Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/269179
30 March/April 2014 BizEd ket makes a difference. Imagine you are a professor going to work in a remote place in the U.S. where very few universities are located. If you don't get tenure, it may be very dif- ficult to find a new job in the same area. But if you go to work in New York City, there are many universi- ties. Such a dense market facilitates job switching. That's increasingly the case in Asia. As the market gets thicker in Asia, academics are more willing to come here. On global student recruitment If you look at the latest GMAC data, you'll see that the number of students taking the GMAT is declining in the U.S., but it's grow- ing in this part of the world. Stu- dents are choosing business schools in Asia such as NUS Business School even though they have good opportunities in the U.S. The reason? Which part of the world is growing fast? Asia. Where will students be able to fast-track their careers? Most likely in Asia. If students train at top business schools in this part of the world, they'll get the connections and knowledge that will help them succeed here. There is what I call a label- ling effect among students and employers, where top U.S. schools have tended to have more of an advantage. If employers wanted to hire someone in finance, they might want a graduate of the Uni- versity of Chicago. If they wanted general management, they might want someone from Harvard. But as Asian schools keep rising in the rankings, the advantage that top schools in the U.S. have is disap- pearing. Leading Asian business schools are attracting students globally. At NUS Business School, 10 to 15 percent of our students now come from the West. On classroom diversity Like all business schools, we con- sciously pay attention to diversity. We want our classrooms to integrate students from all over the world. One way we help our students interact with one another is by giv- ing them total responsibility for a part of the program. We let them run this program together and sup- port them, but we do not interfere. For instance, each year our students run an international case competi- tion called Cerebration, in which some 650 teams from around the world participate. Our students are responsible for arranging corporate sponsorships, as well as partici- pants' hotel accommodations and plane tickets. They even write their own cases. Students from a range of countries—including Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, China, Singapore, and India—must learn to work together. On finding Asia-centric cases Do we have a lot of Harvard- like cases that focus specifically on Asia? Only a few, but they are growing in number. Do we have meaningful data to sup- port vibrant, robust classroom exchanges? Definitely. Like other business schools, we encourage our faculty to use "caselets" drawn from current clinical information to provide our students with an understanding of the Asian market, as well as help them develop criti- cal thinking, decision making, lead- ership, and management skills that fit our market context. We also ask students to develop their own cases. In Singapore, we have the Enterprise 50 Awards (E50), an annual list of the top 50 small and medium enterprises. Our school has an agreement with E50 organizers for our students to shadow these entrepreneurs. The students then write three papers: a consultant report for the entre- preneur's consumption, a class report for the instructor's con- sumption, and a reflection report that describes what the student has learned on his or her personal journey. Each year, selected student reports are published in Singapore's Business Times newspaper. We then compile these reports into books—we have produced five books so far. The entrepreneurs also buy these books, with the pro- ceeds going to charity and funding scholarships. In this way, our stu- dents are contributing to learning in society. This kind of activity isn't just happening at NUS. Many schools in Asia are developing innova- tive approaches. Our mission is not to copy Harvard, Chicago, or Stanford. Rather, we are daring to define what a leading business school should be in Asia. Biggest hope or fear for the next five years My fear is that we will become complacent. But my hope is that we recognize our responsibility and develop a sense of purpose. Our schools must support the economic renaissance of this part of the world. By developing the right culture, Asian business schools can transform themselves from successful organiza- tions into significant organizations. That is what we strive to be. Haub School of Business | Saint Joseph's University | 5600 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19131 Haub has it. No. 4 out of 1,500 business schools for best return on investment. —Payscale sju.edu/haub Haub School of Business MKCOM5643_SHD010R-Biz Ed Ad_012114.indd 1 1/23/14 4:41 PM