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YourTurn The GHP ("Great Homogenization Process") Are we in danger of commoditizing the 100,000 MBA degrees awarded each year? I think we are. Across the community of full-time, residential MBA programs (including my own institution), the GHP is at work— the Great Homogenization Process. We see the GHP at work every day, the result of a number of simi- lar, converging forces. Excluding the handful of MBA programs with a historically anchored brand name, the characteristics that distinguish most MBA programs are the same: size, alumni, price, and location. Likewise, most MBA programs pur- sue the same goals, such as greater globalization, more diversity, and more valuable alliances, as well as the incubation of business startups and the construction of state-of-the- art facilities. To achieve these goals, school by Mark E. Haskins Schools often compete for the same faculty, students, and corporate friends. Professors select course materials from the same directory of publishers and frequently exchange course syllabi. Case-orient- ed programs introduce lec- tures to clarify concepts, while lecture-oriented programs introduce cases to exemplify practice. None of these factors, if taken tunity to create substantive yet distinctive programs that contribute to a school's long-term sustain- able success. In the spirit of this business schools. First, we might target our class representatives visit each others' campuses and Web sites to "borrow" good ideas. They conduct bench- marking studies of other institutions' programs, comparing them to their own. Consortia are formed to pro- vide face-to-face opportunities for sharing information. Accrediting agencies impose similar criteria on the schools they visit. Deans devour the latest business-press rankings and find themselves driven to an identical set of scorecard metrics. But the GHP doesn't stop there. It affects admissions brochures, which are laden with generalities, promising similar-sounding experi- ences through "innovative pro- grams," "leadership development" or "international opportunities." 54 BizEd JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2003 alone, are necessarily to be avoided. It's natural to trade ideas with one's colleagues and seek to improve one's product. But when stacked on top of each other, these factors cre- ate an ex panding arena of similar practices, phil osophies, and pur - poses. It's not as if we're adapting ideas from other industries to our businesses, as Ford Motor Co. might do with lessons learned from Wal-Mart. We're all in the same business. We're all selling MBAs. By borrowing each others' ideas and mimicking each others' practices, we preempt differentiation between programs. We create not a robust and vibrant community of unique MBA programs, but rather a wide- spread, indistinguishable sameness. At one level, the GHP may appear to be inevitable. After all, the risks and rewards of crafting dis- tinctive MBA program features are problematic. Even modestly success- ful differentiations in an MBA pro- gram have historically been hard to defend and often do not contribute to a business school's pursuit of competitive advantage. For the bulk of MBA programs, idea, I can suggest four areas that offer avenues for differentiation among profiles. A diverse student body encourages rich interactions among students; but it also affects course content, and not always in a positive way. Like many professors, I current- ly teach students with a variety of learning styles, talents, personalities, career levels, life experiences, and nationalities. To design each course so that each student has the poten- tial to achieve the course's learning objectives, I must create classes that are more general than I would with a more targeted group. But what if schools geared their admissions processes to select stu- dents according to only one, two, or three very specific profiles, instead of assembling a class of students with a mixed, broad array of attributes as is commonly done? Under this model, professors could tailor courses to the learning needs of specific student groups. For example, I would design a very different accounting course for a classroom of international stu- dents who are visual learners with humanities backgrounds than I would for a classroom of American students who are kinesthetic learners with science backgrounds. Such differentiation, of course, however, an unexplored challenge exists: to break the mold from which most modern MBA programs are created. We should seize the oppor- poses some challenges. Different programs might need to vary in length to accommodate different student groups. Faculty would need to design learning experiences and