Tuck’s Matthew Slaughter, Longest-Serving Dean At A Top B-School, Will Step Down In 2028

Matthew Slaughter, the longest-serving dean among top business schools, will step down as dean of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business in June 2028. He will have led Tuck for 13 years, a stretch that brought record fundraising, a rebuilt faculty, a wave of new programs, and a long run near the top of the U.S. MBA rankings.

Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock and Interim Provost Matthew Delmont announced today (November 9) that Slaughter has agreed to serve one additional year as dean, through June 30, 2028. His third four-year term had been set to end June 30, 2027. The extension gives Dartmouth time to find his successor, and a nationwide search launches in January 2027.

After he steps down, Slaughter will spend a year as a special advisor to the new dean before he returns to the Tuck faculty and begins a sabbatical.

Slaughter’s tenure is already the second-longest in Tuck’s history: Only his predecessor, Paul Danos, served longer. Danos led the school for 20 years and was Poets&Quants’ 2014 Dean of the Year. When Danos announced his departure in 2014, he too was the longest-serving dean of any top business school.

‘OUR WORK TOGETHER IS FAR FROM OVER’

David Marchick, former dean of American University’s Kogod School of Business and the 2026 Poets&Quants Dean of the Year, is a longtime friend of Slaughter’s. Marchick taught at Tuck as an adjunct professor before taking the helm at Kogod in 2022.

“Matt Slaughter is a unicorn talent – a world-class intellect and scholar, savvy strategist and prodigious fundraiser,” Marchick, now American’s president, tells P&Q. “Under his leadership, Tuck has reached its highest level ever, raised more than a half billion dollars and prepared thousands of students for meaningful and productive careers. And he has mentored me on my academic journey.”

Dartmouth’s leaders are looking ahead to the search for Slaughter’s successor, and noting the challenges that person will face.

“We will be looking for a leader who can build on the incredible successes of Matt and his team over the last 12 years and help Tuck plan for the next decade in a world being rapidly redefined by changing foreign policy and AI,” write Beilock and Delmont in a message to the Tuck community.

In a separate note to faculty and staff, Slaughter says he is not done yet.

“There are some 20 months left in my deanship and there is much to be excited about in Tuck’s future,” he writes. “For today, I simply want to extend my thanks to each of you as colleagues and to share my optimism about what comes next for our great School.”

He also thanks the community for supporting his family over the years.

“My family and I owe so much to Tuck and to all of Dartmouth; it is difficult to put into words the immense gratitude I have for our community,” Slaughter writes. “Tuck is truly a community unlike any other.”

He ends the note with a line he has repeated often as dean, this time with a twist.

“I will once again remind us that Tuck endures because Tuck innovates (and that innovation extends to the deanship!),” Slaughter writes. “And our world needs more Tuck – and in particular, more of the wise, decisive leaders that we develop.”

AN ECONOMIST AT THE HELM

Slaughter is a scholar of international economics and an expert on globalization. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Notre Dame and his Ph.D. in economics at MIT, where his doctoral advisor was future Nobel laureate Paul Krugman. He joined Dartmouth’s economics department in 1994 and taught undergraduates until 2001. He moved to Tuck’s faculty in 2002.

From 2005 to 2007, Slaughter took leave to serve on the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President. After he returned to Tuck, he spent four years as associate dean for the MBA program and three years as associate dean for faculty. He was also the founding faculty director of Tuck’s Center for Global Business and Government. He has won Tuck’s Teaching Excellence Award and holds the Earl C. Daum 1924 Professor of International Business chair.

Slaughter became Tuck’s 10th dean in July 2015, succeeding Danos, who had served five terms. He kept teaching after he took the job. He still teaches his MBA elective, Leadership in the Global Economy, and writes for global publications.

A FAST START: GLOBAL LEARNING AND A NEW CORE

Slaughter moved quickly. In his first month as dean, Tuck approved a global learning requirement for every MBA student, delivered through a program called TuckGO. In 2019, a $25 million gift from Zdenek Bakala, a 1989 Tuck MBA graduate, and his wife Michaela endowed TuckGO. At the time it was the largest gift commitment in Tuck’s history.

During his first term, Slaughter also overhauled the first-year MBA core curriculum. The changes included a revised academic calendar and a new slate of data analytics courses. He widened Tuck’s reach beyond the MBA as well, with programs such as the Advanced Management Program for senior executives, the Next Step program for military veterans and elite athletes, and TuckLAB, a startup-focused program for Dartmouth undergraduates.

Tuck stayed in P&Q’s top 10 every year of that first term. It ranked ninth in 2015, seventh in 2016 and 2017, and ninth in 2018.

Slaughter’s second term began in July 2019, and within a year the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Tuck invested heavily in technology to move its programs to virtual and hybrid formats. MBA pay climbed during the same period: the Class of 2022 reported a top salary of $202,900, and 98% of the class received offers within three months of graduation. In 2023, P&Q named Tuck one of its “10 Business Schools To Watch.”

A RECORD FUNDRAISER

Fundraising may be Slaughter’s biggest legacy. According to Beilock and Delmont, he has raised more money for Tuck than any previous dean in the school’s history.

Early in 2018, alumnus Paul Raether and his family gave $15 million for scholarships, matching the school’s record for the largest single gift. Later that year, Tuck launched The Tuck Difference: The Campaign for Tomorrow’s Wise Leaders, with a $250 million goal. That target was more than double the $125 million Tuck raised in its previous campaign, which ended in 2009 under Danos. The campaign ultimately raised $416 million.

Two even bigger gifts followed. In 2022, Tuck received an anonymous $52.1 million pledge, the largest gift commitment in school history at the time, to endow the Dartmouth Summit on Health, Wealth, and Sustainability, a recurring gathering of global leaders, scholars and students. In 2024, a bequest from the estate of Glenn Britt, a 1972 Tuck MBA graduate and former CEO of Time Warner Cable, and his wife Barbara brought Tuck at least $37.5 million for scholarships. It was the largest outright gift in Tuck’s history.

Slaughter also led the “Team of 100” scholarship campaign, which set out to raise $125 million to mark Tuck’s 125th anniversary. Dartmouth now puts the campaign at $127 million. He also launched the 125th Society to celebrate the anniversary. Through it all, Tuck has kept what Dartmouth calls the highest annual giving rate in all of higher education.

In a letter to alumni, Michael Ward, chair of Tuck’s Board of Advisors, puts Slaughter’s fundraising total at “well over half a billion dollars.”

“It is natural for us in business to reach for the numbers, and Matt Slaughter’s are remarkable,” writes Ward, a 1992 Tuck MBA graduate. “Under his leadership, Tuck’s MBA program has risen and held steadily in the top ten of major U.S. rankings, due in no small part to the continued quality of each incoming MBA class, with many new records set, and the career outcomes achieved by each graduating class.”

RECORD DEMAND, NEW DEGREES

Slaughter’s third term brought record demand for Tuck’s MBA. Applications rose 36% to 2,734 for the Class of 2026, and that class set a school record with an average GMAT score of 727. The next year brought a second straight record, with 3,267 applications for the Class of 2027. This fall, as a confluence of events impacted graduate business education, the trend reversed. Tuck received 2,237 applications for the Class of 2028, down 31.5%. The drop came as U.S. full-time MBA applications fell 27%, according to GMAC’s 2026 Application Trends Survey.

Tuck’s portfolio has continued growing in the post-pandemic landscape. In 2024, Tuck and Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine announced a joint Master of Health Administration. Tuck has also added more undergraduate offerings. Its Tuck Business Bridge program, a three-week business certificate for liberal arts and STEM students and recent graduates, now enrolls more than 600 students a year, and hybrid versions run at six partner universities and colleges.

As longtime Tuck professors have retired, Slaughter has recruited their successors. He has added 15 tenure-track faculty in the last three years alone, according to Ward.

“But those of us leading organizations also know that the numbers are the residue of something harder to measure,” Ward writes. “Matt articulated core values and a mission for Tuck in which everyone could see themselves.”

Beilock and Delmont say they will share details of the dean search in early 2027. Ward notes that Tuck has 32 months of Slaughter’s leadership ahead, first as dean and then as an advisor.

“Our work together is not yet complete,” Ward writes. “For now, I hope you will join me in thanking him for all he has done to strengthen Tuck and bring us to where we are today.”

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