Why Ivey Ranked First Among Global MBAs

Kennedy adds that the school’s performance is also elevated by a supportive faculty who go above-and-beyond for students. “The standard of teaching [at Ivey] is very high in terms of what we expect from people and how we want them to be and the school is run pretty effectively. One of the issues in every organization is culture. It’s not just, ‘do you have a good culture?’ It is also, ‘Do people understand it and buy into it?’ Ivey has a somewhat distinctive strategy. One of the things I think makes it work very well is both our faculty and administration are very professional and buy in. That really helps the school execute on its strategy.”

In a wide-ranging with Poets&Quants, Kennedy – who holds degrees from Stanford, MIT, and Harvard – takes a deep dive into what makes Ivey special. Why is the case method more relevant than ever? What are the inherent advantages to being based in Canada? And what can you expect from Ivey in the coming years?

P&Q: Your school ranked first among international full-time MBA programs with Bloomberg Businessweek for the second consecutive year. Why do you believe that you were able to duplicate this feat?

Kennedy: I think there are a couple of things. One is that the different rankings measure very different things. The Businessweek rankings are very focused on the quality of the MBA programs – largely seen through the eyes of students and potential recruiters. And there are some other rankings that are really trying to measure the strengths of the school overall, so those rankings would have things like, where do you place your graduate students and a much bigger emphasis on research. We have a great research program, but we put a lot of thought into the whole life cycle of a potential student from how we interact with them when they first show interest through the admissions process through pre-enrollment to their experience here and even after they leave.

Our strategy is focused on the classroom experience and connections with practice and we invest a lot here. We have a very, very good career management operation. And those are things that the Businessweek ranking puts a reasonable weight on and those are things that are emphasized in our strategy…The centerpiece of our strategy is the student experience and connecting them with practice and connecting them with appropriate recruiters. And those are all things that Businessweek emphasizes. Therefore, I’m not surprised that this is our best showing among the various rankings.

P&Q: Your school ranked first in the employer survey for the second consecutive year. From your vantage point, what distinguishes your graduates from those from other schools? What specifically have recruiters told you that you’re doing right?

Kennedy: I have two answers to that…The first is, Ivey, along with a handful of other schools, are very much focused on case method of teaching – and Harvard and Darden do that too. But I think going through a case-heavy program has a couple of benefits that really help you in the workplace.

There are three distinct types of learning that you want to get out of an MBA program. The first level is just filling up your tool kit. It’s the standard business tools. How do you price a bond? How do you segment a market? And I think any reasonable business school is going to teach you those things. I think case method learning is a particularly good way to do it because we don’t just teach you the concepts, but we also teach how to apply these tools in many different industries and functions. It’s several steps away from just book learning, so when our graduates get into the workforce, they’re ready to use those tools and apply them right away.

The second level is case method – and then Ivey adds onto this – there’s a whole lot of process learning as well. Going through a year of a case classroom, you learn how to be decisive even when you don’t have complete information; you learn how to make your point clearly and concisely without the argument degenerating into pettiness; you learn to work in teams; you learn that different people will take leadership at different points of process. The case-intensive and the small classes really emphasize all these things that I collectively call process learning. Those [skills] are very highly valued among recruiters. To have a successful career, those process learning skills are just as important as the toolkit.

Any good school can teach the toolkit, but I think case method schools do a better job of applying that toolkit. There’s the teamwork, the communication, the skills, the bias towards action at the second level.

At the third level, there’s just a handful of schools that really emphasize the connections to the alumni. Ivey has about 25,000 alumni – and well over a third of them engage with school every year where they come to a class, participate in a case, taking a recruit to dinner. So we have all across the life cycle, from students considering coming here to when they participate in the program to recent alumni and very senior executives, those people are continually engaging our current students and recent graduates. That makes the current class much happier. As people leave Ivey and move along in their careers, that’s a huge support mechanism. And I think that’s reflected in their happiness with the school and it helps us in those rankings. That’s the third level – it’s not really learning, but you’re entering into this Ivey network that, at least in Canada, is an incredibly important one.

P&Q: Your program lasts one year when it is fashionable, at least in North America, to run a two year program? What inherent advantages does a one year program have that enables your students to achieve the results they want?

Kennedy: First of all, the one year format is fairly common in Europe. It’s not nearly as common in North America. The switch [at Ivey to a one-year format] was made in 2006, so that was made under my predecessor. I think it’s good positioning. The big advantage is that potential students are only out of the workforce for a year. There are two costs to an MBA program. There’s the tuition you have to pay and then there’s the foregone wages and time away from the workforce. I prefer to think of what we have as a three semester format instead of four because it’s not half as long. We actually have about 85% of the contact hours.

For students who know what industry they’d like to go into, it’s a much more direct path. It reduces the opportunity costs by quite a lot. For people with family situations, either dual career people or people who’d like to get on with forming their family, it accelerates the experience. There is a downside in that some portion of people who come to business school want to go through two search processes. Maybe they worked in financial services and they’re interested in getting into consulting. We don’t have an internship, so having an internship gives them another crack at exploring. On balance, we think that more of our students – 80-90% of the people — have a pretty good idea of where they’re going. It’s a more tightly integrated program, it’s quicker, and you’re only out of workforce for a year.