No MBA? New King’s Dean Says Employers Want Younger Talent

The new King’s Business School is housed in Bush House, Aldwych, the former headquarters of the BBC World Service

Q: When you speak of “uncertain times,” the first thing that comes to mind for many is Brexit, in light of which it seems like a very uncertain time to be launching a business school. 

Well it’s been a long time in the planning — this isn’t something that we’ve rushed into. Our president (Edward Byrne) has had a long-term vision to launch a business school. It has been a little strange for King’s, one of the top universities in the world, not to have a business school. So I think this is kind of the missing piece of the jigsaw, which is complementing our portfolio in law, medicine, social science. I don’t think it’s an odd time in that way.

What we’re seeing is that we’re increasing the size of the school 15% to 20% year on year, applications are up year on year, and as I said, we’re recruiting amazing students from all over the world — as well as amazing faculty.

We’re a school that has a strong reach into society. We don’t want to be a narrow school whose only focus is on business in a very narrow way. The governor (Mark Carney) last night was talking about the importance of the interconnection between the public domain and the private sector domain, so I think getting our students to understand the regulatory context, the broader political economy — including Brexit — will be very important and will continue to be very important to what we teach. The impact is impossible to avoid, of course.

Q: On the question of what you teach, can you explain the decision to not offer an MBA?

We think there is more than one game in town. So where we want to focus our efforts is, we have an amazing undergraduate program, we take a very globally diverse group of students who come in with very, very high points in our A-level system. And also what employers are telling us is that they are seeking to attract talent earlier in the pipeline — they’re looking to attract undergraduate students.

There are more business management degrees anyway, so there are more people coming through. So I think it’s more about what we’re seeking to do — which is about developing a leading undergraduate program, complemented by a roster of specialist master’s programs. That’s where our thinking is. And talking to employers and alumni and students, they agree that that’s where we should be focusing our efforts.

DON’T MISS DEAN NAMED FOR NEW B-SCHOOL AT KING’S COLLEGE LONDON and KING’S COLLEGE SAYS ‘NO THANKS’ TO MBA