During the 2010 Tsinghua Management Global Forum, three Deans from top business schools in the world, all members of the Tsinghua SEM Advisory Board, explored management education in the new century with Dean QIAN Yingyi of the School.

The panel discussion, hosted by SEM as the third session of the Global Forum, featured Jay O. Light, Former Dean of Harvard Business School, Garth Saloner, Dean of Stanford Graduate School of Business and David Schmittlein, John C Head III Dean of MIT Sloan School of Management, and Dean QIAN Yingyi of Tsinghua SEM.

From left ro right: Jay O. Light, QIAN Yingyi, Garth Saloner, David Schmittlein

Challenges in the New Century

Senior Associate Dean of Tsinghua SEM YANG Bin started the discussion with the first question: what are the challenges and opportunities for business schools in today’s world?

Dean David Schmittlein first responded that one imperative, among others, for today’s business schools, is to demonstrate its values to society. They should attain their social esteem by continuing efforts in knowledge creation, telling the truth about, for example, businesses’ contribution to society and modes of sustainable economic development. The schools should also see educating innovative leaders with positive impact to the world as part of their mission.

Dean Garth Saloner said, one thing distinctive about business schools is that they carry out researches for curiosity, not economic returns. Therefore, the first major challenge for them is to maintain a strong research culture. Further, they should also be able to deal with the pace of globalization, trying to equip students with resources and skills to perform management on a global scale. Management education should provide a “framework of thinking” that allows them to continue learning with all the changes going on, not simply management tools.

Dean Jay O. Light took a different perspective to tackle with the question. He thought current management education in different schools, especially MBA programs, has become “commoditized” and too similar to one another. Business schools should carve out a way of management education that only appeals to a certain group of students from a certain type of businesses.

Dean QIAN Yingyi then stressed the special difficulty for Chinese business schools. Leadership and innovation, according to him, should be of top priority in Chinese management education. However, the tradition in China is to emphasize the knowledge building part of education. Leadership and innovation is not sufficiently promoted, and even, in some circumstances, restricted. Considering the advantages innovative talents will bring to future society, business schools should devote themselves to create an atmosphere within which students are able to expand their imagination and make different attempts.

Media and students attended the panel discussion

Curriculum Reform

After the opening question, four Deans continued to talk about the curriculum reforms, especially MBA curriculum reforms, going on in each school.

Dean Jay O. Light explained the globalization strategy permeating the whole curriculum set in Harvard Business School, explained how group activities replaced large-size class projects and assisted students in their study. Dean Garth Saloner said that Sanford Graduate School of Business aims to provide an environment favorable to innovative thinking from students with or without business backgrounds, and to achieve this goal, three methods were adopted: to move higher-level courses before basic courses such as statistics to inspire students’ interest; to provide a menu from students with varied experience to customize their learning; and to promote global experience in the first year of all students. After that, Dean David Schmittlein further developed on Jay O. Light’s perspective about the stress of specialty in business schools, and explained the technological advantage of MIT Sloan School of Management before Dean QIAN Yingyi briefly reviewed the MBA curriculum reform at SEM.

Suggestions for SEM

After answering questions from the audience about the influence of the internet and the demands of ethical education for business schools, three guest Deans offered several suggestions to Dean QIAN Yingyi: to include in the faculty top level scholars from a variety of areas, to promote knowledge creation by telling the truth about what is needed in society, to contribute more by expanding the size of the faculty and students, and to reach out to more people by way of the internet.

“We want to make a difference in this world,” said Dean QIAN Yingyi, “and we are actually able to lead reforms now in China with all the close supports from top business schools. I know we are still far from HBS, Stanford GSB and MIT Sloan, but I feel lucky to receive their suggestions and keep track with their latest developments.”