Cambridge Judge Business School: ‘Go Out & Do Something Extraordinary’

MBA graduates at Cambridge University Judge Business School

IN THE FUTURE: A NEW BUILDING, MORE WOMEN AND ALTERNATIVE FINANCE

Of course, an MBA from Cambridge is still a relatively new degree and there are few graduates to recruit each year—which is one reason why rival Oxford is significantly boosting its MBA enrollment. The Cambridge MBA was initially conceived as a part-time program. Students came to campus for half a year, then went back to their employers for half a year, only to return for a year to get their degrees. “But you could’t grow the program that way,” believes Loch. “It was too different.” And it was also very small, with only 25 to 30 students. Cambridge then experimented with a three-year, part-time MBA program, and then a two-year program, before adopting the current ten-month format about a dozen years ago.

Since it’s start, the school has drawn heavily from outside the United Kingdom for students. More than 90% of the MBA students are from outside the U.K. and more than half are from outside Europe. “We want to have a diverse classroom,” says Loch. “Some come from countries spontaneously and some from other countries where you have to go and convince them to come. You never have a perfect balance.”

Still, with its rankings up and several initiatives well under way, the near-term future looks strong. A new Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance was recently launched to examine such issues as equity-based crowdfunding and peer-to-peer business lending and the like. A new Women’s Leadership Initiative launched in June, which seeks to boost women’s leadership and empowerment in the business world globally. In September, the Cambridge MBA program will have its first female director, Jane Davies, currently a lecturer in operations management and winner of the school’s 2013 teaching award. A school spokesperson says “there will be a significant impact in the percentage of female candidates admitted to the MBA class of 2015-16,” presumably well above its current 30% level.

COMPETING IN A MARKETPLACE WHERE BRAND IS IMPORTANT

And Judge’s new building is expected to open in the summer of 2017, though Loch quickly points out that “the building doesn’t do anything by itself. It is an enabler of having a positive atmosphere, but the real work is done with the faculty and support staff.” Asked whether a multiple campus strategy is necessary for a global business school, a strategy that is in place at INSEAD, his former employer, Loch believes it’s not really a necessary condition for being global.

“For INSEAD,” he points out, “it was an absolute breakthrough because nobody else did it in the same way. I think what INSEAD has done is really a brilliant move. INSEAD is now moving a bit away from the line ‘the school for the world.’ They are moving to value for society and not only for business. That is a statement that the multi-campus strategy is something that is very valuable but by itself it doesn’t do anything. Our students come from all over the world and most of them are going back all over the world. Whether you send them for half the time to another campus doesn’t really matter. How valuable that is really depends on how you manage it and how they localize the experience. The fact you have multiple campuses is not that important. If you go and take the same lectures, it doesn’t matter which city you are in. It really matters if you do something with local businesses and gain new insights from that experience.”

The degree’s relative newness, thinks Loch, does put the school at something of a disadvantage, contributing to less awareness of a Cambridge MBA and an MBA alumni network of only a few thousand graduates. “It is a marketplace where brand is very important,” says Loch. “Of course we have the benefit of a great brand with Cambridge but as a business school brand it is a disadvantage of being new. There is a critical time you have to be active in the market to be really recognized, known and respected. This year we are having our 25th birthday, and we are just now getting to the point where we have been in the market long enough to be a player.”

DON’T MISS: THE MBA GATEKEEPER AT CAMBRIDGE JUDGE or OXFORD’S SAID BUSINESS SCHOOL: HARDLY A STUFFY DOWNTON ABBEY