Stanford GSB Gets New Dean For Its MBA Program

Economist Paul Oyer will become senior associate dean for the MBA and MSx programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business

Stanford Graduate School of Business economist Paul Oyer became a certified Uber driver to learn more about the gig economy. After finding himself back on the dating scene a few years ago, he signed himself up on a dating site that ultimately led to a 2014 book entitled Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Economics I Learned from Online Dating. Now he’s signing up for a new job at Stanford as head of the school’s prestige MBA program.

Beginning Oct. 1, Oyer will succeed Yossi Feinberg as a senior associate dean with a portfolio that includes Stanford’s MBA and MSx Admissions, the MBA and MSx programs, as well as the school’s Career Management Center. A member of the GSB faculty for 19 years, Oyer comes to the job well prepared. He has been Co-Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Area Coordinator for the Economics Group, and member of the Future of Management Education committee.

After three years in the job, Feinberg decided to return to full-time teaching and research. In a memo announcing the change, Stanford Dean Jon Levin noted Feinberg’s “long list of accomplishments” including his support of the school’s MBA and MSx programs, from admissions to academic and student life, to careers, as well as his leadership of the GSB’s management education curriculum. “His dedication as a SAD (senior associate dean), and his commitment to the GSB are truly extraordinary,” wrote Levin.

A 1989 MBA FROM YALE TAKES OVER STANFORD’S MBA PROGRAM

Before moving to the GSB in 2000 to teach economics and entrepreneurship, Oyer was on the faculty of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. In his pre-academic life, he worked for the management consulting firm of Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, as well as for the high technology firms 3Com Corporation and ASK Computer Systems.

He holds a BA in math and computer science from Middlebury College, an MBA from Yale University’s School of Management earned in 1989, and an MA and PhD in economics from Princeton University picked up in 1994 and 1996, respectively. According to his CV, when Oyer is not teaching or doing research, “Paul runs, swims, skis, hangs out with his two college-age children, and walks his flat-coated retriever.”

Oyer’s research is in the field of personnel economics. Besides his book that uses online dating to explain key ideas in microeconomics, he also is the co-author of Roadside MBA, a strategy guide for small businesses based on the authors’ extensive travel around the U.S. interviewing small business owners.