in the incoming class reached an all-time high of 43% – a 10% increase in just the past four years.
Numbers rise and rankings fall, however. What really matters is philosophy and its execution. It is here where Ross truly shines. Dean Scott DeRue is fond of comparing the Ross full-time MBA to a teaching hospital – a place where students and employers alike can “try before [they] buy.” The program centers around project-based learning, with the program offering over 200 different consulting projects a year to students. While Ross is best known for MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Project), it has expanded into a new track, one DeRue calls “building businesses into the business school.”
The program is called LBLE, short for the Living Business Leadership Experience. Think of it as Ross’ biggest investment on its “mission to really reinvent the student experience.” Here, students partner with companies to launch and operate new business units. Currently covering seven companies, the LBLE program enables students to shoulder the full responsibilities of running a business, including marketing, finance, and operations.
“One of the coolest things about it is that students get to see and experience first-hand how tough decision-making can be,” says Soojin Kwon, managing director of full-time MBA admissions at Ross. “You don’t always have complete information or buy-in from all stakeholders. How do you manage in the face of ambiguity? These are the kinds of challenges that students work through in a real business.”
In other words, Ross MBAs don’t just read cases, they live them – and are responsible for how they turn out. “One of the great things about Ross is that students get to work with and for real organizations that have a challenge – while they’re students, not just read cases or identify solutions for challenges that have already happened,” Kwon adds. So they’re not only gaining exposure and experience, they’re also able to make an impact.”
Thanks to its innovative ideas, courageous commitment and relentless execution, you can expect Ross to leave a major impact on business education in 2019, too.
The University of Washington’s Foster School of Business benefits from its location in Seattle, home to two of the world’s biggest tech companies
University of Washington, Foster School of Business
“It’s not about strategy. It’s about execution.”
That’s the advice that Dean Jim Jiambalvo once received from a former Starbucks CEO. By that measure, you could say Jiambalvo’s 14-year run as dean of the Foster School has been a smashing success.
It is stunning to look back at Jiambalvo’s accomplishments as he rides off into the sunset. When he took the reins, Foster’s full-time MBA program wasn’t even ranked by U.S. News or The Financial Times. And it was an afterthought with Businessweek too. Fast forward to today and Foster consistently ranks among the Top 25 programs in nearly every major ranking.
What happened? Let’s just say Jiambalvo laid the blueprint for building the modern business school. During his tenure, he placed a heavy emphasis on luring and developing the best faculty. In fact, the school’s per capita research output rivals programs like Wharton and Stanford. A prolific fund-raiser, he also worked the phones to generate over $380 million dollars from alumni and friends. This prowess enabled him to construct two state-of-the-art buildings covering 200,000 square feet during his term. That doesn’t even include the 100,000 square foot Founders Hall is slated to open in 2021. On top of that, he launched a torrent of centers, covering areas like sales and marketing strategy, entrepreneurship, global business, and leadership and strategic think.
Get the point? Alas, that’s the past. These days, Foster’s “We > Me” culture has yielded serious dividends. The incoming class featured 42% women, one of the highest rates among major business schools. Last year, the school notched a 99% placement rate for graduates, with 60% of students heading into technology – where they pulled down $118,355 bases and $38,695 sign on bonuses to boot. The reason? For one, the school offers Applied Strategy projects – mini internships if you will. The Foster difference? Students can take up to three of them.
When you’re good, luck simply puts you over the top. That lucky ingredient at Foster is Seattle itself. The “Emerald City” nickname is now more reflective of economic green than Pacific Northwest shrubbery. The Seattle market has exploded, thanks to a vibrant startup scene and a powerful Fortune 500 presence. Yes, the Pudget Sound is home to iconic brands like Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks, not to mention climbers like Rover and Zulily. This perk, coupled with a wealth of outdoor excursions (and coffee houses), makes Foster an increasingly covet seat among business school applicants.
“If you want to build a network of people who are currently at Amazon or Microsoft, the Foster School is a terrific environment,” Jiambalvo adds. “There are also all kinds of small companies in Seattle. And a lot of students want to be at a startup. The Bay Area is in a league of its own and then there is Boston and then Seattle. So entrepreneurship is something we also pay a lot of attention to. We have a very, very strong center, great coursework, and great experiential learning.”
Columbia Business School
Columbia Business School
You won’t find a business school with more inherent advantages than Columbia Business School. That starts with its New York City locale, where nearly every Fortune 500 company is just a cab or subway ride away from its Morningside Heights campus. Indeed, the Big Apple boasts every industry and every stage imaginable. That makes it all the easier for CBS MBAs to build a robust rolodex of contacts from company leaders to specialty practitioners. With flexible schedules and Fridays off, students can easily take on internships during the school year.
In its tagline, CBS hails itself as being “at the very center of business.” What they don’t tell you is the school is also at the very center of the arts, fashion, and media too. While Wall Street and a booming startup scene are major enticements, the campus life is equally alluring. A large MBA program par excellence, students can also choose from over 200 electives. Thanks to being just a few miles from Midtown and Wall Street, the school attracts the most coveted speakers and executives-in-residence…not to mention adjunct faculty like Barry Salzberg, the former Deloitte CEO who runs the school’s consulting immersion. Let’s not forget clubs. The school sponsors over a hundred, which range from banking, consulting, and fintech to cycling, sailing, and squash.
Despite being an Ivy in “The City that never sleeps,” Columbia remains a bit underrated as a whole. You’d never know it by the numbers posted by the Class of 2020. As usual, the admissions department was awash in applications, accepting just 17% as students – with nearly three-quarters ultimately accepting their offer. At the same time, the class posted an all-time high in average GMATs at 732, higher than even Harvard Business School. Whatever you do, don’t dismiss CBS as a “finance school.” That’s so 2007, with consulting firms now drawing more graduates than banks.
What’s holding CBS back? That’s easy: Uris Hall – with a charmless exterior that was seemingly inspired by 1950s-style public housing. That’s about to change, as the school is opening a new building in Manhattanville in 2022 that promised to be among the most state-of-the-art in the industry. That’s not the only big news. In June, Glenn Hubbard will step down as dean after 15 years in the role. While Hubbard’s tenure was unquestionably successful, this change represents an opportunity for new ideas to take root at the school.
Unfortunately, these advantages aren’t the only reasons why CBS is a school to watch. Let’s just say school administration wasn’t sad to see 2018 go. In July, the school was assigned to pay $1.25 million dollars in damages to Enricheeta Ravina, a former assistant professor, in a sexual harassment and retaliation case against Geert Bekaert, an award-winning finance professor. That comes on the heels of several harassment cases involving faculty being investigated at the school. In November, another bombshell dropped, when a first-year claimed she was drugged and raped by a classmate at an off-campus gathering.
Are these events indicative of a certain culture at the school – or is CBS just reflective of what happens more discreetly on other MBA campuses? Even more, how will the school react to these events to better protect students and faculty? The answers may just determine how CBS will be viewed in the coming years – and that makes it truly a school to watch.
Vanderbilt Owen students visited 11 different banks and financial firms over fall break, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Vanderbilt photo
Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of Business
Here’s a stat to remember: Healthcare now accounts for 18% of American GDP…or $3.5 trillion dollars annually.
Impressed? Just wait until you get a load of this next number: Over half of all private hospital beds are managed out of Nashville.
Cha-ching!
Indeed, the region is home base for over 500 health care companies, which generate over $92 billion a year and account for over a half million jobs. That includes giants like Hospital Corporation of America and Community Health Systems. Together, they operate nearly 300 hospitals and surgical centers in the U.S. and U.K. It isn’t just the big players reaping the rewards. Nashville-area healthcare startups attracted $1.6 billion dollars in investment from 2005-2015. One such startup, Intermedix, made a $460 million dollar exit last year.
Get the picture? The Owen School certainly does. Each year, 16% to 20% of their students enter the healthcare field after graduation – more than double the rate of any full-time MBA program. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the Vanderbilt Medical Center, one of the nation’s largest hospital complexes, is just five minutes down 21st Avenue from Owen. Such connections are just one of the inherent advantages enjoyed by Owen grads who complete a healthcare concentration.
“It’s just the place to be,” says Owen’s Christie St. John, Owen’s MBA admissions director in an interview with P&Q. “Why would you want to be anywhere else? Because you’ve got personalized attention — personalized services. All the alums, all the companies are right here at your fingertips.”
Indeed, the healthcare industry is changing rapidly in ways that are particularly attractive to MBAs observes Owen Dean Eric Johnson. Notably, it has grown increasingly “professionalized,” he says in a 2018 Q&A with P&Q. By that, he means that they now involve more complexity, where an MD doesn’t cover the specialized training in areas like finance to run a large organization. At the same time, Johnson adds, healthcare delivery is pivoting more towards MBA strengths.
“The U.S. health care system is in a constant state of churn, and it’s creating a lot of opportunities to roll up all kinds of specialties. For example, anesthesiologists, emergency room doctors, whatever, they get bundled up as a service sold back to hospitals. It’s very much a roll up kind of industry right now, and that’s an MBA sweet spot. MBAs love conquering the world, rolling up an industry and a very fragmented industry at that.”
Such opportunities leave the school poised for a major jump in prestige and value in the coming years. Of course, an Owen healthcare concentration isn’t your standard classroom fare. If MBA candidates want to study healthcare at Owen, they’ll need to get their hands dirty. That’s why the program opens with an immersion, where students shadow doctors, nurses, and patients, witnessing everything from surgeries to check-ups. In the process, they gain an understanding of the daily routines that stakeholders follow and the issues they encounter. Such exercises give Owen graduates the tools to sharpen their decision-making and provide the know-how needed to truly adapt and innovate in a fast-moving industry.
“Owen allowed me to come in with somewhat of a head start,” adds Jameson Norton (’15), CEO at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics and executive director at Vanderbilt Behavioral Health. “We’re talking a lot about how things are evolving and you’re able to learn about some of the potential disruptors and the ways that things are transforming. That helps you anticipate where things are moving. It gives you a vision for where we’re headed.”
Scheller College of Business at Georgia Tech University
Georgia Institute of Technology, Scheller College of Business
Every business school lauds “technology.” It is the differentiator, the means to stay ahead. Case studies are devoted to how it helps companies reach more consumers, boost productivity, and enhance communication. At the same time, technology is viewed as a culture setter, one that alters corporate structures and partner relationships in its wake.
Just one question: How exactly do you leverage technology to maximize its potential?
Finding the answer is the cornerstone of the Scheller MBA. In fact, the program’s curriculum is designed to train students on how technology impacts every corner of industry and company operations. That’s one reason you’ll find concentrations and immersive tracks like Technology Commercialization, Managing Innovation & Technology, and Innovating for Sustainability being offered. Despite the quant calculus in the program, Scheller is hardly a finishing school for engineers and computer scientists.
“You don’t have to have a technology background to be successful at Georgia Tech, says SaVona Smith, a first-year MBA and a former regional sales manager who is transitioning into brand management. “They teach you all you need to know!”
Alas, technology is the soul of the larger Georgia Tech University, a top-flight research institution that features one of the world’s best engineering programs. That creates opportunities for MBA students to partner with students from various schools. This is exemplified by TI:GER, where MBAs partner with graduate students in the sciences, law, and engineering to commercialize Ph.D. research breakthroughs.
In fact, Scheller MBAs are surrounded by innovation and technology. The business school is literally encircled by the Tech Square district, 1.4 million square feet of space that’s home to 100 startups and 50 accelerators and incubators – not to mention research facilities and offices for Fortune 500 darlings like AT&T, Coca-Cola, and Home Depot. Of course, learning how to network with and bring value to these organizations takes practice. Thankfully, Scheller boasts one of the world’s top career services centers – and faculties – according to surveys conducted by The Economist.
“We feel it is Scheller College’s time to shine,” says Katie Lloyd, executive director of MBA admissions, in an interview with P&Q. “We’re well-positioned to be the MBA program for the 21st century, from practical application, to our position at the intersection of business and technology and emphasis on business analytics. MBA programs worldwide are trying to move this direction, but we’re already there.”
The MiM student population at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain is about 25% Spanish — and 75% international. IE photo
IE Business School
IE Business School is proud to flout the rules. They were founded by entrepreneurs, so what would you expect? This brashness – which stems from an openness to new ideas and an obsession with delivering an education that truly matters – has produced a culture and curriculum far different from the mainstream.
IE was among the first schools to integrate the humanities into their classroom teaching. The school was also among the first to recognize the intrinsic value of experiential learning. Blessed with an entrepreneurial spirit and steeped in technological know-how, IE is a champion of diversity, not just in terms of nationality but background, temperament, and philosophy. One example of the school’s rebel spirit? The program opens with two entrepreneurship courses! Oh, and it also boasts an intensive “fitness” regimen, replete with coaching and programming geared towards personal and career development.
Intriguing, no doubt. That isn’t enough to make IE an MBA program to watch. This year, the designation stems from two developments. First, the program is investing heavily in itself. For one, IE is pouring €50 million over the next five years into enhancing technological immersion, with a special emphasis on AI, blockchain, and fintech. What’s more, the school is on a building spree, with its Campus IE expected to double its current Madrid space by 2020.
That’s the good news. In IE’s case, 2018 could also be described as taxing at best and scandalous at worst. The reason? The school was removed from the Financial Times’ 2018 full-time MBA ranking. Just one ranking, you say. Maybe, but a year earlier, IE ranked 8th in the world on the FT list, higher than such programs as Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, and MIT Sloan. In fact, IE became the first Top 10 program ever booted from the FT ranking.
What happened? While fraud was initially suggested, the reason turned out to be garden variety mismanagement. Simply put: The team responsible for updating alumni data and managing the flow of survey responses failed on both counts. Considering that survey data accounts for a 59% weight for FT school rankings, the mistake was catastrophic.
“In this case, the quality of the data we received was not good enough,” wrote an IE spokesperson in response to a P&Q inquiry. “We received surveys completed by people who were not who we thought they were. We alerted IE to this issue and we have asked them to urgently tighten their data collection procedures so that they can be included in future rankings.”
Although the school initially downplayed the errors, the bad publicity resulted in heads rolling. Most likely, the school leadership realized that alumni pride translated to big contributions – and rankings act as the equivalent to a homecoming victory in the MBA world. A week after the news broke, the school responded forcefully, firing two staffers and demanding the resignation of a third. The soul-searching also resulted in tightening data management processes – with anything rankings-related now funneled through the dean himself.
An embarrassment? No doubt, but there is a precedent. In 2016, NYU Stern dropped nine spots to 20th in the U.S. News ranking after failing to submit a key piece of data. Sure enough, the school rebounded the next year and all was forgotten (though not necessarily forgiven). A momentary blip or a harbinger of things to come? You can bet prospective applicants will be watching how this plays out as intently as administrators in the coming month.
Members of USC Marshall’s vaunted Trojan Network
USC, Marshall School of Business
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”
This opening line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities would be an apt description for how 2018 went for the Marshall School of Business.
Let’s start with the worst of times, since one event darkened what was otherwise one of the best years ever for an MBA program.
In late November, Dean James Ellis was told he would be removed as dean of the Marshall School. The reason? The university appears to be blaming Ellis for what it believes is an inordinate number of complaints (roughly 70 in 11 and one-half years) lodged by either students or faculty at Marshall with the university’s Office of Equity and Diversity (OED). Although Ellis himself was never cited for any misconduct himself, such accusations are basically a career death sentence in today’s #MeToo climate. Just two problems with the situation. First, only 10% of the complaints were ever forwarded to Ellis (and the ones that reached him received immediate action). Second, in due process worthy of the communist East bloc, the university won’t even let Ellis read the charges levied against him. So much for transparency.
Not surprisingly, faculty and students alike have rallied to Ellis’ cause, with a petition demanding his reinstatement generating 3,000 signatures by Christmas. The issue also includes sharp political dimensions, beginning with an overzealous (and largely unqualified) interim dean seeking to undo the damage of harassment and bias issues being largely ignored at other schools on the USC campus. While pointed letters and negative press coverage have left the decision-makers unmoved, Ellis’ supporters may still hold the leverage. One USC development officer expects the school to lose $30-$40 million dollars in support from alumni and friends over the action against Ellis.
That’s bad news for a program that has been on a major roll as of late. In a down year for student interest across the board, Marshall was one of only Top 20 MBA program to receive more applications than the previous year. It wasn’t just the quantity of applications that stuck out during the 2017-2018 cycle. Anne Ziemniak, assistant dean and director of the full-time MBA program, described the Class of 2020 as “the “highest quality applicant pool in Marshall’s history.”
The numbers bear out her assertion. The median GMAT reached 705 – an all-time high and a 32 point jump over the past three years. Average undergraduate GPAs also surged from 3.3 to 3.5. However, the number that truly stuck out was 52% – the percentage of women in the Class of 2020. It was the first time that a Top 20 business school had more women than men in the class – thanks to a grassroots effort launched by first-year students and supported wholeheartedly by administration. If the school can achieve this milestone consistently, it will make the program all the more formidable among recruiters, says Mark Brostoff, assistant dean and director of MBA career services.
“As we go to market with internship opportunities and full-time jobs, employers are going to be very happy that we have a 50-50 split in the class,” he noted in a 2018 interview with P&Q. “They want more women in their pipelines. The resumes requested most often in the last couple of years are of female candidates.”
If student quality and demographics don’t sell the program, the Trojan Network will. An alumni base of 88,000 members strong, the Trojan Network is a philosophy as much as people. Their chief tenet: Look out for opportunities to help future Marshall MBAs – just as alumni looked out for us. It is a natural extension of the Marshall culture — where students enjoy a strong voice in decision-making – that carries over into their roles as Marshall MBA graduates. “Students see that our alumni are engaged and they themselves pick up on the cue that it is important to be engaged once you graduate as well,” Ziemniak tells P&Q in a 2018 interview.
Alongside stronger recruits and a rabidly-supportive alumni, the Marshall School also rolled out a new curriculum this fall. The difference: It offers a stronger analytical focus with more holistic programming that better reveals the synergies between various organizational functions and levels. It was a heavy investment, no doubt. Now the question being asked is whether Marshall’s momentum and assets be enough to overcome the dissension roiling the campus. To be continued…
University of Texas, McCombs School of Business
How do you stir up excitement in your MBA community? A new dean? Meh, their triumphs usually happen behind-the-scenes and take years to realize. Free coffee? Only if it isn’t the cheap stuff…and caffeine buzzes wear off pretty quick. A new building? Yeah, now you’re talking.
Yes, christening a new building presents a fresh start, where the furniture is new, the space is open, and the walls and floors sparkle. More than that, they are a statement about a school’s purpose and capabilities. Few buildings made a bigger splash in 2018 than the new Rowling Hall at the McCombs Business School.
Everything is bigger in Texas – and that includes business schools. Rowling Hall rises five stories and covers 497,500 square feet in downtown Austin. According to Tina Mabley, the assistant dean and director of the full-time MBA program, the building’s wide spaces and state-of-the-art extras were designed as a space to spark conversation and idea-sharing, and experimentation. More than that, Rowling Hall serves as a bridge to the larger Austin community. Nicknamed “Silicon Halls,” Texas’ capitol has emerged as a startup engine and corporate powerhouse, thanks to 18.4% job growth over the past five years coupled with a 2.9% unemployment rate. Home to 85 accelerators and incubators – with areas startups drawing nearly $800 million dollars in investment in 2017 alone – the region also bustles thanks to a large corporate presence from standard-bearers like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. With Rowling Hall, Mabley believes that McCombs can further tap into the area’s rich expertise and connections.
“Our unparalleled location places us at the intersection of The University of Texas campus and downtown Austin, which serves as a vibrant business laboratory right outside our doors, explains Mabley in a 2018 statement to P&Q. “The University of Texas and the city of Austin have grown and evolved together. Austin has been the fastest-growing city in the country for three of the last five years and Rowling Hall allows us to capitalize on all the richness that growth has brought to the area. We appreciate a synergistic relationship with the city, which enhances the experiential applications and interactions we can offer our students every day. Being a major hub for tech, healthcare, energy, and a variety of other industries, we continue to find ways to bring these elements into our curriculum and community.”
A new building and an enviable location aren’t the only things that McCombs has going for it. In 2018, the full-time MBA population grew from 265 to 289 students at this “famously friendly” business school. In December, the school received a “transformative” $20 million dollar gift from alum Phil Canfield, with a heavy dose going to scholarship to further attract the best students. The McCombs MBA also benefits from an embarrassment of riches, including a top tier undergraduate business program; a faculty that prides itself on teaching excellence as much as research prowess; and a larger research university flush with resources and avenues for partnerships. Let’s not forget a 450,000 member alumni base who aren’t shy about throwing up a “Hook ‘em Horns” everywhere from the Great Wall of China to the White House lawn.
“This depth at the university allows us to create innovative programs that connect collaborative teams across campus,” Mabley adds, “whether that’s public policy students, med students, and MBAs finding solutions for child poverty; architecture students and MBAs working on sustainable design ideas; or law students, computer science students, and MBAs teaming up to work with early-stage companies and start-ups to help raise series one financing.”
MBA students at the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School
University of Rochester, Simon Business School
When you’re small, you need to be smarter. That means identifying trends sooner and executing programs better. That has always been one of the Simon School’s strengths.
A program long known for delivering a curriculum that fused quantitative analysis and economics-based thinking, Simon made headlines in 2015 by cutting tuition by nearly 14%. That action served as the proverbial shot across the bow against ever-rising tuition. Now, Simon is tackling a different issue. As political rhetoric on immigration has heated up in the United States, international students have grown increasingly wary of studying there, helping to drive a slump in MBA applications during the 2017-2018 cycle. At the same time, legislative gridlock has left the Optional Practical Training (OPT) work visa stuck at one year This creates a paperwork-intensive nightmare for potential employers that makes international students less competitive for U.S.-based jobs than their American counterparts.
Rather than following this lose-lose model for international students and employers alike, Simon made a bold move. This year, the MBA program earned a STEM Designation, a government program designed to head off a shortfall in technical talent in the coming decade. In a nutshell, the school revamped its curriculum so that 50% of its coursework involved science, technology, engineering, and math topics. Here’s the radical part: the revamp was extended to cover all 10 of its specializations, rather than simply cherry-picking one specialization or master’s program.
By doing so, Simon will be able to extend international graduates’ OPT by 24 months. This enables them to work in the U.S. for three years, giving them three shots at a green card. This designation also cuts the costs and paperwork associated with company sponsorships, making international candidates all the more attractive to American employers.
“Getting 36 months on an OPT work visa is trivial compared to the exercise you have to go through for an H1b visa,” says Dean Andrew Ainslie in a 2018 interview with P&Q. “A company doesn’t have the massive expensive of a lawyer and paperwork…Right now, for any foreign student, it’s been something of a scary moment. Quite a few companies have pulled back from offering foreign students jobs. This will open a lot more doors for our students.”
This change also represents a major win for Simon, which expects to draw more applications from the international student pool and gain greater credibility from recruiters seeking more tech-savvy and data-minded candidates. However, the STEM designation wasn’t the only wrinkle at Simon, whose curriculum is grounded in its patented FACT model (Frame, Analyze, and Communicate). This year, the program implemented a semester system to better coincide with recruiter schedules. It also rolled out an Integrated Student Experience (ISE), a customized development and coaching plan that unifies the academic, extracurricular, and social sides of the MBA experience. Such alterations simply strengthen an MBA program known for its intimate size, student-run consulting firm, and world-renowned pricing programming.
Still, the STEM designation is expected to be a game-changer, an innovation likely to be copied by peer schools in the coming years. “Everything has been oriented around what the recruiters need,” Ainslie adds. “Recruiters have been saying to us that it is very hard to find talent in the U.S. and very hard to employ foreign students because of the uncertainty around the H1b visa. This is a big win for both of us.”
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BUSINESS SCHOOLS TO WATCH IN 2018
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