Yale: Career Outcomes Hurt School’s Ranking

From Dean Edward “Ted” Snyder’s Webinar

“Part of the reason why the rankings don’t reflect it is because our career outcomes haven’t been up to par with many of our peers,” said Snyder. “There are some things we need to do. We need to increase our yield on the front end. We need to make sure we do the best job on the back end in terms of career outcomes. That means supporting our students, but also making sure they get themselves ready for the market. I could talk a long time on this front and I think we are going to see improvement in it. We’ve got a much stronger effort, much clearer expectations are being set.

DEAN SAYS HE WILL NOT CROSS A BOUNDARY TO GET A HIGHER RANKING

“However, there is a boundary that we won’t cross and we shouldn’t cross. We like the fact that we bring in students with extremely diverse interests, more diverse than any other school I’m aware of. So the front end mix includes people who don’t know what they want to do–students who are thinking about the education sector, the social sector, the entrepreneurial sector, and the for-profit sector. They are thinking about different regions of the world.

“For a small class,” he added, “this is incredibly interesting and exciting to me and everyone else. We could reduce the degree of difficulty on the back end by changing the front end but that is the line we don’t want to cross. So we will work on this but the message in the school is to understand the challenge we have and the degree of difficulty we have and take it on. This is the right approach.”

Starting compensation for graduating MBAs and placement generally has the greatest weight in rankings. Roughly 45% of the total weight across the five most influential rankings of business schools–U.S. News, Forbes, BusinessWeek, The Financial Times, and The Economist–reflect how well MBAs are paid and how quickly they land their post-MBA jobs (see MBA Rankings Largely ‘Follow the Money‘).

The toughest question Synder fielded today was from an anonymous alum who pointedly asked: “It’s my perception that there is both a notorious complacency and a clear lack of incentives to participate and excel in classes at the School of Management in both its students and professors. Do you plan to address these issues?”

MBA STUDENTS DON’T WORK AS HARD AS THEY USED TO

Snyder conceded that MBA students don’t work as hard as they once used to in MBA programs, but insisted that Yale was no different than its peer schools. “I con’t see any cross-sectional difference in Yale versus other schools,” Snyder said. “I’ve been at business schools since 1982 and I’ve been at many of the top business schools in the country. There has been a time series effect where business school students since sometime around 1990 have seen their lives get more complicated. We charge them more money. Their calendars have gotten more full and the challenges especially in terms of career exploration have gone up. Teaching has gotten better. The result is students don’t work as many hours outside of class. There is something going on, no question. It may sound like complaining but in my experience students on average used to work harder. But I do want to say I don’t see Yale as being an outlier. Having said that, I think we can do much better. I see an opportunity to tone things up.”

Snyder said he believed that as dean he could do three things:

“One, you set expectations of students. When i meet students i ask them to be leaders in the classroom. i ask them to be a leader in at least one classroom, to change the conversation. Two, when i talk to faculty i make sure they understand that Anjani (Jain) (the head of SOM’s full-time MBA program) and i have their backs when it comes to being rigorous and tough and setting high standards. This is not a so-called beauty contest or dance contest, and it’s not all about teaching ratings. if you end up with not-so-great teaching ratings because you have been challenging students and some students aren’t happy, that’s okay. We will be able to sort that out over time. We want to support faculty who are challenging students. And third, and the faculty have begun to address this in conversation, there may be a change in how we set the percentage of students who get distinctions. Now it is 10%. That may be too low.”