MBA Makeovers: A Marketing Ploy or True Innovation?

“You’re always going to have students who want to transition from another industry which means, at the very least, the core curriculum has to be there,” Gardial says. “How it’s packaged, does it really have to be a year, can we make it more flexible for students? This is where some of the curricular innovation comes into play.”

Richard Lyons, dean of UC-Berkeley’s Haas Business School concurs. Haas recently underwent a curricular revision of its own and Dean Lyons has been speaking at various graduate business school forums about the changes.

“On some levels, one shouldn’t expect the changes to be radical. It would be bad for us to chase every fad to reinvent ourselves,” says the dean. “We are moving things around at the edges; but we’re not changing 50, 60, 70 percent, we’re changing 10, 20, and 30 percent.”

Most business schools deans agree with Lyons. As demonstrated by Wharton, many program makeovers are done to meet the needs of business–largely the companies that recruit MBAs–as it continuously evolves. Yet, MBA deans, program directors, faculty, and administrators recognize that it would be unwise to try to re-establish themselves based on every business-related issue that’s making news headlines.

REASSESSING THE FUNDAMENTALS.

Though most schools would agree that certain elements of the curriculum, namely the core, should remain intact, this doesn’t mean the core is exempt from the evolution of business. In 2008, Columbia Business School reassessed its core curriculum to put the relevancy of the fundamentals to the test. The end result was an updated “required core” (accounting, corporate finance, leadership, marketing, operations, statistics, and strategy), and a new “flexible core” with menu options in three categories: Organizations, Performance, and Markets.

With courses like Power and Influence, Performance Management, and Global Economic Environment, Columbia’s flex core is designed to supplement the required core while broadening its scope.

CURRICULAR CHANGES TO ADDRESS SYSTEMIC FAILURES IN BUSINESS.

For the most part, however, business schools seem to frame their curricular changes primarily to address systemic inadequacies in business. At Haas, for instance, the school’s recent overhaul addresses the concern that business schools have been breeding grounds for pompous and arrogant MBA graduates, a criticism that gained ground during the recent implosion of the financial markets.

“Here’s an example where business and society say: ‘Here’s a way you haven’t been delivering what we need. You’ve been delivering too much over-confidence and not enough humility.’ That’s a systemic problem,” says Dean Lyons.

To remedy the problem, the focal point of Haas’s curricular review was to produce a specific type of graduate; what they call an “innovative leader.” Sure, the term doesn’t scream “revolutionary,” but it forced the school to examine their internal culture and, in doing so, tackle a key systemic problem.

Haas’s response has been to inject every facet of its re-designed curriculum with a boost of four defining principles designed to help shape the mindset of its students as they progress throughout the program: question the status quo, confidence without attitude, students always, and beyond yourself.

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