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"My hopes are that the students will have a broader perspective, not just on microfinance, but on what it's like to be running a small business by the shoestrings when your family depends on it to eat."—Edwin Brands, adjunct professor, University of Iowa engineers who were with us also belong to a group called Engineers for a Sustainable World," says Brands. In fact, Wuerth thinks that interest in microfinance has been driven at some schools by the students themselves. "The students are the ones who have a sense of wanting to do good and do well at the same time," she says. She believes many students of this generation are committed to a strong community and a better world, unlike students of previous generations who all wanted to be Wall Street analysts. "It seems the pendulum is swinging the other way," she says. Mainstreaming Microfinance At the Asian Institute of Management, a variety of micro- finance initiatives have been designed with the goal of appealing to both practitioners who need expertise and MBA students who need an introduction to the field. "Our first objective is to strengthen the management capacity of existing microfinance institutions in our country," says AIM's Ronald Chua. "Our second is to 'plant the seeds' of interest in microfinance into AIM's programs and courses, particu- larly its degree programs." To meet the needs of practitioners, the school has launched an 18-month microfinance track in its master in entrepreneurship degree program. Participants are often heads of microfinance institutions or responsible for a profit center at such an organization. AIM has also devel- oped a suite of short management courses designed for senior managers of microfinance institutions and covering topics such as strategic planning and implementation, human resource management, marketing to the bottom of the pyramid, and microfinance in hard-to-reach areas. Some of the microfinance cases studied in these man- agement courses also can be used in AIM's other degree programs. For instance, Chua teaches a mainstream "Banking with the Poor" elective that is designed to inter- est AIM's MBA students in microfinance—and it's work- ing. Most recently, out of a class of 99 MBA students, 27 enrolled in a microfinance elective. Some of AIM's microfinance programs have been made possible by seed money given by the Microfinance Management Institute (MFMI), which has funded a three- year research grant. AIM is one of a handful of schools that has become an MBA Project Partner with MFMI and offers courses dedicated to creating and diversifying the body of knowledge on microfinance. Other students who exhibit an interest in microfinance are from countries where such programs are successful, she notes. "Many of our Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi students know all about microfinance," says Wuerth. "The more global a business school is, the more microfinance will be known to its students." To Harvard's Chu, it's not so obvious that the sustainable development crowd is leading the microfinance charge, but he suspects that's because of the way Harvard teaches the topic. He says, "For example, in our microfinance executive education course, we look at corporate strategy, emerging markets, competition against multinationals, profit, growth, and control. From that perspective, it's about understanding how to manage effectively in an industry that serves the low- income segment. But you could take a different approach and look at microfinance from the perspective of sustainable development and social impact, and you would look at com- pletely different cases." A World of Good No matter how they are structured, microfinance programs meet several key criteria for business schools. They offer schools opportunities to become involved in their communi- ties and to participate in the global economy. They also give management students a chance to see the power of business to change the world. Even so, experts know that microfi- nance will not solve all the problems of the world—or even all the problems of the poor. "Access to financial services is necessary and important, but it is not enough to lift people out of poverty," says AIM's Chua. "A problem arises when people expect microfinance to be a silver bullet." Today's microfinance programs aren't even scratching the surface of the potential, Brands says. "In India alone there are 300 million people below or at the poverty line, and only four or five million are being served by microfi- nance," he says. The numbers are growing, however. "In the 2006 Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax last November, it was an- nounced that the goal of reaching 100,000 million poor women worldwide with microfinance was achieved in 2006," says Chua. "The new goal is to reach 175 million poor wom- en by 2015 and move 100 million of them out of poverty." That leaves a lot of room for business—and business schools—to maneuver. Business schools that want to par- ticipate in the microfinance revolution should identify their goals, pick their models, refine their approaches, and roll up their sleeves. There's plenty of work to be done. ■ z BizEd MAY/JUNE 2007 31