As the semantics suggest, change is afoot—wholesale change, what Yale calls “revolutionary.” Although reforms are in some ways specific to given schools, there are decided patterns. Simply stated, reform-minded b-schools are shifting toward team-taught, multidisciplinary, boundary-crossing courses—experiences designed to invest managers with what Yale, for example, calls “organizational perspectives.” In this new world, interpersonal skills carry more weight, as do “soft” skills like leadership and communication. In some cases, the programs have been compressed into shorter lengths of time.
The new Yale curriculum prepares students for “work across boundaries of function, organization, and industry.” Eight multidisciplinary courses—with names like “Innovator,” “Operations Engine,” “Sourcing and Managing Funds,” and “State and Society”—are structured around the organizational roles a manager must master in order to succeed.
Stanford, meanwhile, is working to customize a “deeper, more engaging, intellectual experience” for its MBA students, with a more global focus and greater attention to the development of leadership and communications skills.
Many schools are working hard to bust down their silos. For example, the University of Tennessee (UT) reformed its MBA curriculum in 1998, when it launched a new MBA program billed as the first in the nation to “incorporate a strategy for complete integration across business disciplines.” Since then the program has evolved into a well-regarded 17-month course of study that weaves concentrated study in core disciplines with training in leadership, communications, and other key business tools. Employers say UT graduates have a broader contextual understanding than their peers, and even say the program produces better-prepared interns.
At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the model is “streams of knowledge.” The traditional disciplines were shattered, then reconstituted as integral components of programmatic threads designed to parallel the practice of business. Students, for example, can take “Creating and Managing an Enterprise” and learn how to drive innovation and develop new products. In part, the program seeks to make the learning environment as “real-world” as possible.
After a top-to-bottom redesign of its MBA curriculum, the University of Western Ontario Richard Ivey School of Business trademarked its approach, “Cross-Enterprise Leadership.” Ivey defines CEL as “the capacity to predict, analyze, strategize, and act on issues that span an entire organization.” Students in the new curriculum, Ivey says, will still get a strong grounding in basic skills, but they will also learn how to “think, act, and lead cross-enterprise.”
The very change in vocabulary—from “finance,” “marketing,” and “accounting” to “strategy,” “the customer,” and “leadership”—signals truly systemic repositioning. At their core, these reform efforts and others like them represent a recognition that what MBA students have been learning might not be as well aligned with what they need to know as it should be. Whether other business schools follow the lead of these pioneers remains to be seen. Certainly, though, many eyes are watching with great interest.
This article is Part One of two articles. Next time in Deans Digest, deans speak about curricular reform.
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