Why Ivey Ranked First Among Global MBAs

P&Q: Your curriculum relies heavily on case studies. Why do you believe case learning is so relevant in today’s world, particularly as schools move towards a more experiential model?

Kennedy: I think the case method is a great way to not just learn the tools of business, but how to apply those tools. You have to learn how to exercise judgment. Most business is not just an equation where you get perfect data. It’s applying judgment, thinking about things and understanding the tradeoffs. The case method forces the students to do that in the classroom. A further extension of that is field learning. Prior to coming here – I’ve been the dean here for a little over two years – I spent 10 years at Michigan. And Michigan really was big into the field learning. And Ivey does quite a bit of that. In our undergrad program, there is a required course where you get put into a team and you either work on an Ivey consulting project (those are larger firms) or you work on venture projects where you go out and work with startups. We have the case method where you’re applying these tools to real business situations throughout the curriculum. And we’re also doing a fair amount of field learning. We haven’t made it the centerpiece of the program, but we are increasingly having more field experiences outside the building as well. I see those as complementary. They are two ways to better learn how to apply the tools and I see them as complimentary to each other.

P&Q: What types of experiential learning opportunities have you embedded in your curriculum?

Kennedy: At the undergraduate level, every student has to complete a team project with a real company. At the MBA level, the vast majority of the students go off and do a field project. They’ll go to China, India, or somewhere in South America. We put them in teams and they work with real company. They work on a real business project. Those are required courses in both programs. In addition to that, many of our institutes and centers – and many of the elective courses (like our entrepreneurship courses) – have a field learning element to the course. It’s not in every course, but we’re getting more-and-more of that.

P&Q: You operate the largest career services center among Canadian business schools. It also earns higher scores than their Canadian compatriots according to The Financial Times. What makes your career services operation so special and enables you to achieve a 92% placement rate and the highest starting salaries in Canada?

Kennedy: Ivey very much thinks of itself as being in the telemanagement space. Our career management people are very involved throughout the process. For example, every applicant has to do an interview, either in-person or by Skype. And it’s with a team of people – one from the admissions department and one from career management. During that, we ask the [applicants] about their career aspirations to figure out if they are realistic expectations. We’re looking to admit people who are really prepared for successful careers – and Ivey is just the last piece.

Career management is not just ‘at the end of the program, I hope to have a job.’ They are involved in selecting the class. Throughout the year, there are several touchpoints with career management, where they run a couple of class sessions. We do a lot of resume coaching. We do a lot of mock interviews…so we give them a lot of training on how to interview well and identify the right jobs.

And the final thing, and with myself coming from several U.S. schools, I was very favorably impressed by the amount of two-way communication between our career management operation and the recruiting firms. A lot of it is just standard. They come and post a schedule. Fairly often, you have a company, say a large bank, that’s looking for students with very specific backgrounds (a certain level of math training who can also speak Mandarin and have dual citizenship, for example). We’ll help them identify those people outside the normal process. Also, at the end of every cycle, the recruiting firms give us feedback on our process but we survey all the students. And we give the recruiting firms feedback on how their firms are perceived. Did they pitch the firm right? In the info sessions and interviews, did the people feel taken care or did they feel abused? [We tell them] what their brand is.

The reason the career management center is larger than other Canadian schools is that they’re not just organizing interview lists. They’re involved in the admissions process. They’re doing a lot of coaching of the students when they’re in the program. There’s a lot of two-way communication with the recruiting firms, both in terms of helping match them with the appropriate students and helping the firms put their best foot forward as well. This leads to a positive feedback loop where we really feel like we’re partnering with both the students and with the firms.

P&Q: In America, we often think of Canada as having the coldest climate and the warmest people. Statistically, the nation also maintains one of the highest qualities of living at a relatively low cost. What types of opportunities does Canada offer to MBAs that would make it so appealing to stay (particularly for international students)?

Kennedy: We’re about an hour-and-a-half or two hours outside of Toronto. London is half-ways between Toronto and Detroit. Canada is an OECD country [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – a group of roughly the 30 richest countries in the world]. There is quite a long list of truly global firms based in Canada. We have a set of big banks, a set big energy and mining companies – a lot of sophisticated companies here. If you go to work for a Canadian firm, there are many, many of them where you can have a global career. Canada is a relatively open society. It’s quite welcoming to immigrants. In our MBA class, about a third of our class [is comprised of] international students, meaning they are here on a student VISA. Over half of the MBA class was born outside of Canada. The difference is, about 20% of the class are naturalized Canadian citizens who were born elsewhere. I grew up in the U.S. and I’ve found Canada to be relatively open, friendly, and stable and with a high quality of life. People learn to deal with the weather; I moved here from Michigan and lived in Boston before that so it’s not much different than either one of those.

P&Q: You’re obviously at the top of the mountain, at least when it comes to the Bloomberg Businessweek rankings. What programs or initiatives are you operating to maintain your 100 index score and maintain your lead over other international schools?

Kennedy: The program has changed a lot over the last 10 years. There’s still case method learning, but we’ve grown our undergrad. We’ve changed our MBA from four semesters to three semesters. I think what we’re focusing on now is a lot more international opportunities. We changed our schedule a little bit so it’s much easier for the MBAs to go on exchange. Until a year ago, that was almost impossible. We’re just starting to experiment with better use of educational technology. We’re not going to do an online degree or MOOCs. But there are a lot of things that you can do to take some of the rote learning – the blocking and tackling – outside the classroom. That would allow us to better use classroom time for the things we do really well, which is the case discussion and application. [And we can use technology in other ways as well]. For example, if you want to do a project in Africa – maybe you travel there. Or maybe you team up with some people from Nairobi or Cape Town and you’d have a virtual team at low cost which expands the options a lot. Those are things that we are starting to experiment with. I wouldn’t say they’re fully formed, but we’re thinking hard about innovation.

Those are the main things: Better using technology for our current program and better connecting our students and faculty with peer schools around the world. There is a lot of opportunity.