Archive for the ‘Management Education’ Category

Forbes sums up our panel on higher education at Techonomy yesterday in Tucson.  In a word, the gap between well established, traditional universities and up-and-coming for profit players does not seem to be narrowing.  Most of my colleagues on the traditional side, especially those with healthy endowments and selectivity ratios, believe things are fine, thank you, and are focusing and how to further improve their offerings for the small number of students they serve.  Meanwhile for profits continue to explore ways to drive scale without sacrificing quality.  If (or when) for profits figure out a way to strengthen their brands, traditional universities which do not act, are up for an interesting shake up.

AACSB’s magazine BizEd asked ten long-serving heads of business schools to reflect on the evolution of business education since it was founded ten years ago.  In my piece I argue that the last decade has seen some of the worst damages bad management can cause.  But I’m also hopeful that business schools are showing signs that they are taking responsibility and action, including the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME), and The Oath Project.

How much things can change in a decade! In October 2001, we learned that executives of the energy darling Enron had hidden billions in debt through accounting engineering and dishonest financial reporting. The scandal wiped out thousands of jobs and tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value, including the retirement assets of thousands of employees. It handed a death sentence to legendary accounting firm Arthur Andersen and led to the largest bankruptcy case in U.S. history.

Continue reading at BizEdmagazine.com.

I was once again inspired by Shai Reshef during our panel discussion at The Economist “Ideas Economy” conference in New York, where he presented  of The University of the People concept and the progress they are making. Incredibly innovative approach to lower costs, increase reach and achieve inclusion.

My arguments had to do with the potential of technology to transform the education process, not only in terms of reach but quality, and most importantly, the need for a profound transformation of the traditional campus.  Perhaps the least valuable thing we can do in a lecture hall is to lecture.  There are many better (cheaper, more effective, more convenient) ways to convey knowledge.  And time on campus ought to be dedicated to activities that can best take place in person: applying knowledge, collaborating, discussing, building relationships.  Are we ready to meet these challenges?

I really enjoyed our panel at last week Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting on the design of technologies for economic empowerment, moderated by Chelsea Clinton.

- Oscar winning actress Geena Davis presented data on how media contributes to perpetuating gender stereotypes in the U.S. and around the world.  Her Geena Davis Institute has found, for example, that male roles in Hollywood movies outnumber female roles by 3:1.

- Neil Bellefeuille, of The Paradigm Project, explained their approach to use market-based approaches to introduce clean stove technology in very low-income communities were traditional cooking techniques are responsible for thousands of smoke-related deaths and heath problems, millions of wasted hours in wood recollection and transportation, and vast deforestation.

- Toshi Nakamura, founder of The Kopernik, described their innovation/aid/market place approach to designing and distributing new technology solutions to meet energy, lighting, or water challenges in underdeveloped environments.  He also praised Thunderbird TEM Lab students for their recent consulting work in Indonesia for his organization!

Read more »

Thunderbird Vision 2020, Global Leadership-Global Impact, asks that we focus outward, not inward and that we find new and better ways to change lives, to empower individuals to bring about opportunities around the world by building good businesses.  Here’s one example.

By Wynona Heim, Program Manager, Thunderbird for Good

The Vital Voices award ceremony was a wonderful event, and Fatema Akbari and her daughter Shahla did a beautiful job at the acceptance speech, and as Ambassadors for the 10,000 Women program, Project Artemis, and their native Afghanistan.  Fatema stole the show when she got up to the microphone at the end of the speech that her daughter had translated for her and said in English: “I want to make a special thank you to Vital Voices, the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program, and Thunderbird for all of their support of Afghan women.  Next time I come to the United States, I will speak only English.”  She was the ONLY awardee to get a standing ovation at the END of her speech.

Her Vital Voices video, which includes the interview with you, is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt6I_KNXUZ0

By J. Oseas Ramírez Assad ‘11

Estimado Angel,
…
I wanted to share with you that this Sunday I just got back from Cambodia where I was participating in a TEM lab for the last five weeks. We worked on a project for DDD (Digital Divide Data), a social enterprise that hires disadvantaged Cambodian youth (from very poor families, landmine victims, etc.) and trains them on basic IT skills to provide digitization services. At the same time, DDD gives them a scholarship to study a university degree so that they can get a better job when they graduate, thus breaking the cycle of poverty they were in. Our project consisted in helping DDD determine whether and how they could offer their digitization services locally in the healthcare and financial services sectors. In the end, we were able to present the client with valuable insight about their organization as well as concrete, actionable items as they required. This will help them strengthen their business model in order to continue furthering their social mission

The reason why I wanted to share this with you is that since I started my studies in Thunderbird a year and a half ago, this is the first time in which I have experimented what it means to enact our mission of creating sustainable prosperity worldwide. The mission is what made me choose Thunderbird above other programs and it was fundamental for me to live it before graduating. This took place greatly in part thanks to the support you provided to me through Mr. Scott to address the IIE to allow a Fulbright to participate in such a program, so I wanted to thank you for your support.

Estimado Angel, gracias: esta experiencia ha tenido un gran impacto en mi vida.

Nos vemos pronto – ¡saludos!

It seems impossible to disassociate Arizona from immigration debates after the most (in)famous law in the State’s history–SB1070–was passed last year.  The AACSB’s Deans Conference in Phoenix this week couldn’t be an exception, and I was given the honor of moderating the panel on immigration and business schools featuring also Kenneth R. Keeley of the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and Dean Michael Luger of the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester.

Here’s a summary of my thoughts:

• Immigration can be and has been a driver of innovation and economic growth in the US economy.
• According to data from the Kauffman Foundation (see my posting Connectivity means Competitiveness) immigrant-founded companies generated $52B in revenues and 450K jobs in 2005. Over half of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were born outside the US. And more than a quarter of all engineering and technology companies created in the US between 1995 and 2005 had one foreign-born founder.
• According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, non-citizen inventors generated 24.2% of all patent applications in 2006 (up from 7.3% in 1998).
• More than half of the immigrants that go on to create businesses in the US originally came to the US to study.
• The #1 discipline of study among foreign students coming to the US is business (21.1% in 2009/10).  Business plus STEM fields account for 67.2% of all foreign students in the US.
• Mainland China, India and South Korea are the main sources of foreign students, each accounting for more than twice as many students as any other country.  Canada, Taiwan, Japan, and Saudi Arabia come next. China and Saudi Arabia have shown the highest growth last year (30% and 25% each).
• Immigration debates tend to center around how to best keep immigrants out, but the future of the American economy requires policies that proactively attract the right types of immigrants, and universities (and business schools) are the best vehicle to do that.
• H1B Visas granted by the US went down dramatically after 9/11, from 163,000 in 2001 to less than 80,000 in 2002, 03 and 04, and not back to 85,000. Not surprisingly, the percentage of foreign students at Thunderbird peaked in 2001 (67%) and declined to around 44% in 2008. Total number of foreign students declined in the US between 2002 and 2006 (and is recovering now).

I asked my colleague Kip Harrell to share his thoughts on this matter and here are some highlights:

• Rankings tend to penalize schools with high national diversity because employment difficulties of foreign students hurt “employed at graduation” and “3 months after graduation” metrics.
• International student employment is not only more difficult in the US market, but also in finding employment at home
• Helping international students develop networks, both in US and their home country is critical for employment success
• International diversity is critical in educating true global leaders, but the complexities of attracting the right students and helping them find employment should not be underestimated

About to participate in a panel at the Global Competitiveness Forum 2011 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss how to “reboot education”.  Here are some of my thoughts in rather raw format:

1. The challenges and opportunities facing higher education are far too great to be left in the hands of academics alone.

Some estimates anticipate that the number of university students in the world will increase by 62 million in the next 15 years.  That is a staggering 4.13 million new students per year.  If we tried to satisfy that demand by building large traditional universities (of say 40K students apiece) we would need about 100 new universities per year, or one every three days (each by the way would require at least 500 new faculty members).  The stakes, meanwhile, are pretty high, as economic competitiveness continues to increase the demand for high value-adding jobs and those who can’t provide decent education risk being left behind.

Academics for the most part have failed to change a system which is not radically different from the early European universities 1,000 years ago (Univ. of Bologna est. 1088).  If not them, then who?

2.- Innovators, entrepreneurs are needed… in droves

The magnitude of the challenge requires that we rethink technologies, educational paradigms and business models.  Governments won’t lead the charge.  If anything, they may make the process more challenging by decreasing funding at the worst possible time (the State of Arizona has decreased its per-student appropriation from about $9K to $5K in four years).  The private sector will need to grow beyond its current size and in spite of the regulatory issues they have faced in the last couple of years.  The University of Phoenix serves 400K+ students.  No public university comes close.  There’s plenty of opportunity for social entrepreneurs too.  Western Governors University has grown in just over 10 years from start up to 20K students (with no classrooms or professor in the traditional sense!).  Traditional players like Thunderbird are ideally suited to experiment with hybrid approaches bringing together a mix of solutions.

3. On-line works

In fact it works better than traditional if used appropriately. And it’s only going to get better.  Our experience with the Global MBA On Demand shows how the right blend of online (in our case collaborative, high touch) and residential modules can not only better serve the needs of an increasing market of technology-savvy, highly mobile, non traditional working professionals, but it can actually deliver exceptionally high rates of student learning outcomes and satisfaction.

The Kauffman Foundation just launched its first Kauffman Lab for Education Ventures with the intent to help catalyze some new models.  The first 25 aspiring entrepreneurs are working on projects ranging from blending social networks in learning platforms, to exploiting the power of games, ot improving assessment and retention.  None of these innovations would be possible without technology.

by Lucas C. Wagner

EMBA Report To The Board,

I am happy to give you my own statement which outlines some of the things that went on from a macro level, boiling it down to how it affected me and how I have immediately started to use the Thunderbird experience in my own life.

In short, our cohort came in at a spectacularly bad time in the economy. Many of us were forced out from our jobs or were otherwise let go. When we began, nearly all of us were employed. At one point during one trimester, however, 50% – 60% of us were “between jobs”. Some people confessed openly, others did not want anyone to know. Attitudes were extremely ugly because of these circumstances. Our spouses / partners were constantly questioning our decision to go to Thunderbird. Our remaining employers were balking at the time commitments. We struggled with issues affecting nearly all Americans – the loss of value in our investments, including our biggest one — our home.

As time progressed, though, we realized that the world did not end. The sky did not fall. And we survived.

Instead, many of us realized how very lucky we were to be present during such a dramatic time in recent history. We saw how our country and the world was adjusting to the widespread realization that life depends on being reliant on each other. In booming times, people look at the world with a telescope, whereas, in bad times, people tend to view the world with a microscope. We were lucky enough to see a world focused on itself and its own inadequacies instead of brushing them aside in favor of explosive growth.

We saw the realities of what it means to think globally and why an International MBA and a global mindset are now necessary… and how a domestic MBA has become antiquated and provincial. We saw that we were not alone in the global economy. We realized that we were never alone; we just can’t afford the rent on the blinders anymore, and so the truth becomes known.

For me, the experience has changed my life. From the two months I spent in Latin America before coming to class to the week spent in India, I’m not the same person I was when I entered the program. I think the best compliment I can pay is to tell you about what I have done with my education.

Using the education I received, I formed a startup based on my experience with the middle market in financial services. When I left my previous employer, just prior to entering Thunderbird, I resolved that I would not return back to financial planning until I invented a way to profitably help normal, everyday people and give them an unbelievably great experience that was once reserved only for the wealthy. In late 2009, I began to develop the concept and make good on my promise.

The EMBA staff graciously let us use an interview room part-time for a month or two as we sketched out ideas, talked frameworks, and typed out code snippets. There was no formal company, just a few ideas and best practices. When we reached the next stage, I formed a global team. I’d never managed a global team before, but quickly I learned that I was well-prepared with the soft skills and leadership to work with talent from other countries. I began to live the Thunderbird dream; all the crazy, strange things I studied now became my life. I learned from and taught my team, just as they learned from and taught me. Today, the company, Prosperlogic, and its core services are a mere two months away from launch.

We’re planning to help a lot of people — hundreds, perhaps thousands more than if I remained a private financial planner — thanks to a bit of creative “mad scientist” thinking, a global team of talented men and women, and one little misfit school that lit the flame which brought it all together so that I can take the “creating sustainable wealth” message out into the world.

It is I who thanks you for this privilege.

Lucas C. Wagner, CFP®
Thunderbird EMBA XIX

Phoenix, Arizona
Jan 6, 2011

Today’s Thunderbird Global Council meeting in Salzburg has helped push Vision 2020 a step further focusing on two critical issues:

1. How to measure impact.  Vision 2020 calls for a focus on “global impact” and a laser focus in educating individuals who can contribute to a thriving, sustainable and inclusive global economy. This requires that we begin to report publicly on the real impact we have.  The TGC is helping identify a set of indicators of impact to be included on our first “Impact Report”.

2. How to build a global community of learning and practice that will support global leaders throughout their careers and will empower them to create value in various ways through various cycles.  Such community should deliver at least three types of value: inspiration, insight, involvement; it should be both virtual and physical; it should be global in composition and focus; it should be flexible and self-organizing.

Great energy, great ideas.  I feel energized to take next steps.  And ready for the alumni reunion tomorrow in Bad Ischl.