Exclusive: INSEAD’s Dean Talks New Online Degree, New MBA Curriculum & What Comes After Covid

How are MBA applications looking this cycle?

Last year, we graduated the biggest class ever, 600 students. I think now we’re going back to normal. I fear that probably we will see a little bit of a decline in applications because of the economy, because the economy is so hot. The MBA applications are counter-cyclical. But it’s OK. Our Master in Management program is doing extremely well, so we’re growing it.

I’ve always said that for me, the most important thing is to ensure that we have a high-quality MBA. If the applications go down, which is possible, because looking at the GMAT trends … Still, the top schools have not seen a big decline in applications. But if the applications go down, I’ve told the admissions office, I don’t need 500 students for an intake. Because obviously from a financial point of view, you want to have a full class. But if you have a little bit of long-term thinking, then you realize that it can become a vicious cycle. Because if you admit students that are not up to the level, then you will end up with students who cannot progress or cannot even find jobs.

If they cannot find job, then the word will get out that the employment rate is low because –

“INSEAD MBAs can’t hack it.”

Exactly. I will be much happier if we go from 1000 to 900 with high quality MBAs, rather than just filling the class. Again, we are the biggest supplier of MBAs in the world, among the ranked schools at least. Going down a little bit is not an issue.

Actually, I should correct it a little bit because we see the GMAT trend in the U.S. and Western Europe going down. But of course in China and India, it’s going up. When we try to create class that will have the most effective learning environment, we do want diversity. We always try to keep any nationality up to 12% and not above that.

Applications in some regions are increasing, in Africa are increasing, China and so on. Africa is really great, but we have very few applications from Africa. Doubling the applications from Africa is not that much — three or four or six or seven applicants becomes eight or nine or 10. But it’s better than them going down.

When we spoke in 2018, we talked about women in the program and I think your level of women at that time was 33%. It’s now 37% in the most recent class. What needs to happen to get that number up? HEC is 35%, London is 38%; but other one-year programs, like Oxford and Cambridge, are at 44% and 43%, respectively.

We actually made a pledge. We joined the HeforShe Alliance, which is a UN Women initiative. We pledge that we’ll go to 40%. Again, we are trying to balance nationality diversity, gender diversity, and so on. One of our big problems is basically that we insist on having still a lot of Europeans in the classroom. I think they’re one-third.

But then the problem is that in Europe, there are very few female applicants. In Germany we have about 15% to 20% female applications. Spain, Italy is the same. China has 60% women in the classroom. The U.S. is about 40% to 45%, so it’s like the U.S. schools here.

It is not impossible to get to 50%, but then you will have a very different composition of the class. We are moving in the right direction. I’m pretty sure that by 2024 we’ll be 40%.

You are now eight and a half, nine years into your deanship. Besides COVID, again, what would you tell 2013 you about what to expect from the next nine years? What would be the first thing you would want to know coming into the job?

A lot of things. I think that what I’m very proud and happy about is the early, initial focus on business as a force for good. It was not easy in the beginning, because some people were saying, “What do we do? You focus only on people doing this research.” But now everybody sees that that was the right call.

But also, what is most interesting to me, is first, the faculty started talking about INSEAD (as a force for good) … We had a meeting of various chairs two weeks ago. These are the heads of the departments. We have nine departments, accounting, finance, and economics and so on. We have this meeting, and one of them was saying, “We are the school that basically focuses on business as a force for good. This is what INSEAD is.” They started owning this.

It’s not just me going out and saying, or five, six other people. The faculty now own the identification with business as a force for good, which I think it is very important, because they work on these topics. There are about 60 faculty members who are on topics related to this.

I think that also we were lucky of investing early in online with the Microsoft program, but we focused on company-specific programs, not on open programs, not on books and so on. However, this was very useful because we developed the know-how of how to do these things.

When the pandemic hit us, you look at our last year, we delivered 75% of our executive education program online — live, virtual or synchronous. The average rating is the same as in person, which is amazing. We managed to engage this.

I think that what I should have done differently, so what I would have told myself in 2013, is that I feel that I should have made more changes early on in the administration. I was somehow, “Let me focus on this or that.” I made a lot of changes in the last few years, and I can see how much better the organization is with these changes.

Personnel changes?

Yeah, personnel, people at the top levels. I think that this is something that I should have thought of more carefully, about the organization, about the structure, about people. But this is something that you learn only with experience.

Again, I’m a professor. I’m not a manager, so I was put to manage something that’s a lot of intuitive things. Probably I should have taken a bunch of courses in Seattle about management.

Is a return to full-time teaching in your immediate future? Take a year or two off and write a book?

I have one year, seven months, and four days left in my second term. I have two years’ sabbatical because I served two terms of five years. For each term, I have a year of sabbatical. There are so many interesting things I want to do. I’m a macroeconomist, and the last few years were the most interesting years. In Singapore, there is one radio station, Money FM. In August, they said, “Can we interview about the future of education?” I said, “Sure, let’s have an interview.” We had 30 minutes interview on radio.

The anchor actually, she liked it a lot. She said, “Why don’t we do another one?” We started doing it every month. We did one on gender equality, one on sustainability. Then I said, “Why don’t we do one on macroeconomics? I’m a macroeconomist,” so I did one 10 days ago on inflation, the global inflation and so on. It was so exciting.

I will take my sabbatical. I’ll see exactly in what part of the world I will do that. But it’s very likely that at least one of the years I’ll spend here in the U.S. Then go back to writing things. Talking about social norms and writing. I have actually three books in my head. We’ll see which one will come first — if any. But I must say that being an academic is such a rewarding profession. I love teaching. I love doing research. Even this thing, building a framework from an economic point of view, understanding how to build this into one thing. If I can do a little bit of work on this, that would be great.

I also promised a friend who founded an NGO called Think Equal that I’ll devote 20% of my time to voluntary work. I’ll be helping her. She’s actually a filmmaker. She made this documentary called India’s Daughter about the gang rape of a medical student in 2012. The student was gang raped and then she died three days later.

Leslie, she’s in the UK, she went to India. She interviewed the rapists and the lawyers and so on. She said, “I realized that we think that these people are psychopaths or crazy. But they’re not. They’re actually normal people.” The only difference is that they were told that this is acceptable. Their lawyers were saying, “She has no business going outside by herself after dark.”

They believe that. One of the lawyers said, “If my daughter did this, going with a man who is not her husband …” (because she was with a friend). “… going to the movies at 7 p.m. …” (she was coming back from the movies). “…I would beat her up, if my daughter does it.”

She created the whole curriculum of books and teaching materials for the ages between 3 and 7, a formative period for the brain. The neuroplasticity of the brain is the highest at this time — so that people start, at that time, learning how to respect the other. It’s not only about gender equality. It’s racial discrimination, and all these things. I’ll probably be helping her, because again, she’s a very successful filmmaker, but sometimes the NGO has to run a little bit like a business to be sustainable.

These are exciting things!

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