Interview: Stanford GSB Dean Jon Levin

Stanford University Graduate School of Business – Ethan Baron photo

‘SOME THINGS HAVE TO CHANGE TO PREPARE STUDENTS TO BE MORE DATA LITERATE’

None of this is to say that Levin believes the MBA curriculum is perfect. He envisions important changes in how MBA curriculum has to change. “The thing about MBA education is that there are some things that have to change and are changing in to prepare students to be more data literate and to be able to help students pose hypotheses that can be answered with data,” says Levin.

“If you are going to work with engineers and data scientists, you have to be able to ask a question that you could then answer with data. What is the new business model or new opportunity that you couldn’t do before? These are all opportunities and then we get into the issues around what are the new responsibilities. Those are the hard questions, the questions that everyone in the world is struggling with. Privacy. Job automation. Income inequality. A fundamental question is will this wave of technology advance in a way that it doesn’t leave people behind?

THE LIMITS OF TECHNOLOGY

“What will the new jobs be? What type of jobs will be created? Will they be jobs that give people dignity in their work and a sufficient income? That’s one of the big questions of the next couple of decades. There will be important decisions that will get made in Washington and Beijing and other places around the world but a lot of the decisions are going to be made in the private sector. So the students we are educating today and the students we graduated recently will be making those decisions.”

In terms of whether machines have a role in those decisions, he is doubtful. Levin maintains that technology has often unforeseen limitations that make judgments by thoughtful people important. “When the fires broke out in southern Los Angeles last year, they had to tell people to stop using mapping software because the maps routed people to where there was no traffic and they were routing people to places that were on fire. The point of that is that these systems which seem very smart can also be very dumb.

“There also was this interesting and troubling work that a student in our AI lab did on facial recognition. Algorithms on available data became really good at recognizing white male faces with a high degree of accuracy and not so good in recognizing the faces of women of color. No one had even noticed that when these systems were used. No one ever thought about that. The challenge is to be able to look ahead and ask what questions might this raise? That is a great challenge for our faculty and our students.”

‘WE ARE COMMITTED TO CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT THAT IS WELCOMING FOR ALL STUDENTS’

Levin shows little concern over MBA application declines or the diminished number of international applicants who have been scared away from the U.S. due to anti-immigration rhetoric or concerns over obtaining work visas. “We are trying to get great students from wherever they are from,” he says. “What we are committed to is creating an environment that is welcoming for all types of students. That is what we try to control and focus on. We want to make sure this is a place that is attractive to students from all different places and industries with different ideologies and aspirations.

“And we are going to stay committed to that even if there are fluctuations in policy and the business cycle. We are getting great applicants. We are fortunate in getting a great pool of applicants and it translates into having great students. I think the rise of alternative programs is interesting and it’s a great thing that there are more ways to get access to management education. That is really positive for the world.”

Whatever the future holds, Levin seems excited by his school’s efforts to address what he calls the fundamentally hard social problems of the day. “Having a dynamic private sector has lifted billions of people in the world out of poverty,” says Levin. “It’s extraordinary. It’s like nothing in the history of humanity in the last two centuries of economic growth. That is an amazing thing and we don’t want to lose sight of how innovation drives economic growth and that drives increases in well being. Having said that, you look at the U. S., and you have to think about people who are left behind. When you have advances in technology they broadly benefit humanity and society but how do you make sure you are creating a wide variety of jobs that insures the dignity of work and how do we sustain our workforce in productive ways.”

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