DeansTalk - business management education

Paul Danos on Forbes about Tuck Unique MBA-Only

Tuck's Unique MBA-Only
(300 sec.) Dean Paul Danos explains what makes Tuck unique in the competitive world of B-schools.

2007-09-17

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"Dean of Tuck School Takes the Long View" -Wall Street Journal interview

Dean of Tuck School Takes the Long View, October 9, 2007, Wall Street Journal.

In His Fourth Term, Danos Puts Focus On Small Seminars.

The turnover rate for deans has been accelerating at many business schools, but Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, is clearly in no hurry to replace Paul Danos, the dean of its Tuck School of Business, the oldest graduate business school. This year, Dartmouth reappointed the 65-year-old Dr. Danos to a fourth four-year term, which will make him one of the longest-serving business-school deans. Ron Alsop interviewed him recently about his plans for Tuck, the value of faculty research, and the changing world of B-school deans. (free subscription paragraph)

To see the full article with the answers to the questions below you need to be a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal.

WSJ: What are your primary goals during your fourth term?

Dr. Danos: I am staying to see..

WSJ: How many additional professors will you need for the smaller classes and seminars?

WSJ: There has been much criticism of business schools for focusing on research with little direct relevance to the business world. Do you believe that's a fair complaint?

WSJ: From your perspective, how has the dean's job changed through the years?

WSJ: Many deans have told me they tire of all the fund-raising pressure. Has fund raising been a growing part of your job, and does it distract you from academic matters?

WSJ: More schools seem to be hiring business executives as deans these days. Do they face different challenges than academics like yourself?

WSJ: Would you consider staying for a fifth term, surpassing the 18-year tenure of one of your predecessors at Tuck? Or have you thought about retirement and life after Tuck?

The article finishes with:

"Many of these converstaions can be accessed at www.deanstalk.net, an international dean's blog."

M.B.A. Programs Pay Off for Women Seeking a Return to Wall Street- NYT focus on Tuck

New York Times article, October 5, 2007.

Also in the Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2007.

Efforts on Wall Street to re-engage women who are trying to return to the work force, many of whom left for family obligations, have started to yield results.      

During the last few years, some of the nation’s premier business schools began to address that demographic group with executive M.B.A. programs. Of those, perhaps the most encompassing is the annual program started last fall by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, with a curriculum that combined academics and career opportunities...

Paul Danos - making sense of the investment climate

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Earlier this month I sat down for a web video interview—stay tuned to this space for more on its launch—to make sense of the investment climate in light of the recent subprime mortgage crisis. The timing was significant. On the day we talked, the Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 400 points and central banks in the United States and Europe injected more than $150 billion into the financial system to keep it afloat. Here’s a partial transcript of our conversation:

Most of us thought of public markets as something that just is and always will be. Indeed, many of our financial and economic theories depend on public information about companies. But the recent wave of privatization—in part, a response to the current regulatory climate—may change how we perceive the balance between public and private. In this post-Sarbanes-Oxley era, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators examine corporations with greater scrutiny, shaping both how boards monitor management and how management monitors itself. The legal penalties for violating rules have also changed. The question is whether the pendulum has swung so far to the reporting and auditing side that the publicly-traded company is now at a disadvantage.

Until recently, it appeared as though private equity firms could take almost any company private, their cheap credit a viable alternative to the vast pools of investment traditionally opened through public financing. With public markets continuing to dominate the vast amount of investment worldwide, in the future we are likely to see a blend of public and private markets. This is a good thing. A healthy private equity section of the market keeps people focused on creativity, efficiency, and stockholder returns. It is good for CEOs to feel that pressure.

But like public markets, the death of the initial public offering is also greatly exaggerated.  Late ‘90s-era valuations, of course, are a thing of the past. But good companies—and good ideas—will always have buyers. This is true even when the IPO market isn’t strong, as is the case today. Major corporations have no shortage of cash on their balance sheets and will often acquire smaller competitors or those with complimentary technologies and products. One company’s growth strategy is another’s exit strategy.

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Three Keys to Success

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

To close out the series of excerpts from the upcoming book “Inside the Minds: Business School Management,” I thought I would leave my thoughts about the three central keys to success.

1. Put Students First

As the dean of a business school, the most important rule is to always put student welfare first, and always articulate your message as such.

In every strategic step and in the inevitable messages, correspondences, and speeches to students, alumni, and faculty, the dean should put matters in terms of student welfare and student learning experiences. We must always be surveying our students’ needs, and we must modify our programs along those lines. In the best of all worlds, the things you do to meet student needs will also be the things that get you good publicity, but student welfare must be the starting point. In order to build future businesspeople equipped to enter an ever-changing world, it is critical to constantly look at the big issues facing students.

2. Be a “Happy Warrior”

A dean must be enthusiastic and positive, always seeing the good in the whole system and articulating it. You cannot be a downtrodden cynic in this role. You must love the job, love the organization, and show you love it. After all, what could be more satisfying than educating the principled leaders of the future?

In order to achieve success it is necessary to be truly interested in the process of education. While it is true that many skills transfer over from other realms, the skills that make for a great teacher, a great researcher, or a great business person may not ensure success as a dean. Being a business school dean entails working with students, trustees, faculty, staff, alumni and many others, and it is necessary to be able to balance all of these interests at the same time.

3. Treat Faculty as Your Biggest Asset

The strongest force on campus is the gravitational pull between students and faculty. Students want to be guided by their faculty and they want to be respected by them as well – all other student motivations pale by comparisons.  Faculty expertise and teaching skills draw students to campuses more than any other factor, and faculty prestige is a major factor in a student’s school selection. The dean must understand how best to harness the faculty in order to achieve the most positive outcomes. Sometimes the most productive work is thought leadership that is fleshed out through research and then brought into the classroom; in other cases, it may be creating materials and curricula.  The key to deaning is ensuring student learning and the key to student learning is the proper utilization of faculty expertise.

The job of a business school dean is an interesting one with special constituencies and priorities.  In today’s changing world, the job entails grappling with unique challenges as our industry matures and evolves.  However, while the mechanics may vary from other industries, some of the most important ingredients for successful leadership are universal, like vision and attitude.  In this case, that means putting students first, being a happy warrior, and treating your faculty as your most important asset.   Those keys will put any dean on the right path.

Paul Danos (Tuck)- Adapting to Globalization

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Continuing the series of excerpts from the upcoming book “Inside the Minds: Business School Management,” here are some thoughts about one of the strongest forces affecting the business education industry today.

Just as business is becoming more global, so too is business education. From the competition for incoming students and top faculty to the career development of its graduates and the strength of its alumni network, a top school must operate on a global stage in order to be successful.

Ten years ago, the globalization of Tuck was one of my biggest professional challenges. Today, even though the curriculum, student body, and faculty are quite international, it is still an ongoing process to educate people around the world about how our school—the most intimate of the Ivy League—is in fact a major global player.

In the course of adapting our school to meet the challenges and realities of globalization, we found success in a number of specific programs and initiatives that increased our global presence:

• Exchange programs with non-U.S. business schools: We have fifteen such arrangements around the globe.
• Increase in non-U.S. students: Incoming classes at Tuck have gone from about 15 percent to 34 percent non-U.S. citizens in the last ten years.
• Increase in non-U.S. faculty: About 30 percent of our faculty are international.
• Partnerships with non-U.S. schools: We have pursued several partnerships in offering joint executive education programs with international schools.
• Global alumni network: Tuck has made a concerted effort to utilize alumni who work outside of the United States in recruiting and placement activities.
• International press outreach: We have used international trips and constant outreach to maintain good press relations worldwide.

We have been helped immensely in our globalization efforts by the Internet. Today, every prospective student in China, India, Brazil, and so on can gain access to a wide range of information about us, which was certainly not the case twenty years ago. Understanding how to use the electronic media to channel people to a school’s information is a crucial capability, especially for smaller schools.

I have been a dean for eleven years. Prior to this position, I was a senior associate dean at another fine school, and throughout that period the broad outline of the dean’s position has remained about the same. But much has changed in terms of demands on the dean’s time. The most significant change has been related to the explosion in the demand for business education as a result of the global expansion of capitalism. There are many big players outside the United States, and the entire world is converging on the same type of business education—whether it is a four-year undergraduate program, the full-time M.B.A. program such as ours, or the many variants of part-time M.B.A. programs. Faculty are also converging in terms of how they aspire to conduct their research and how they teach, but here resource constraints will force many new schools to accept a different model.

Years ago, it was possible to be a dean without ever having seen China, India, South America, Africa, or Europe. In the last fifteen years, however, deans regularly visit all corners of the world to learn about business cultures and deliver their school’s message. Faculty also are much more international today in terms of both personal background and academic research, and our students bring global experiences to our programs.

The increasingly international role of business schools necessitates that a dean have a stronger sense of communications. A dean cannot just sit and wait on campus for change to happen; he or she must create a compelling strategy, implement that strategy, and be the global spokesperson for the program. We have more support and more resources at our disposal than ever, but at the same time we are expected to cover the whole world.

Dean Danos - Generating Revenue

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Second in a series from the upcoming book titled “Inside the Minds: Business School Management,” here are some thoughts about one of the perennial challenges that business schools face.

American business schools typically do not operate for profit, and without the subsidies, gifts, and foundation grants they receive, the vast majority of schools would be losing money each year. In the case of private schools without government support, it is impossible for tuition to pay for the way we approach education. At Tuck, tuition covers less than 50 percent of our expenses, which means most of our revenue must come from non-tuition sources such as endowment earnings, annual giving, and profits from non-degree executive education programs.

An endowment is a savings account run by the central university into which endowment contributions from alumni and other donors are placed. For example, if someone donates $1 million into a scholarship fund, the money is placed into the endowment to be invested by specialists. If that money then earns a 10 percent return—in other words, $100,000—the school is able to spend a portion of the revenue according to specific rules. Most university policies limit that to about 5 percent of the capital balance (in our example, $50,000). Leading business schools have substantial endowments that help pay anywhere from 20 to 40 percent of the expenses. Giving large gifts to business schools has been, by and large, an American phenomenon, but endowments are growing at major non-U.S. schools.

When a business school needs more funding, there are three classic approaches: additional tuition, executive education programs, and fundraising.

Per-student tuition levels are dependent upon the market. In America, the leading full-time M.B.A. programs are mostly within $5,000 of one another, ranging typically from $35,000 to $40,000 per year. However, unlike private schools, state-supported schools do not always charge full market-based tuition; some charge as little as half to in-state students. A decade ago at Tuck, we saw a clear need to add ten new faculty positions in order to deliver the world-class business leadership education that has always been our mission. In large part, we funded this by adding sixty students to future incoming classes.

A second example of finding additional revenue is achieved by expanding non-degree programs such as executive education. At Tuck, we offer an array of short programs for executives; a number of non-degree programs for students, including a summer program that brings 200 to 300 college students here for a full month each summer; a series for minority entrepreneurs; and a course aimed at M.B.A.’s who have been out of the workforce for a period of time.

Finally, one of the largest sources of potential revenue growth comes from fundraising. Most buildings, professorships, and scholarships at leading schools are paid for by “capital” contributions, some of which are placed in endowments. Fundraising through annual giving and reunion giving is both an art form and a management challenge. Both activities require volunteers, callers, and extensive mailing lists—however, none of these efforts will be fruitful without goodwill and a tradition of giving. Before asking for money, a dean has to create and implement great programs for the students. Having the right strategy is the starting point. Fundraising itself depends on having good information about your constituency, and schools are often in the dark about their alumni because they have not kept in touch with them. As a result, they cannot expect to receive many significant gifts or a high percentage of participation.

It is critical to know your alumni and to ensure that they have a good memory of your school. In America, most people have some affection for their alma mater, and keeping in touch is an essential starting point for reinforcing that feeling of goodwill. We send out newsletters and magazines, we host events all over the world, we have clubs, and we hold reunions. We also directly involve alumni in advisory boards and in recruiting and placement activities. Perhaps most importantly, we make sure we continue to serve as a resource for our alumni throughout their entire lives, whether by bringing our faculty to them for lifelong learning courses or by maintaining a strong and responsive alumni network to help their professional development. All of these elements help foster a sense of family, and this virtuous circle of involvement and goodwill leads to financial support.

Many people believe deans spend the majority of their time on the road fundraising. However, I spend only about 30 percent of my time traveling, whether it is to connect with alumni, do corporate interfacing, or interact with donors. Most of a dean’s time should be spent ensuring that each student gets an outstanding learning experience. The support should be the byproduct of a school that functions well and is carried by its vision of student development.

Through a combination of expanded tuition revenue, new executive education programs, and fundraising, Tuck has doubled the size of the school in the last ten years—a necessary step in helping us achieve a better balance of faculty and students. Deans often justify school growth by citing a need to expand the faculty, and in our case we found the growth to be very positive. We used the majority of the money raised during our expansion to support new faculty and raise the level of research support, and we have been very successful in our results. If you believe a strong faculty is the major asset of the school, you must build strategies around creating and maintaining it. This means bringing them in, supporting them, and continually adding resources into the faculty stream. But, expanding student counts beyond a point can be detrimental to the student learning experience and can outgrow the other fundraising opportunities, for new graduates are many years from making large contributions.

Inside the Minds: Business School Management

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Recently a U.S. publisher asked me to contribute a chapter for an upcoming book titled “Inside the Minds: Business School Management,” which presents the thoughts of a dozen deans about current issues in the industry.  I thought some of what I wrote might be interesting to readers here at BizDeansTalk,  so over the coming weeks I will post a few excerpts here.  The first is about a dean’s reporting regime – in essence, where are you on the organizational chart?

The American system is such that virtually all business schools have an affiliation with a large academic center or university, just as Tuck has with Dartmouth. Most graduate business schools usually work under the umbrella of the mother institution but are generally rather independent operating organizations with significant budgetary responsibility. At Tuck, we have our own governance procedures for our faculty, and our faculty members have authority over the curriculum and courses.

In my position as dean, I report to the Dartmouth provost, president, and trustees—however, the operations and policies of the business school are quite independent. My position, therefore, is analogous to that of the chief executive officer of a wholly owned subsidiary of a major corporation.

Our major constraints are the class size and the number of degree programs offered; changes in these areas must undergo an approval process before major alterations can be made. For example, we would not have the authority to double the size of our class without the approval of the trustees, regardless of the dean’s or faculty’s views. However, we are given a great deal of leeway in other areas such as curriculum, student recruitment strategies, research programs, executive education offerings, alumni relations, and development.

The reporting regime determines how much independence a dean has, and it often controls the budgetary system and the all-important revenue and expense sharing formulas between the business school and college or university. The best general advice I can give is to be completely conversant with every aspect of the history and current states of such agreements. They are rarely cast in stone and are often open to negotiations.

Dean Danos - "The MBA is changing people's lives"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

"Amba Student Of The Year Award: Finalists show why 'the nerds don't win", The Independent News Channel, 26 November 2006, 21:56

The AMBA audience heard a forthright defence of the MBA against its various critics from Paul Danos, Dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, one of America's top schools. Criticism of the degree, he said, has become fashionable.

"A few years ago applications were down and critics said deficiencies in our programmes were the cause. Today, we know that their reports of our demise were grossly exaggerated."

According to Danos, the detractors said the research was irrelevant, that the material was outdated or that the MBA did not teach students to be managers. Some even said they weren't teaching management and lamented the influence of economic theories on management research.

In reply, Danos pointed out that at the top schools, full-time students were in their late twenties or early thirties, with a wealth of management experience already under their collective belts. Critics of research, he suggested, read too many popular books and not enough peer-reviewed papers.

"Business people know that research published in our top journals is very important. Our researchers deal with real data and real businesses, with very practical topics.

"At Tuck, the average student triples his salary and the average international student has a five-fold increase. So to say that there is no value to the MBA is factually wrong. Many of the critics are just making rhetorical points; just being provocative. The MBA is changing people's lives. I don't think the critics understand that."

B-School Diversity on Campus

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Santiago’s post on cultural diversity in Canadian schools, combined with the Diversity conference that our students at Tuck hosted this past weekend, has prompted me to think about the responsibility a business school has for fostering diversity on campus. I know that Santiago posted some thoughts on how business schools must create "cosmopolitan managers" last month, so here are some thoughts of my own:

There is no question that top schools must educate a student body that represents a diverse cross-section of races, citizenships, religions, and geographic regions. But for most schools today, a continued commitment to diversity isn’t just about doing what’s right. The truth is that it is also a business imperative: today’s business education just isn’t world-class if it does not include exposure to a diverse faculty and student body.

Much of the learning and growing that takes place happens through personal interaction, as each student gains new insights from the personal experiences and perspectives of classmates and professors. Without diverse experiences to draw from, they would simply be unprepared for today’s increasingly cross-cultural business environment.

For Tuck, this means that our curriculum must expose them to not just Boston, but also Beijing, Bangalore and Sao Paulo. And diversity is more than skin color and country of origin: they also must be challenged by those with varying professional experiences, from consultants and investment bankers to photographers and football players.

Of course, an administration can place an important emphasis on continuing to grow our diversity, but the work of our students and faculty is where the action really is. Conferences and student-run clubs like the Gay/Straight Alliance, Hispanic-American Student Association, and professional groups like the African American Business Association and the Asian Business Club play a vital role, and a school must provide the infrastructure necessary for them to succeed.

The truth is that every member of a b-school community has a unique background and perspective to share, and in large part students are here to expose each other to their own diverse experiences. Being in such a diverse population is one of the great joys of an academic experience and smart students make extracting every ounce of that endless pool of knowledge a major part everyday life.

On Mother Teresa

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

As dean of the Tuck School of Business part of my job is to make sure that we develop future business leaders. To do that needs a sense of what makes a good leader, and experience shows us that there is no single attribute common to all great leaders.

If I were to create the perfect leader, I’d blend a variety of qualities. I’d include the vision of Thomas Jefferson, the practical creativity of Steve Jobs, the mastery of knowledge of Alan Greenspan, the tenacity of Charles de Gaulle, the focus of Bill Gates, the inspirational abilities of Winston Churchill, the steadfastness of Pope John Paul II and the courage of Martin Luther King. And I’d assign one other quality as well, one that is often overlooked in discussions of leadership. The quality is selflessness, and you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who better personified it than Mother Teresa.

Starting with no money but inspired by divine providence, which, granted, not every business leader
...

For the full article you should visit the Financial Times website.

A Word on Backdating

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Here in the U.S., there has been a lot in the news lately about companies that quietly or secretly backdated executive stock options (timed so that the executives could realize ‘gains’ that had, in fact, already happened).  My expertise is not in stock options, but with a background in accounting and a responsibility for imparting strong ethics in future business leaders, here is my take:

First, some are quick to use this as a reason to condemn all stock options.  Frankly, this current back-dating problem doesn’t have anything to do with whether options are (or are not) a good tool for motivating executives.  I’m not particularly high on using options because the actual returns on options can come in very spotty ways;  sometimes you go years without any value and sometimes you get a big windfall.  I think restrictive stock is much better. And now that options must be expensed as compensation, the entire practice is being used less.

But the issue is a useful example of the ways that business education can prepare students for future, yet-to-be-invented questionable practices. 

The root of the problem with backdating is the lack transparency about the transactions.  Some of the backdating may very well have been criminal, but most would have been proper if they had been completely revealed to shareholders in broad daylight at the time.

Five or ten years ago, not many of us would have predicted that backdating would become a problem.  But if you start out saying the basic rule in dealing with stockholders is to be completely transparent about compensation, then most potential problems are solved.  I think transparency is the thing you have to teach the students; that basically you must be as transparent as possible in every way when it comes to accounting and finance matters.  To the extent that you aren’t, you may be accused of trying to deceive.  This does not deny that there are many complexities in today’s compensation procedures and we must also make all readers of financial statements aware of the complexity.  Transparency is the antidote to misunderstandings.

Deans Talking (in Cologne, Sao Paulo, and Paris)

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Over the past year and a half, we hosted a series of three roundtable discussions in Cologne, Germany; Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Paris, France with other business school deans from China, Europe, Latin America and the US.  We recently completed synopses of each transcript, and have posted them here:

Summary

Germany (pdf)

Brazil (pdf)

Paris (pdf)

From the discussions one can see that globalization is changing business education just as surely as it has changed international business.  These roundtables have been a valuable tool for comparing regional business school models and ensuring that our MBA programs reflect the realities of the modern marketplace.

Qualities needed for Leadership

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

This morning I submitted a piece to QS’s “Top MBA Career Guide” about how a good business school can help students develop not just leadership skills, but also the moral dimension of leadership. In case you are interested, here it is:

------------

Each year, a group of Tuck students travels to rural Omaha, Nebraska to share a meal and conversation with Warren Buffet, one of the most successful investors in history. Next year they will have a chance to talk with him not just about his financial success, but also about the personal success he achieved recently by donating a staggering 85% of his wealth to charity.

Buffet’s decision highlights the unique way that Tuck defines leadership: it is not just about financial or career milestones, but rather it is “the ability to inspire others to strive and enable them to accomplish great things.”

To achieve part of that definition, today’s business leader needs an arsenal of intellectual assets in order to be effective. A good MBA program gives the essential foundations by means of:

• the learning from faculty and fellow students in courses,
• the honing of analytical and communications skills,
• and the exposure to the practice of management in projects, internships and visits of executives.

Most MBA programs are very good at providing these essentials, but in the evolution of a leader these basics are far from sufficient. To achieve the full definition of leadership, much more is needed, and each individual must dig deep within to develop some key personal attributes that fill out the list of leadership requirements. These include:

1. A giving spirit — leadership is about helping others achieve great things and that means giving of oneself through mentoring, teaching, introducing, and incenting so that others can lead.
2. A balanced perspective — a true leader must take his or her organization beyond the goals of any one business and toward making a contribution to society. 
3. Self-awareness — leaders will only develop fully if they are aware of their effects on others.
4. A moral compass — leaders must demonstrate a heightened sense of right and wrong.

Can an MBA program play a part in this very personal part of leadership development? We believe that the answer is yes, and we have designed several experiences that do just that.

First, Tuck is designed around care for the individual. That is why we choose to limit our scale and to emphasize teamwork. Class size is limited at approximately 240 students, and students spend virtually all of their time – particularly in their first year – working in small, six-person study groups. Within one year, almost every student knows every other student in his or her class.

MYTHS IN “THE MANAGEMENT MYTH”

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

In the June edition of Atlantic Monthly, a lengthy article claims that “Most of management theory is inane . . .  If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead.”  I wrote a letter to the editor in response (below) and posted it on the magazine’s online forum.  But since only magazine subscribers can post on their forum, I thought people may want to read my letter or offer their own thoughts here.

Letter to the Editor:

I am writing to offer a correction and a clarification to “The Management Myth,” by Matthew Stewart in your June edition. 

First, a correction:  The article states that in 1908, Harvard “opened the first graduate school in the country to offer a master’s degree in business.”  Actually, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth was founded eight years earlier, in 1900, as the country’s first graduate school of management. 

More importantly, a clarification:  In “The Management Myth,” Mr. Stewart himself fell for a myth about the modern MBA: that it can be equated to a survey of today’s popular press best sellers.

Frankly, there is a strong element of truth to the author’s central thesis, which is that Rousseau and Shakespeare offer a better grounding for business management than a library of the gurus’ tomes.  Many of our best students here at Tuck come to us with a broad liberal arts education.  Successful business leaders are as likely to have undergraduate degrees in poetry or fine arts as finance or economics.

But it is not accurate to equate the popular management best sellers with an MBA – those books can be important but they are only a small sliver of a true business education.  An MBA from a top business school gives you a solid foundation in quantitative fields like accounting and finance, it gives you the terminology, the underlying theories, the best practices, and it allows you to expand your understanding of how that all works in actual business settings. It also explores the “soft skills” that are so important – interpersonal, ethics, leadership and communications.  If Mr. Stewart is interested in sampling the full spectrum of a modern MBA, we’d love to have him up here at Tuck and do our best to kill some myths together.

Sincerely,

Paul Danos
Dean, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
Hanover, New Hampshire.

Tags(clickable): Atlantic Monthly

Interview with Peru's Semana Economica

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

This week, I was interviewed by one of Peru’s top economics and business magazines, for a special edition about executive education in Peru.  I thought I’d share two questions and answers here on our blog – one specifically about executive education, and another about how executives can reach across cultural barriers in dealing with Americans (and since the publication is in Spanish, I’ve included the original and an Engligh version as well).  For more from the interview, visit their site here: Semana Economica.

1) “How does a successful, well-rounded, mid-career executive identify the areas he needs to reinforce in order to make the jump to a major leadership position?

In order to be a leader one must really know best practices.  I have found that too little time is spent on searching out and understanding how the best of the competition do their jobs.   If a person has the basic education and the requisite experience, I would put benchmarking as a very high priority.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Surveying the best and then making it better in the local environment is a great strategy.  Executive education from the best faculties is a shortcut to good benchmarking, because the faculty spends most of their time studying world best practices and they are expert teachers. 

2) In the context of increasing Inter-American economic integration (Peru will probably sign a Free Trade Agreement with the US in a few months), how can a Latin American executive best prepare to conduct business in the United States? What key characteristics will he have to understand about his American partner or counterpart?

I would say that the best approach to partnering is complete transparency on both sides.  People from all cultures want to partner with people who are trustworthy.  It is not nearly as important to be viewed as the strongest or the most knowledgeable as the one who is the most sincere and most willing to learn.  Americans often say that they want to “size up” the people on the other side of the table, and what they mean is that they want to make a personal evaluation of their character.  I am sure that Peruvians feel the same, and so the best way to proceed is toward openness and honesty on both sides of the table. 

1) ¿Cómo puede un ejecutivo exitoso y a mitad de carrera identificar las áreas que debe reforzar para dar el salto al siguiente nivel de liderazgo?

Para ser un buen líder hay que conocer las mejores prácticas. Me he dado cuenta de que, en realidad, se invierte poco tiempo en buscar y comprender cómo es que los competidores más exitosos del negocio hacen su trabajo...

Going Global

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

In an article by Ilan Alon and Craig McAllaster in the May/June issue of Biz Ed titled, “The Global Footprint,” the authors identified the six things that business schools have to do in terms of their globalization strategy.

One point I think is important to remember (at least this is true for Tuck) is that the career placement activity for graduate business schools has become almost exclusively a global effort. Virtually all of the companies that hire our students are dealing in the global marketplace in one way or another. Companies are often identified with the U.S. or Western Europe, but in essence if you look at where their sales are and where their operations are, they are truly global companies. They are the companies who are leading the charge in terms of globalization in financial services, strategic consulting, distribution, technology, etc. They’re the companies that hire our domestic students and our students from outside the U.S., which is a very significant slice of our total population. They’re hiring our students for assignments all over the world.

When we say that our non-U.S. students do as well in the placement market as do the Americans it’s because these companies are seeing their needs in a global way. They don’t look at an MBA graduate as an American, or as an Indian, or an Asian. They look at each as a person who can fill a valuable role somewhere in their worldwide operations.

At a school like Tuck we are now seeing global career placement because companies themselves have become much more global.

Another important point to consider is that the return on investment for the full-time MBA at a top school is very high and I believe it is much higher for non-US students where the increase pre- and post-MBA is much greater. Additionally, a very important aspect of the full-time program is the opportunity it affords for a complete change in one’s career – with many students going from teacher to marketer, or from engineer to banker. Such reorientations are very common and very valuable for many MBA students.

Tags(clickable): BizEd, AACSB

Roundtable on Business Education in Brazil

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

For the second in a series of roundtables on the future of business management education, a group of business education leaders and journalists from the U.S. and Brazil recently came together to discuss the situation in Brazil. This is the summary of that session, The Nature of the MBA Program in Brazil, (also avaible in this post just below using the "Continue reading.. " link) along with the previous roundtable discussion—The Future of Management Education in Germany.

Some of the findings show that while both countries have many new MBA programs, in Brazil, most of the new programs are part-time and are offered by independent business schools that are not closely affiliated with universities. Also, the prediction for the growth of faculties is that in Germany schools seek to build a research culture akin to that in the U.S. while the Brazilian faculties are expected to be mostly part-time, with less emphasis on academic and refereed research.

The most recent roundtable discussion on the Future of Management Education in Europe was just held in Paris on April 23. The transcript of that conversation will be available soon.

Physic and Monetary ROI and the Demand for MBAs.

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

More than ever, prospective students understand the value of an MBA degree and that is driving up applications.  In addition, the growing needs of global businesses for well-trained managers who can grow into leaders are creating more demand for MBA graduates. 

Last year was a turnaround year at many top schools in terms of placement. We saw a peak in the job market in 2000-2001, and we were not expecting the demand to return to that level so fast.  Last year Tuck's placement statistics actually exceeded those of the peak year, so that compensation for the class of 2005 was at all time highs.

This year employment statistics will continue to increase-with virtually all first-year students getting paid summer internships and a high percentage of our graduating students with job offers upon graduation.

Like most schools, last year our application numbers were up for the first time in three years. This year our applications are up significantly and I think most other top schools are seeing strong increases in the quality and quantity of students applying.   For Tuck this is the largest increase in applications we've seen in modern times, with applications from outside of the USA leading the way.

The monetary return on investment (ROI) of top quality MBA programs is unquestionably very high, but most programs have positive returns.  A study of monetary returns published in the January/February 2005 issue of the AACSB's BizEd magazine titled, "The ROI on the MBA," concluded that there are substantial long term benefits to graduates with an MBA. The authors (Antony Davies and Thomas W. Cline) found that, "over the past decade, an MBA's average ROI has been three times the return on Treasury Bills, ten percent better than triple-A bonds, and four percent greater than the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)." 

Of course, there is a lot more to career success than compensation.  The full-time MBA also gives experienced professionals the opportunity to change their careers and to enter the global market place for management talent.  Therefore, as both the monetary ROI and the psychic ROI become better understood the demand for top-notch MBA programs should continue to grow.

Number of full-time research professors on decline

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

A recent Associated Press article (Faculty Shortage Explosion in number of schools has put those with a doctorate in high demand, By LISA CORNWELL, March 28, 2006 ) commented that business schools are now competing for faculty. That certainly is an understatement because this competition among schools is not a new phenomenon. We’ve always competed for the best faculty, as we’ve always competed for the best students. The big change that has taken place of late is the magnitude and the scope of the competition. The explosion of business schools all over the world has created a bigger demand for faculty than ever, and it has created a change in the basic structure of many MBA faculties.

Most of the new programs across the globe are part-time programs taught in the evenings and on weekends and much of the teaching in those programs is being done by neither full-time faculty nor tenure-track faculty in the classic mode. 

The question that arises is whether the Ph.D., that is, research training, is going to be important as a requirement in the faculty of these new MBA programs? Is traditional academic research going to be a major part of the MBA world going forward? It certainly will be at a school like Tuck and the other long-established programs that have had research as a basic tenet of their faculty structure for many decades, a research culture that is based on refereed journal publications.  This kind of research has been the means whereby many professors attained knowledge of best practices with that knowledge being transmitted to students in the classroom. That is the ideal for many schools but it is a very expensive one.

One thing is apparent to me: the proportion of all MBA teaching that is delivered by full-time research professors is on the decline. I don’t see how that will change unless the Ph.D. programs of the world grow substantially and/or the culture of many of the emerging schools turn in the direction of requiring a research oriented faculty.  On the other hand, I also see that the ideal of the researcher-teacher is still one much admired and respected and that many schools would want to support more research if they could afford it.  Perhaps as economies develop, more resources will be devoted to the training and support for research scholars who are also dedicated teachers.

Tags(clickable): Education, MBA, Business School

Some thoughts on Diversity in MBA Programs.

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

The word "diversity" in higher education in the US usually refers to ethnic diversity. In recent years, there have been many efforts to make schools more ethnically diverse, with very positive results. More students than ever before are coming from underrepresented segments of the population and are attending top schools. Of course business schools attempt to be diverse in other ways, with gender and geographical representation being high priorities. Non-US citizens have grown on average to about one third of most intakes in top US MBA programs and percentages of women average about thirty percent.

I believe that action to foster diversity in business programs are based on two primary groups of ideas, one related to fairness, i.e., non-discrimination, and the other to quality of the student experience, i.e., students learn more useful things when their peers are diverse. The fairness argument has been widely embraced by higher education and is part of the general consensus. The quality argument is heard more and more and is practiced in many business schools and it goes as follows: students will work in a multi-cultural and diverse business world and therefore they should work with and learn from diverse people in school. An analogous case is heard for giving our students a global educational experience starting with a student body that is multi-national and with a curriculum that emphasizes the world’s best practices. In my opinion, both of these quality enhancing assertions for diversity are widely accepted.

Tags(clickable): Education, MBA, Business School

Why the Two-year Program is Here to Stay

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

As we all know the two-year MBA program is only one of a multitude of choices for those pursuing graduate work in business. It is particularly good for those with little formal business education as it gives an academic year of basics, an internship, and an academic year of electives. I have found that the students in these programs really appreciate taking electives where researchers present cutting-edge knowledge. It is satisfying for the students and for the faculty. As a matter of fact most of our students at Tuck lament not being able to take more electives.

One of the reasons why the MBA degree is so pervasive today and growing in so many parts of the world is that it gives relatively young people the ability to change careers and to substantially upgrade their prospects and trajectory. For some that can be done with a one-year program or a part-time program, but for others the two-year program is ideal. Those with undergraduate business degrees in some cases could get all they need in a shorter program, but those with technical, engineering or purely liberal arts backgrounds often require a longer experience. I have known many undergraduate business majors who want a two-year program because they missed out on the intense leadership and teamwork aspects of the best two-year MBA programs. One thing I am certain of is that there will be a mix of offerings as features of the business education landscape for a long-time to come.

Tags(clickable): Education, MBA, Business School

Educating Global Business Leaders—From the discrete to the continuous.

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

The top MBA programs are part of a global business leadership development process that encompasses a vast number of players in schools and business and non-business organizations. We take enormously talented and highly educated people, who are already in the midst of a career, and give them enhanced options and new trajectories on the leadership track. And in today’s market, more and more, our graduates work for organizations with global perspectives, no longer with regional or even national outlooks. It is also apparent that the learning of leadership is a journey without an end.

Tags(clickable): Leadership, Education, MBA, Business School

Is Corporate Responsibility Governed by an “Invisible Hand?”

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Dean Iniguez introduces the very important subject of corporate responsibility in his recent entry. I would like to touch on the relationship between the “right” individual actions and the “right” corporation actions; and how we as educators of principled leaders should approach the coverage of this in our programs.

Some see a simple rule—just do the “right” thing as an individual. In my view that is necessary but not sufficient, because I do not believe that there is an “invisible hand” that adds up all the “right” individual-level decisions and ensures “good” corporate outcomes. Leaders of corporations must be knowledgeable about the complexities of their organizations, and how all the pieces fit internally and affect society, if they are to ensure that the corporation is making ethical decisions in the overall sense.

Business schools therefore must make students sensitive to the consequences of decisions—not only of personal decisions, but also in terms of the awesome responsibility of making the complex systems of interactions (which is the modern business) work to the advantage of all of the business’s constituents.

I am not against emphasizing personal morals in business contexts. I believe that adhering to a personal code of conduct is essential for any leader. In addition, students often must see business decisions in personal terms in order to be fully engaged in the learning process. But a sophisticated understanding of business procedures, processes, theories, practices, the regulatory structure, the investment regimes, the industrial organization, and a myriad of other contexts are crucial before a leader can be truly principled in his/her decisions, because even a personally ethical, but not fully informed, individual can make decisions that do unintended harm.

Tags(clickable): CSR,  Corporate Social Responsibility, Morals, business school, management education

Rankings | - "Keeping Things in Proportion"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

I was talking to John Fernandez who heads up the AACSB recently, and he said that he estimates that there are over 8,000 "business schools" worldwide of which perhaps about six or seven hundred are accredited by major accreditation groups.  The popular rankings concentrate on, at most, the top one  hundred schools, or less than 2% of all the schools.  It is obvious therefore that the vast majority of business school students in the world have little  comparative and independent evaluations of their schools, certainly far less than is readily available for those that are ranked.  When looked at in this perspective, the current system gives a great deal of information for a small percentage  of schools with neither accreditations nor the rankings having much to say about the vast majority of schools. 

The top business schools will continue to command attention from the press and from accreditation agencies, but the massive and growing numbers of  other schools will command attention too and their sheer numbers will make  them more and more important in the future.

Rankings | - "Some thoughts"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Two true statements one can make about business school rankings-they are controversial and they are important. Many educational leaders criticize the rankings because of the cost of participating, the potential for privacy breeches, and the forcing of differences among top MBA programs where hardly any significant differences exist.

It is difficult to deny that applicants are to some extent swayed by the rankings. If the sales of ranking publications is any indicator, the public's appetite for rankings and summary evaluations will not lessen in the future, and therefore I would like to see how we can make them better and more useful.

Tags(clickable): mba, MBA rankings, education, business school, management education

Tuck trip to Peru, Chile and Brazil...thoughts

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

During a recent trip to Latin American, I moderated a roundtable on the future of management education in Brazil.  When the transcript is done, we will post it on this blog, as we did with our roundtable on the future of management education in Germany. 

I came away with some general impressions and initial contrasts with the situation in Germany.  First, whereas Germany has created many new MBA programs in the last few years, most of which are full-time and often extensions of their first degrees, new programs in Brazil and Latin America in general are part-time and many are long-established. 

I found that the topics covered in both German and Brazilian business schools are converging to a more or less worldwide norm with best practices coming through in text books and cases that are common across many countries.

In Brazil with regard ...

Tags(clickable): mba,  dartmouth, paul danos, tuck, education, business school, management education

Research, Biz Ed | - "Thoughts on the Improvement of Teaching Quality in Research-Oriented Schools"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

There are two endpoints in our academic efforts— 1) student learning and 2) new knowledge creation. There are tremendous debates about the connections between these two in business schools and the results of those debates will determine how business schools evolve.

Do we do enough in our PhD programs or with our faculties to help our professors develop the skills they need to be outstanding teachers? We certainly help in the development of their expertise through research support and encouragement, and that is essential, but the teaching skills part in underdeveloped for many of the professors who need it the most.

The interesting thing is that some professors don’t need much support for teaching because they are "naturals," who from the start are stars in the classroom. But some professors are not as naturally gifted and they could get to be much better teachers with the right resources and support. A major point is that teaching skills development should not come at the cost of reduced research support, because in my opinion the highest standard of teaching is when the substantive expert melds with the teaching expert. One good thing is that because the base expenditure on improving teaching skills is usually so low, doubling it would not be a significant percentage of a school’s budget, and it could do a lot of good in terms of student learning.

Tags(clickable): Paul Danos,  Tuck, PhD, teaching

Leadership | - "Views on Teaching Leadership"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Deans Iniguez, Gupta, and Peters all have very interesting things to say about leadership development and I agree with most of their observations.   

It is my opinion that the coverage of leadership in business schools is perfectly reasonable and that it is a good thing that so many schools are experimenting with it.

Business education is so dynamic because our schools respond to the needs of our students, and in this era our students need to be stretched to improve and accelerate the development of their leadership skills. Research is helping us to sort out effective approaches. Of course corporations have tried many techniques and we learn from their experiences as well.

Research | - "How should we train our PhDs?"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

In response to Dean Ininguez's entry on PhD programs, I agree wholeheartedly that professors must be skilled and dedicated teachers in addition to striving to push back the frontiers of knowledge in their fields.  One very complicated factor I have seen at many schools is the question of whether each and every faculty should be committed to dual excellence or should some specialize in teaching and others specialize in research?

Because top researchers are so rare and expensive to support, I would say that some may not be particularly devoted to MBA teaching but the majority who do teach MBA or other professional courses should be both excellent researchers and excellent teachers.  Most  of the top PhD programs do a small amount in the way of training teachers, primarily by  giving opportunities to teach a course or two or by being a teaching assistant, but they spend the vast majority of the program doing a fabulous job of training researchers. 

We should probably have a post-doctoral period where young PhD graduates could both hone their research skills and also really dig into both the theory and practice of good teaching.  The current system, is primarily "on-the-job" training where the  pressures and the stakes are very high.  This is probably not best for student learning. 

We need to also look at the other side of the imbalance, which is perhaps even more important.  There are so many non-researchers who teach a high percentage of the courses in some business schools and ideally they should get more training in interpreting high-quality research.  As I have said in other entries in this blog, the best teaching in MBA programs is done by those who are both cutting edge thought leaders and dedicated teachers.  In a world where perhaps as many as 30-40% or more of some programs are being taught by non-PhD's who do do necessarily follow the latest research findings, perhaps a concerted effort is needed to make them conversant with leading edge thinking.  Of course, they along with their PhD colleagues are not necessarily trained in good pedagogy. 

Bologna Process | - "More on the Bologna Accord"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

After participating in a panel discussion earlier this year on how the German business programs might respond to the Bologna Accord (see “Roundtable on future of business education in Germany” in this blog), I came away with the impression that the process would lead to a standard structure option for the first two degrees in business at most universities. I think that this opportunity for structural consistency has many advantages and should be supported.

I also came away with two major concerns: potentially rigid accreditation standards and a lack of response to market demands.

I often consult with new business schools around the world and usually suggest that they consider being innovative and adapting to local needs in the design of their curriculum. Some international accreditation bodies have adopted a “missions based” approach that emphasizes being consistent with a school’s own goals, as opposed to filling pre-established criteria. Thus, a school could be accredited as readily with very a unique curricula approach as with one lifted from a long-established school. Accreditation processes in all parts of the world should evolve in the direction of flexibility and away from rigidity.

Some very successful European business schools certainly understand this and are quite responsive to the needs of industry in the graduates they hire. On the other hand, some members of the Roundtable were concerned that the Bologna process smacks too much of a “push down” from government and less of a “bubbling up” from the markets. A guiding principle for professional schools should be that students need to be prepared for professional life and responsiveness to employers is very important.

Of course our academic programs, while affected by structure, accreditation standards and the influence of practice, are aimed at giving high quality educational experiences. Quality of this sort depends on, among other factors, student qualifications, faculty expertise in research and teaching, curricula relevance and innovations, adequacy of facilities and underlying all of these, overall funding. The Bologna process, as important as it is, does not directly address the fundamental issues of adequate funding of business education, assuring access to all who need it and the shortage of qualified professors.

Current-Affairs | - "Update on Katrina relief efforts"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Earlier this month I wrote about Hurricane Katrina and the responsibility we share as leaders in the business community to teach and encourage corporate and personal social responsibility. I mentioned that our first-year students, in one of their first acts as a class, rallied together to raise funds for victims of Katrina and issued a challenge to the second-year students to match their goal of $2,500 or more. Today, just three weeks after my post, I am proud to share with you the results of this challenge. Both classes, far surpassed their goal, and with matching donations offered by our alumni, the combined amount raised to support Hurricane Katrina victims has reached $100,000.

The Tuck student body contributed to this effort, and donations also came in from faculty, staff, alumni, and corporations and four separate alumni each matched the total funds raised by each class.

Seeing the community come together on such short notice to respond to disaster on the opposite end of our country has been very moving to me, especially as a native of New Orleans. I have seen in practice many times that the Tuck community extends far beyond the borders of New Hampshire. Our community, our family, extends throughout the United States and abroad.

When one of our eldest alumni, who lives in the Hanover area, heard of our first-year's fundraising efforts by reading the local paper, he made a point to come by Tuck in person to drop off a check. People like this inspire me, and constantly remind me that fortune can turn to misfortune in the blink of an eye and that we rely on our neighbors and should be conscientious of our actions or inactions, as one day we may have to rely on them as they have on us.

When students arrived on campus at universities in Louisiana late last month, the last thing they expected was an immediate evacuation and then to have that extended from a week or two to four months or more. In the aftermath of Katrina, business schools and colleges have opened their doors. At Tuck, we now have two students from Tulane University in our second-year courses. We welcome them to our community and will work to do everything we can to make their work here productive.

Research | - "Comments at Academy of Management Conference, Hawaii"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

I had the opportunity to be on a panel at the Academy of Management conference in Hawaii last August where much of the discussion revolved around the value of academic research in a management program. Here are some of the thoughts I tried to express in that session:

When I look at the central question of value of research in a business school setting, my belief is that the understanding of business processes, best practices, theories, and methods will all grow in importance. In general, business professors who are leading researchers know, as well as anyone, best practices, and the efficacy of those practices. They have the advantage of studying a cross-section of companies and therefore they can generalize their findings beyond the single company or industry; and their research success depends on rigorous review of their work.

In the debate about the value of academic business research, one central question must be considered: What process is best at developing and teaching knowledge of business to our students? I believe that the research process, as practiced in top business schools, offers the best approach to giving students a forward looking and relatively accurate picture of the world in which they will work.

Some people criticize professors for a lack of understanding of general management processes and here the appeal is usually to a lack of “real business” experience for faculty and for students. I agree that some of what is important to an MBA student can be best taught experientially. For instance, areas like teamwork, leadership, ethics, and negotiations require some hands-on work, but even in those cases, research can and should inform the coverage.

Most of the material in the elective courses taught at Tuck is based on our faculty's expertise derived from their research, and I know the same is true for many other schools. These electives are very highly rated by students for relevance and effectiveness.

On balance, I believe in rigorous research as a way of unfolding knowledge of important business processes. I understand that different fields have different challenges in making progress and therefore are at different points in their development. Top researchers in business schools know a great deal about what can and cannot be legitimately said about those processes, and for the most part they work on important topics and are quite honest about what they know.

In general, there is much to admire in the schools with good MBA programs-innovation and response to markets, coverage of leadership, ethics, teamwork, entrepreneurship, technology, community action, communications, teaching quality, career development, and alumni services. In addition, business schools have found ways to support good research and professors have found ways to have that research become part of the learning process. In general, I know of no professional programs that have done more.

Current-Affairs | - "Message to the Tuck Community"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

MBA students must be involved in addressing societal challenges. In a world where the private sector is of growing importance and where the private sector controls so much of the wealth of most countries, business leaders cannot ignore the communities in which they work. Each person must decide how he or she will respond to the world's problems, be it an epidemic such as AIDS, a tsunami, or the destruction left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Being a native of New Orleans and having many relatives there, I have a special connection to this particular disaster. Growing up, I always heard of the dangers of living in a place that was surrounded by water, below sea level, and continuously dependent on pumps for drainage. It was said that a "perfect" storm from a certain direction and of a certain intensity would be devastating. It seems that now such a storm, Katrina, has taken a dreadful toll on many people and on a wonderful culture that played such an important part in so many lives. Many now say that the old city and the culture will never fully recover.

Certainly, our MBA students, who will some day be leaders in the world's great businesses, must view their sphere of responsibility to include the welfare of others in society. At Tuck we often discuss the relationship between business issues and societal issues. Students work directly on long-term solutions through projects and voluntary work. We encourage our students and the entire community to be involved in crises that demand immediate attention, and particularly in this case of the Gulf Coast devastation, to contribute to organizations like the Red Cross, Americares. Our goal is to expose students to business leadership in its broadest meaning, and to contribute to the immediate alleviation of human suffering and despair is a big part of that. I want to let you all know that Tuck will arrange for a limited number of special exchange students from the affected universities to be admitted to the second year of the MBA program.

I am gratified that our first-year students in their first week on campus are mounting a fundraiser for their class and challenging the T'06s to match their goal of $2500 or more. Jim Allwin has pledged to match the students' contributions and I want to encourage everyone in our community to join in. This is going to be a long and arduous road for the people in the disaster zone and I commend our students for taking this initiative.

Diary | - "Roundtable on future of business education in Germany"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

The idea of a series of roundtable discussions in important regions of the world, which would include leaders of business education, came out of the enormous growth and changes I  have witnessed in this industry over the last five years.

Germany is a particularly dynamic setting and a good example of the burst of innovation and change throughout Europe created by the Bologna Accord. This summary of our discussion delves into the German situation. We plan to host future roundtables in other key regions in the coming years.

Research | - "Are the Perspectives of Academic Researchers too Narrow?"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Both Della Bradshaw and Kai Peters are rightly concerned with the relevance to students of different kinds of research. Do faculty who publish at the refereed journal level have the perspectives on their topics that would lead to their teaching being special? Or more broadly, what process is best one to develop and teach the knowledge our students need? I believe that the research process as practiced in top business schools offers the best chance of giving students a forward looking and relatively accurate picture of the world in which they will work. Sometimes we assume that our academic researchers are narrowly focused and that non-researcher teachers give a broader perspective, but I believe that it can be just the opposite. The top researchers give generalizations based on sampling of populations and/or very general principles. So, for instance, when they generalize about the effects of promotions on subsequent sales, they are not talking about one company or one person's experiences but about the class of companies under study. In a sense, they can be broader in their perspective and they are not limited by their own personal experiences. Of course, the “scientific research” approach to management studies does not always work well, and there are many great teachers who do not actively engage in that process. However, I believe that the practice at most high-quality schools to reward great teaching done by great researchers is rational and justified. As business education expands to new populations, we must look at the costs associated with research and decide on adaptations needed to make solid and relevant research a part of the education of all business leaders.

Research | -"Business Schools' unique research capabilities"

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Dean Iñiguez asks about cutting edge research and the debate about how and where this fits into a business school setting, especially in light of the recent HBR article by Bennis and O'Toole.

I believe that business school researchers have special insights into best business practices and that they can therefore give students unique knowledge that non-researchers may miss. Of course, there are no absolutes here, and exceptions can be found in both directions.

The greatest researchers I have known are among the greatest teachers I have known, and because researchers are often generalizing across many observations, they bring a breath of knowledge that is hard to match. Many of the critics of current business school faculty seem to imply that these brilliant people are in some way engaging in frivolous research behavior and that their schools blindly support that behavior. On the contrary, I believe that for the most part business school research is serious and relevant, and most importantly it leads to truly exceptional learning experiences for students.

North American and European Models for Business Education

Paul Danos, Dean Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Business schools across the globe have considerable similarities in curriculum design and courses taught. One reason could be that global businesses call for strong common threads in how accounting, finance, marketing and the other business fields are covered, or that the course materials are produced in a global publishing regime that has few boundaries, or even that most professors have similar training and there is significant communication between professors in a field.

One of the big areas of difference across regions is in the sources of revenues. Top North American schools have significant annual gifts and endowment incomes and high tuitions. North American state-supported schools also get government subsidies, and they too have moved to higher tuitions. European schools have a few examples where revenue sources are similar to North American top schools, but most are largely state supported, with annual giving, endowment income and tuition currently making up a smaller percentage.

Another area of considerable difference is in faculty focus, where most top North American schools' professors aim their research at scholarly journals and they are rewarded for refereed publications. In other parts of the world, there seems to be more emphasis on publications that are accessible to a wider practitioner audience.

I don't believe that the North American faculty model will change much any time soon, though economic pressures seem to demand at many schools the adding of adjunct faculty who do not do as much primary research. I think that most of the growth in management education will come from outside of North America, and I predict that those schools will employ fewer PhD's and more adjuncts, primarily based on cost considerations but also to achieve what is believed to be a more practical set of offerings.

Interesting questions for future discussion are: “What is the relationship between cutting edge research and relevant courses?” “Will faculty prestige continue to be identified with refereed publications?”