|
Providing good customer service sometimes means knowing that you can’t serve everyone, says Michael Knetter, dean of the School of Business at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. “A lot of business schools are willing to say, ‘We can do whatever it is you want,’ but we know we can’t and we’re comfortable with that.”
Thanks to some fundamental program changes, which did away with the school’s general management track and focused its MBA curriculum on preparing students for specific business careers, UW–Madison is now limiting who it wants to count as customers. “We know we’re not for everyone,” Knetter says. “The student best suited to our program is one who has a clear idea of what they want to be when they grow up. We think this type of person will get the most out of an MBA degree.”
UW–Madison’s new MBA program is designed to enable students to delve into one of 14 career specializations, ranging from applied corporate finance to real estate and urban economics. Every prospective MBA student must apply directly to one of these specializations.
Along with benefiting a distinct group of business students, the change is intended to help set UW–Madison apart from the growing pack of MBA providers.
“Strategy is all about making choices, and we have made them,” Knetter told UW–Madison’s alumni magazine, Update. “We have made a conscious choice to be the best program available for students with a clear career objective. By making the choice to serve that specific segment of the market, we can serve them better than anyone else.”
UW–Madison isn’t alone. Numerous business schools the world over have changed their programs and curricula in hopes of better serving a specific slice of the management education pie. Some have paired the MBA with another degree, such as engineering, information technology management, or even education. Others have added a wide range of specialized MBA courses and programs to their educational offerings so that now, in addition to marketing, finance, and other traditional business concentrations, students have the option of “majoring” in everything from agribusiness to aviation.
“We’re attracting people to our program who probably wouldn’t enroll in any other MBA program,” says Elaine Seat, director of the new and highly specialized aerospace MBA program at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville’s College of Business Administration. “Twenty percent of our curriculum is unique to the aerospace industry.”
|