Our Size is One of Our Strengths

by DEAN ROBERT L. JOSS

In recent months, many alumni/ae and students have expressed their appreciation and support for the close-knit culture of our School. A sizable majority believe that the relatively small size of our community is critical to the transformative nature of a GSB education. They were worried because I had asked our community to reflect on three possible growth options for the School: the creation of a coterminal master’s degree for Stanford undergraduates, the formation of an Executive MBA, and the expansion of our existing MBA Program.

If you were among the worried, you will be relieved to learn that I have decided not to expand enrollment in the MBA Program and not to initiate a separate professional master’s degree program for “younger” students. While we will not form a “weekend” or part-time MBA Program, the School will continue to explore options for master’s degrees for “older” students, building from the very fine base of the Sloan Program. We also will proactively seek applications to our MBA Program from outstanding younger students who may have believed in recent years that they would not be admitted because of the widespread perception that several years of full-time work experience were required for admission.

Some of you have asked, Why mess with success? Like successful businesses in a changing world, we must continuously reevaluate how and how well we achieve our mission, which is to be a world leader in management education based on the enduring quality of our ideas and the leadership impact of our graduates and faculty.

I am convinced that the School does not need to increase MBA enrollment to accomplish its mission and that, in fact, the GSB’s small size is one of its strengths. It not only promotes a culture in which students get to know all of their classmates, it also allows our faculty to avoid departmental balkanization, and it fosters inter- and cross-disciplinary research and teaching, which make our insights more valuable in both the worlds of management and academics.

Our small size is not without drawbacks, however. It limits our ability to cover subject areas in depth, it diminishes our capacity for global impact, and it makes financing the School more difficult. It has resulted in a faculty that is stretched thinly, and it limits how many managers we send out into the world. My intention is to increase the size of the faculty by about 10 percent and use our efforts in electronically mediated learning to improve our worldwide reach.

For the time being, I am rejecting the option of a “weekend” or part-time executive MBA program, because I am not convinced that it would be consistent with our basic strategy of offering transformative educational experiences, and because I worry that such a program might dilute the brand of our regular Stanford MBA Program. But led by the example of the Sloan Program, I believe we have a strong basis from which to explore further options for MBA or other master’s level programs for older and more experienced students.

In short, we want to get the culture right, improve how we operate, capitalize on the uniqueness of our small size, raise our international and senior management impact, and make sure we have a faculty that covers all the critical bases. Financing this mission won’t be easy. As we incrementally add faculty and services to students and alumni/ae, the challenge will be great. My decision to retain our small size is therefore, in part, a leap of faith—faith that the friends of the School, including alumni/ae, will provide the financial resources to allow us to remain small. My confidence in our future is buoyed by the enormous goodwill and institutional loyalty you have displayed and your shared commitment to seeing the School as the undisputed leader in management education.