Rochester’s Idea for Gender Equity in MBA Admissions

Law schools and medical schools have successfully boosted the percent of women they enroll, sometimes dramatically, but increases in business schools have generally been tepid. Why?

That question is at the heart of a brief paper from Mark Zupan, dean of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester, and James A. Brickley, a professor of economics, management, and finance in the Simon School.

The paper, “Rethinking the Work Experience Requirement for MBA Programs,” looks at barriers to gender equity in graduate management education—and suggests a different way of thinking about MBA admissions.

Part of what’s keeping women away from business schools, the paper argues, is the common requirement that applicants have four or five years of work experience. “By seeking students who are 26 to 27 years old,” Zupan and Brickley write, “business schools limit their ability to draw talented women in comparison to other professional schools that admit students straight out of college.”

Lost money is also a factor in this equation, the authors say, because “the net present value of an MBA tends to be higher when the degree is earned earlier.”

“The conventional wisdom that it is critical to have significant pre-MBA work experience may warrant some serious rethinking—especially since it does not bear up to economic scrutiny and also deters female candidates,” the writers suggest. “[I]n contrast to conventional wisdom, our experience suggests that younger students perform well in MBA programs and find productive employment upon graduation.”

In response to these issues, the Simon School created the “Early Leaders” initiative, through which they are more open to admitting students with zero to three years of experience. The results have been strongly positive. “We expect full-time enrollments to increase by 25 percent this fall,” the authors say, and report that the percentage of women in their entering class increased from 26 to 32 percent over the last two years. They also report improved recruiter satisfaction in the school’s student cohort.

“We are cautiously optimistic regarding these initial results,” the paper concludes, “and remain firmly convinced that in order for women to break through the corporate glass ceiling more of them will have to get to the MBA ground floor.”

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