<p>Obviously yale is on the same level as Stanford and Harvard in UG and possibly better in JD....so why is it ranked significantly lower in the MBA program? What makes Yale's "worse"?</p>
<p>search function is your friend.</p>
<p>try searching for “Yale SOM” in the MBA forum, this topic has been discussed at length on several threads.</p>
<p>short answer is age of program,</p>
<p>follow the_prestige’s advice for much more on this</p>
<p>Yale SOM (up until about a decade ago) did not issue the standard “MBA” degree, they offered the obscure “MPPM” degree (which I guess was supposed to be a combination of both an MBA and an MPA degree – but largely ended up being less than the sum of those parts). It was confusing, but was in line with Yale SOM’s general leaning which attracted a lot of public policy types.</p>
<p>That is the general reason it has languished for such a long time (plus its not that old of a program as storch said). Ever since switching to the much more broadly accepted MBA degree and a big push with regards to profiling their professors via major business media outlets (regularly on CNBC, WSJ, Businessweek, etc.) they have effectively shed the “public sector” label and have fully embraced the “private sector” if you will.</p>
<p>Much, much more if you do a search though.</p>
<p>A probable reason is the length of the programme’s existence. But some schools just don’t have enough talents and/or resources to develop a top-notched programme. Some failed to develop a name on some specific programmes. </p>
<p>Several years ago, Yale launched a very bold and expensive move to develop its science and engineering programmes. The university reported that over half a billion dollars will be invested for the said project. Yet 10 years have passed and Yale’s science and engineering programs are today what they were 10 years ago. In other words, Yale failed to develop its science and engineering programmes despite the lofty investments.</p>
<p>RML, I don’t have time to debunk all the falsities that you speak. However, the premise that Yale has “failed” and “cannot” develop its grad schools is wrong. For instance, the school of management now is ranked number 10 and just two years ago it was number 16.</p>
<p>^ Did I say Yale cannot develop a top-notched programme? It has a top-notched law school. It also has a top-notched undergraduate programme. All I was saying is that – it’s not that easy to develop a programme to become top-notched. It cannot solely bank on its strong law school or undergrad. It needs more than that. It needs to hire the right people and enough number of people. Develop an excellent curriculum. Build an awesome college structure and equip it with state of the arts and highly sophisticated facilities. Admit very competitive applicants and enough number of students. Continue to build its relationship with industries and so on.</p>
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<p>In addition to what others have said, I would add that MBA programs - much more so than probably any other educational program - are highly subject to network effects, of which I see two being the most salient. The first is the power of your alumni network - the more attractive your school, the better student body your school will attract, who will then graduate and form a powerful alumni network, which will then attract even better students who want to access that network, etc. {I happen to think that alumni networks are arguably the most valuable asset that MBA programs provide.} The second is the employer/student relationship: the better your school, the better students you attract, which then attracts better employers, which then attracts even better students, etc. </p>
<p>Yale SOM, just like any other young school, therefore has a problem in breaking into those cycles, simply because HBS and Stanford have large head-starts and have therefore accumulated powerful network effects. This is especially true in the case of alumni networks. Sure, Yale SOM can (and indeed has been able to) convince some top employers to enter the Yale on-campus recruiting system, as it’s not that expensive for a company to ‘multihome’ by opening a recruiting account at another school. But alumni networks are inherently monogamous and permanent. You can’t convince Michael Bloomberg to change his alumni affiliation from HBS to Yale SOM. He will always and forever be part of the HBS alumni network and never part of the Yale SOM network. </p>
<p>Hence, if all else were equal, somebody choosing between HBS and Yale SOM would rationally choose HBS simply for the access to the superior alumni network. That therefore means that those who go to SOM are only those students who weren’t good enough to get into HBS, which means that HBS’s alumni network would continue to improve relative to SOM’s, which makes HBS still more attractive, etc. Yale could combat that only by actually being better than HBS on other metrics, which would therefore mean building a better curriculum or brand, or charging less. But left to its own devices, the network effects will grind away.</p>
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<p>Sakky, as usual, your insights are great and interesting…
As an HBS grad yourself, what do you think should Yale do in order to compete with HWS?</p>
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<p>I think it’s a little more complicated than this or else how would Yale even move up from #16 to #10 in the last decade? It’s been shown that charging less actually makes a school less sought after because people perceive it to be of lesser quality.</p>
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<p>I tend to agree with the_prestige’s arguments on other threads that Yale has successfully managed to leverage its latent assets, particularly its general brand name and overall alumni network. The Yale SOM alumni network may not in itself be particularly impressive relative to that of other top B-schools, at least not yet, but the general Yale alumni network certainly is. Granted, such a general network is less useful within the MBA context than a purely management-focused network, but it’s still far better than nothing. </p>
<p>And besides, I don’t think that Yale’s rise to #10 is such an enigma anyway. After all, they don’t have to beat HBS to rise to #10, and they obviously still do not. All they have to do is beat whoever used to be ranked #11-15. Those schools probably don’t have strong network effects working in their favor anyway. After all, who belongs in that group of former #11-15? Carnegie-Mellon Tepper? I’m quite certain that Yale’s overall alumni network is superior to CMU’s despite the fact that it isn’t management focused. </p>
<p>But the general point is that network effects, while tremendously powerful, are not invincible. You can brake a competitor’s network effects and have the market tip towards you - Microsoft has done so numerous times throughout its history (although, granted, perhaps through resorting to illegal tactics). But it’s hard. </p>
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<p>That’s where some savvy marketing strategy comes in. The ostensible sticker price can remain high as a signal to the market. What you then do is provide a large discount to certain admittees that you really want - basically a merit scholarship. You then simply don’t announce exactly how many of your students actually receive those scholarships. Maybe almost all of them receive one. But you leave that fact ambiguous. Hence, the market thinks that your cost is high, hence imputing high quality, but in reality, the cost is quite low. </p>
<p>What makes such a strategy even more attractive to the students is that you provide them with a strong prestige fillip in addition to the financial boon. Let’s face it, people want to be able to boast that they won a cool sounding scholarship, even if there is no money attached to it. I’d like to be able to list that I was a “Yale Management Honors Scholar” (or some other similar high-falutin’ title) on my resume, even if it didn’t actually come with any financial benefit. Never underestimate the power of social status in terms of shaping behavior.</p>
<p>I just listened to an interview on BBC with an author who was educated at Cambridge and then went on to Harvard Business School. He graduated in 2006 and has been studying B- school graduates and interviewing them for his recently released book on the culture of American B schools.
He praised the Yale effort to change the dynamic of business school culture, and claimed that HBS and the other usual suspects were very closed minded in their approach to graduate business education. There is no emphasis on sales and marketing, he claims, and way to much of a premium on speculation investing and hedge fund operations. He said that Yale was breaking the mold, and teaching business managers to know their sales force, know their workforce and actual go out and produce a product that people will not only buy, but benefit from as well.
He also pointed out that about half of the graduates will not really get the return on the investment that they are looking for, and that they could have received similar results at a much lower cost… however this is negated by the fact that most attendees of HBS are not exactly coming from a background of financial stress. He did point out that American businesses will hire individuals based on the HBS line on a resume regardless of the level of intellectual acumen an individual holds.
It was not a total knock on the HBS/Wharton crowd… but was definitely a discourse on the need to adjust the curriculum at these top schools in order to produce a management force that can adapt to today’s global economy. Turning out hedge fund mangers one after another is not truly preparing our business leaders for the future of American business.<br>
Very interesting stuff, especially for someone attending a business school that pales in comparison to these other schools (both in prestige and price tag).</p>
<p>I too have been impressed by Yale’s revamp of the curriculum. I tend to think that that represents the cutting edge of what MBA education ought to be. I certainly agree that innovations in curricula are another way to brake competitors’ network effects. </p>
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<p>But the real problem is that those are the jobs that MBA students wanted, because they paid so well. The truth of the matter is that, for quite a while now, people were paid far more to allocate capital or render advice than in actually developing products or managing organizations. Even at HBS, the consensus leader of General Management as a distinct subdiscipline, few students actually take jobs in general management upon graduation. The vast majority instead take jobs in consulting or finance. </p>
<p>If general management jobs actually paid better, then MBA students would surely take them.</p>