<p>the prestige, </p>
<p>5 years ago, Haas can hardly crack the top 10. Haas was just ranked number 10 - 15. 5 years ago Yale was ranked just about where Haas was as well. Now, 5 years have gone and look where they are now – Haas solid top 10, and Yale solid top 15. What reason does Yale SOM has to outrank Berkeley-Haas in the future that you think it’s inevitable to happen? The Yale name? Then why is Oxford MBA still what it was 5 or so years ago??? Go figure.</p>
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<p>Granted, it’s not my wager, but I think that proposed bet is rather slanted. I suspect that Yale SOM may indeed exceed Haas’s ranking in one year’s USNews ranking merely due to the sheer volatility of the rankings. Recall that Caltech was ranked #1 (with no ties) in the undergraduate rankings for a single year - a notion that even my brother (a Caltech grad) finds difficult to accept. I think a more fair bet would be one that measures the aggregated rankings of the two schools over a period of time, say from now to 2015, perhaps back-weighted to account for Haas’s current head-start.</p>
<p>Oh boy, what do we have here? </p>
<p>Breaking news: **Yale SOM names Chicago Booth’s Dean as New Head:
**
[Yale</a> Names Chicago Dean Snyder to Run Business School (Update1) - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)
[Yale</a> Daily News - SOM taps outgoing Chicago Dean](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/01/20/som-taps-outgoing-chicago-dean/]Yale”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/01/20/som-taps-outgoing-chicago-dean/)</p>
<p>Here is an excerpt from the BusinessWeek article:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m telling you folks – Yale is on the rise (and has been for the last few years – and this proves that its not a coincidence or an accident). This breaking story is exactly what I am talking about folks – it is the perfect example of an institution looking to make waves and make big moves. A sleeping giant has woken up, and Yale is playing for keeps. Yale isn’t going to be satisfied with no. 10. They want to be one of the big dogs. And as I’ve always said, what’s stopping them? Time and effort. Well, they certainly have shown effort, so it’s really a matter of time IMO.</p>
<p>I had no idea this story was in the works – imagine my surprise (well, not really “surprise” as it fits what I have been saying all along) when I woke up, logged onto Bloomberg, and saw this headline on Top Stories: Yale Names Chicago Dean to Run Business School. I just sipped my coffee and smiled a tiny bit).</p>
<p>This is huge boost IMO. This is the guy that orchestrated the historic Booth donation while at Chicago.</p>
<p>Here is another small story that may have slipped by you over the winter break:
[Yale</a> Alumnus Gives Lucky $8,888,888 for Business School - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg)</p>
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</p>
<p>Why complicate things unnecessarily? In five years, who is ranked higher? Simple. Besides, the vagaries of any ranking in any given year goes both ways – it’s just as easy that in any given year Haas gets an abnormal boost up or that SOM experiences an abnormal dip down. I’m not talking about a temporary trend or one off situation. I’m stating clearly that Yale SOM will pass Haas in the rankings by 2015.</p>
<p>And to state it even clearer: that SOM will stay consistently ahead of Haas from that point onward. I feel like I am handcuffing myself by limiting it to a 5 year deadline (since I truly believe that it really is only a matter of time until this becomes a reality – the time limit just makes thing more interesting IMO).</p>
<p>So the question is simple: who’s on top in 2015, Haas or SOM?</p>
<p>SOM for my money.</p>
<p>To be fair, Yale is famous for people who want to become a political leader or a lawyer. My impression is that lots of American people want to be a leader or a lawyer. I guess that is why Yale is so prestigious in America. Yale’s other top-notched programs include history, English, and some arts and humanity programs. Its science programs are excellent, but not as strong as Berkeley’s. Its social science programs are strong too, but can not compete with Berkeley’s. Engineering is Yale’s weakest area, falls far behind Berkeley’s.</p>
<p>In terms of graduate school departments, Berkeley is second to none if we exclude professional schools. In terms of faculty strength, Berkeley rivals Stanford and Harvard, and easily beats Yale.</p>
<p>The more I think about it, this move is kind of a game changer folks.</p>
<p>It’s like an up and coming football program from a brand name institution hiring the Urban Meyer / Nick Saban / Pete Carroll of his peer group to run the program – the guy is a rock star in the B-School community. Now he’s got the commitment / backing from a powerful institution, an elite name to market PLUS momentum to take the program to the next level.</p>
<p>For the last several years, I have been saying on this very site that SOM was a tremendous way to get in on the ground floor to a program who’s star is on the rise – with the added upside of being able to tap a very powerful alumni network. Well, that window is closing very fast folks. Buy low time is basically over, this stock is poised to take off.</p>
<p>datalook, all points well noted. </p>
<p>I give full props to the strong caliber of Cal’s grad programs (esp. in the hard sciences, the quality of faculty, research output, etc.)…</p>
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<p>…having said that, we are indeed discussing professional schools. And head to head, Yale beats Cal. Yale’s law school is consistently the no. 1 ranked program in the US, its med school is a Top 5 program, and now its b-school is poised to take off.</p>
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<p>But that’s not what you said in your original proposal, which was:</p>
<p>“If at any time from now until and including 2015’s ranking SOM ranks ahead of Haas, I win.” (emphasis mine)</p>
<p>In other words, if Yale SOM outranks Haas in this year’s upcoming ranking, but then does horribly from that point on, you would still win, because you said “if at any time…SOM ranks ahead of Haas”. In other words, you’ve stacked the deck in your favor, for SOM would only need to pull a one-off. </p>
<p>Now, if you want to stand by your current proposal, then I would agree that that would be fair.</p>
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<p>I agree this is a fair proposal, and makes things interesting IMO.</p>
<p>In terms of professional schools, Yale is about equal to Berkeley.</p>
<p>For law school, Yale > Berkeley
For business school, Berkeley > Yale
For medical school, Yale > Berkeley ( Berkeley does not have one)
For education school, Berkeley > Yale (Yale does not have one)
For engineering school, Berkeley > Yale</p>
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</p>
<p>So then what are you afraid of? Accept the challenge.</p>
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</p>
<p>Education school? Let’s stick to the Big 3 plus engineering then.</p>
<p>Law: Yale > Cal
Business: Cal > Yale (this is my ace in the hole)
Med: Yal > Cal
Eng: Cal > Yale</p>
<p>2-2.</p>
<p>We are tied with b-school being the tie-breaker, because, Cal ain’t getting a medical school any time soon, Yale’s engineering isn’t going to overtake Cal just as Cal is not going to overtake Yale in law.</p>
<p>It comes down to the MBA program.</p>
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<p>Well, actually, I have to take the opposite tack. The truth is, the stench of the shocking Joel Podolny resignation still wafts from New Haven. It would have been understandable if Podolny resigned to take an administrative position at another school, but to resign for ‘Apple University’ (whatever that is) is, frankly, embarrassing. </p>
<p>Furthermore, while I don’t want to be overly critical of Ted Snyder and his undoubtedly excellent fund-raising capabilities, the fact is, he’s not a true modern-day business academic and never has been. He hasn’t published a single peer-reviewed paper since 1997 (note: book reviews and working papers do not count as peer-reviewed papers). Furthermore, he’s only published a grand total of eight academic papers in peer-reviewed journals in his entire career, only 4 as clear first author (and only 1 as single author), with not a single such paper ever appearing in an A-level journal. {Heck, I never even heard of some of the journals his papers have appeared in, and I think I’m fairly apprised of these issues.} More importantly, only a single paper of his - the 1991 paper in J. of Law, Economics and Organizations of which he was 1 of 3 authors - could be even considered to be impactful in terms of citation count. </p>
<p>As a point of reference, Podolny’s 1993 single-author paper in ASQ (an A-level journal) has garnered more cites than all of Snyder’s papers combined, including papers where he was a member of a team of authors and hence deserves only partial credit for the total cite count. Sharon Oster, while no Podolny, nevertheless had a better publication record than Snyder did, having at least successfully published in a few A-level journals. In fact, I know assistant professors, arguably even a few graduate students, who have better publication records than he does. Frankly speaking, somebody with a similar publication record would be highly unlikely to pass tenure review at a top B-school nowadays. </p>
<p>To be fair, Snyder was tenured during the old days of management academia when you didn’t really need an erudite publication record to be tenured, or, heck, sometimes didn’t even need to publish at all. Nevertheless, Snyder is clearly not in the same category of academic as Podolny (who truly was a rock star) or even Oster, and therefore probably won’t be able to bolster Yale SOM’s academic capabilities, which I consider to be the school’s greatest weakness. Like I said before, I can’t think of a single professional reason why somebody in management academia would choose Yale SOM over Haas, and Snyder’s appointment does nothing to change that - arguably, makes it worse. </p>
<p>{Now, we can argue about whether management academia ought to be placing such a high emphasis on peer-reviewed papers, top journals, and overall publication records at all, or whether B-schools were better served with the older promotion ladder that emphasized practitioner acumen and teaching skills. But that’s a discussion for another time, for the fact is, whether we like it or not, success in management academia is nowadays and for the foreseeable future predominantly predicated on publication in top-tier journals.} </p>
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<p>I’m afraid Ted Snyder is not considered to be a rock star in the B-school community, at least according to the current academic criteria that has become prevalent in the management academic world as mentioned in the above discussion. Only a single paper of his has been reasonably influential, and that paper was written with two other authors with which he must share credit. Certainly he cannot match the indisputable rock-star status of Podolny, who has 5-8 heavily cited papers (depending on how you measure ‘heavily cited’), 3 of which were single-authored. </p>
<p>To reiterate, we can discuss whether academic criteria should predominate the zeitgeist of management academia as much as it does. Yet whether we like it or not, such is the new reality of management academia. New management scholars spend far more time worrying about theirs and others’ academic publication records than teaching evaluations or, frankly, practical knowledge of business. </p>
<p>A school such as Chicago GSB can be successful under Snyder because Chicago already has a well-established reputation for research, in the same manner that HBS can succeed under the leadership of Jay Light (who has never published a single peer-reviewed academic paper, having been promoted under the old HBS system). Chicago GSB simply needed somebody to raise funds, a skill which Snyder clearly has tremendous acumen. But Yale SOM is different. They need to bolster their research apparatus, a task for which Snyder is ill-suited.</p>
<p>Hence, I don’t think the comparison of Snyder to Urban Meyer, Nick Saban, or Pete Carroll are apropos. If anything, Yale SOM had a Meyer/Saban/Carroll in Podolny, and now they’ve perhaps replaced him with a potential Charlie Weis who, while successful in his prior position, does not really address the school’s most glaring weaknesses. {Weis should have stayed in the NFL, where he could play to his strengths.} </p>
<p>Note, none of this is to say that Yale SOM won’t still nevertheless rise in the rankings. They may well do so. However, I venture to argue that Yale SOM was a far greater threat to do so under the leadership of Podolny than Snyder.</p>
<p>This whole discussion has spurred me to examine the CV’s of the deans of all of the top B-schools and (subjectively) assess the CV’s and academic credibility of each of them.</p>
<p>Stanford GSB: Garth Saloner, economist (specializing in competitive strategy and industrial organization), with numerous papers in A-level journals including AER and RAND. His first and probably best paper (Farrell & Saloner 1985) is one of the most heavily cited papers in the history of AER. </p>
<p>Haas - Richard Lyons: financial theorist on currency markets, with a whole slew of papers in JFE, J. of Finance, and AER. </p>
<p>Wharton - Tom Robertson:marketing theorist specializing in marketing strategy and diffusion (virality), with a number of papers in Marketing Science and J. of Marketing. </p>
<p>MIT Sloan - Dave Schmittlein: operations research theory, particularly in statistical forecast theory. Papers in ASQ and (especially) Management Science. </p>
<p>NW Kellogg - Dipak Jain: Pricing theory, with papers in Marketing Science and J. of Marketing.</p>
<p>Chicago GSB - remains to be seen who the replacement is</p>
<p>Columbia GSB - Glenn Hubbard - macroeconomist with papers in seemingly all of the A-level economics journals, including AER, QJE, and JPE. </p>
<p>Dartmouth Tuck: Paul Danos, accounting theorist, but with only 3 papers (but all in A-level journals). </p>
<p>HBS - Jay Light* - not a real academic</p>
<p>*Yet it should be noted that Jay Light is retiring this year. Rumor has it, his replacement will be Rebecca Henderson or Srikant Datar: star academics both. Light was merely a stopgap dean picked as a compromise choice after the departure of the widely respected strategy theorist Kim Clark. </p>
<p>Hence, of all of the top-ranked B-schools, excluding Chicago and its current ‘headless’ state, all of them but for the notable exception of HBS are currently headed by a respected academic, especially Columbia and Stanford, who are led by undisputed stars. Excluding Light, Snyder is probably the least academically oriented of all of them except perhaps for Danos; whether 8 papers in lesser journals is equal to 3 papers in A-level journals is debatable. </p>
<p>Again, none of this is to say that B-schools should place the heavy emphasis on academic publications that they currently do. However, like it or not, such is the state of management academia currently and for the foreseeable future.</p>
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<p>But let’s stop and examine that thought right there.</p>
<p>The President of a University, Dean of a B-School – although it won’t be highlighted in their official respective job descriptions – fund raising / marketing is absolutely a critical component to their respective mandates (I’d argue its THE most important).</p>
<p>Is it nice if you have a skilled fundraiser AND critically acclaimed academic? No question. But if you had to choose one skill, it’s fundraising / marketing – because the faculty is where the brains should be, as a leader, your job is to make sure that your faculty is filled to the brim with the best minds – its nice if you are one of them but its not necessary. You just need to bring them in – with a deep pocket book at his disposal, why won’t he be able to do this?</p>
<p>Next. Marketing. Now one of the biggest problem I’ve had with BusinessWeek’s MBA rankings (amongst other things) was that its no. 1 ranking was always so fickle and unpredictable. Chicago Booth’s recent no. 1 ranking (to me) has a lot to do with savvy marketing and that can be credited at least in part to Synder.</p>
<p>In other words, even if he doesn’t publish a single academic paper while leading SOM, Snyder was brought in for a specific purpose: bringing in money, talent and boosting SOM’s image (via rankings or otherwise). There is no reason to believe he won’t be a runaway success in doing so.</p>
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<p>But this makes perfect sense to me.</p>
<p>Those schools / programs in the M7 have already “arrived”. They don’t need to spend an inordinate amount of time, money and energy marketing their names. The fact that the M7 leadership across the board look fairly homologous, then, shouldn’t be a surprise – they are competing amongst one another – they are “peers”. Their current mandates are not the same as an SOM.</p>
<p>When you are an outsider / upstart, you HAVE to do things a little different. Why? Because by definition, if you want to change the status quo, you have to do something different. You can’t just do what the M7 are doing if you expect to displace one of them or try to expand the pie to an “M8”. You’ve got to make moves. Doing the same thing will have you running in place rather than moving forward. You can’t just have yet another academic run things and expect you will magically get to the next level. No, you go the other way. You hire an aggressive marketer and fundraiser. Some one who will make waves and shake up the place.</p>
<p>Again, I think this is absolutely the perfect hire for SOM.</p>
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<p>I’m afraid I still have to disagree: in my opinion, the perfect hire for SOM was Podolny, for reasons explained below. Now he’s gone. </p>
<p>Again, the anointment of Snyder is not going to impress anybody within the ranks of management academia. Nobody within those ranks is going to be swayed by Snyder regarding the commitment of Yale SOM to becoming a research dynamo; in fact, the opposite is true.* Yet academic credibility is one feature - arguably the only feature - that SOM lacks towards becoming a truly elite B-school. Everybody knows about the Yale general brand name and the alumni base, but that does not impress those in academia.* SOM lacks truly world-class faculty and research, and that is precisely the one problem that Snyder is least likely to be able to fix. </p>
<p>What you seem to be talking about is a complete upending of the current system of management academia and its emphasis on research. If that’s truly the strategy that SOM is attempting to conduct, then I wish SOM good luck with that, for many have tried and they’ve all heretofore failed. If anything, B-school research is becoming more prominent, not less. SOM is considered to be a (relative) backwater for star new management scholars who would rather place at Haas, or even the Yale Department of Economics,* and I don’t see that changing anytime soon if SOM doesn’t bolster its research credibility. </p>
<p>Podolny provided an instant academic credibility boost to SOM. Podolny was able to convince a number of star young scholars to choose SOM (who, I’ve heard, have now either left or are considering leaving). And - as you have pointed out - SOM become a USNews top 10 school under Podolny’s leadership. Now he’s gone. More importantly, SOM’s new emphasis on research under Podolny was clearly paying dividends, and now it seems as if SOM is going in a different direction. </p>
<p>*Again, whether that’s how management academia should behave is a different story; I’m just telling you how it is.</p>
<p>Given Yale’s deep pockets (and willingness to use them), attracting and keeping elite faculty will not be an issue.</p>
<p>And any rate, we’ll see. It will be interesting to see it unfold over the next few years.</p>
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<p>That was also the case 5 years ago. Yet I still find it to not be a coincidence that only under the reign of Podolny - the most academically respected dean in the history of SOM (and arguably the most academically respected of any professor in the history of SOM) - did SOM attain the highest ranking ever. Granted, the sample size is small - the school has only been around for 35 years and the rankings have been around for less than that - so the correlation may be purely coincidental. Nevertheless, the evidence is suggestive. </p>
<p>It should also be said that star faculty members - even of business faculty - are notoriously indifferent to appeals to salary. Star faculty could easily make far more in the private sector if that’s what they wanted (and many do exactly that through their side consulting). What they crave is academic recognition from their peers, and that’s only to be gained via research prominence. If SOM were to develop a reputation for not really caring about research, that would only serve to drive the best scholars away, regardless of what they might pay.</p>
<p>Sakky;</p>
<p>referring to a prior post:
If one were going into finance and had quant skills and a few years work exp., how do you think the top finance masters (let’s say Princeton, Sloan, Haas) stack up vs the top MBAs (HSW)?</p>
<p>Also, it’s not entirely surprising that theprestige hasn’t run into haas mfe grads because they graduate such a small class (60) relative to MBA programs.</p>