Elite MBA Programs at Public Universities: How a Dozen Innovative Schools Are Redefining Business Education

Preface

Traditionally, business schools have prepared industry's mid-level management. Some of the best and the brightest individuals who attend highly touted prestigious universities ultimately become our country's next generation of business leaders. As such, business schools play an important part in supporting the country's economic development and long-term prosperity. The mainstay of these endeavors is the master's degree in business administration, or MBA. This acronym is probably one of the most recognizable today. Its cachet lies in the continued success of business schools in executing their charge to prepare managers and leaders for the workplace. We believe that it is important to understand why some business schools consistently contribute to the country's well-being in this manner and do it better than do their counterparts at other universities.

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We are a nation of raters. We rank everything—soft drinks, sports teams, students, and business schools. We do so, primarily, because we are competitive and individualistic. Simply put, we want to be number one. Every year, internationally acclaimed journals rank business schools based on the efficacy of their most recognizable program, the MBA. Some look at programs housed at U.S. universities (U.S. News & World Report and Business Week); others take an international perspective (The Financial Times). All fail to discriminate between programs housed at public versus private universities. Each relies on the same primary factor for determining their rankings—money. For instance, most ask: How much do graduates earn? A second set of criteria focuses on customer satisfaction. Business Week, for example, surveys alumni, corporate managers, and human resource executives to discern the degree to which programs prepare their graduates for employment. A third set focuses on a school's reputation among deans or recruiters. U.S. News & World Report surveys both groups, who may know a great deal or perhaps only a little about the schools they rate, on a variety of idiosyncratic criteria.

As a nation of raters, we sometimes forget how little we learn from rankings, which often are based, not on criteria that matter most to us as individuals, but on screening criteria that someone else has imposed. The problem with rankings of this type lies in the propensity of the ranker to lump all organizations into one group. In effect, U.S. News & World Reports draws its conclusions about which MBA programs and business schools are the best by placing all universities and programs in a large hopper of sorts and sifting them through various-sized screens to see who falls out and who rises to the top. In doing so, they ignore the very essence of programs that sets them apart—differentiating characteristics and institutional strengths (Cole, Barber, and Graubard, 1994).

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We contend that great graduate programs depend on more than how much full-time MBA graduates earn or the program's reputation. Indeed, they are more than the full-time MBA; the driving forces behind such programs and the colleges and universities that house them are really rooted in the faculty they employ, the research that gets conducted, the doctoral programs they offer, the way they deal with diversity, their interactions and partnerships with industry, their contributions to their local communities, and the strategic leadership that drives their creativity. Even though The Financial Times considers faculty credentials and productivity in its determination of MBA program rank, salary factors carry twice the weight of faculty qualifications in its considerations. For Business Week, factors other than faculty research productivity receive nine times the weight. For U.S. News & World Reports, reputational factors and applicants' previous records represent 65 percent of the total weight.

In addition, we firmly believe that programs housed at public universities function under certain constraints that do not befall those located at private institutions. Public universities carry a mandated fiduciary and social responsibility specific to the states in which they are located (Tierney, 1998). Private institutions, such as Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of Pennsylvania, may exercise similar charges as a matter of good practice, but not under the same restrictions. For instance, states expect programs at public universities to be affordable for state residents. Often, they cap tuition levels, thus restricting the revenue generated through tuition charges, yet fail to make up the financial shortfall that results. Harvard Business School, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania suffer much more limited constraints.

This public responsibility continues, despite the growing privatization of large public institutions. Public universities and their programs are still expected to respond to the social and economic needs of the state. Many large public business schools have retained their business research centers with the production of critical research data for the state in the face of reduced state funding. Georgia State's Economic Forecasting Center provides important urban, regional, and national economic data and insights. The business school at the University of Washington uses university resources to assist the development of small businesses in economically distressed communities through its Business and Economic Development Program. Although private institutions also engage in these types of activities, they have the luxury of limiting their exposure to the expenses incurred in such endeavors should they find them too costly. In the end, business schools at public universities must not only provide the best value for the dollar but also contribute to the economic and social vibrancy of the states they serve.

This book is about business schools but not about ranking them; it is about finding out what really makes them tick. And, it is not about all business schools. Rather, it is about that special breed of exceptional business schools that resides at public universities. We used the following guidelines in determining which schools to include. Each participant is an Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International-accredited, public, U.S. school of business with graduate programs that are highly visible. All schools have MBA programs that are ranked in the top fifty programs in the country. And finally, the twelve schools in the study were willing to participate.

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Our intent in writing this book is to help the general reader, prospective students and employers, and other business schools better understand the program quality and opportunities offered by public graduate business schools. We will not engage in evaluating individual schools, nor will we engage in critical commentary on the schools. Instead, the twelve case studies present stories of business school graduate education, not simply the limited view that journalists provide in their periodic lists of MBA program rankings. We anticipate that faculty and administrators from other schools will find this book helpful in making their own strategic choices about program and school direction. We believe that prospective students and future employers will gain insights as to what to look for as they choose schools to attend, in the first instance, and recruit employees, in the second. We also believe that alumni and friends of the study institutions will want to read about them.

Chapter 1 provides a general backdrop for the study. Chapter 2 provides various frameworks for analyzing the cases, and Chapter 3 details the common themes that we found across the cases. Chapters 4 through 15 present the individual case studies. Chapter 16 suggests strategies and recommendations for business schools and prospective students and employers.

About the Editors and Contributors

NATHAN BENNETT is the senior associate dean and a professor in the College of Management at Georgia Tech. His current research interests include multilevel modeling of organizational phenomena. Previous research has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Applied Psychology, and the Journal of Management. He is also actively involved in executive education programs both in the United States and abroad.

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TERRY C. BLUM has been the dean of the College of Management since summer 1999. She was named to the Tedd Munchak Chair in Entrepreneurship in 1996, making her the first woman at Georgia Tech to be awarded an endowed chair. She has researched and published extensively on topics related to innovation and technology transfer in behavioral health care. She serves on a National Institutes of Health study section, and is a co-investigator for research grants related to the study of organizational and entrepreneurial factors that mediate the transfer, adoption, and diffusion of innovation to for-profit and not-for-profit health treatment organizations.

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