Article: Great student experience: Paul Danos

Campus Recruitment

Great student experience: Paul Danos

Paul Danos, Dean, Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth University, talks about creating experiences that last
Great student experience: Paul Danos
 

A great business school offers a bundle of experiences to students including learning, networking and corporate exposure

 

A great business school must do many things right, and most of those things take many years and even decades to perfect. One important long-term process is how to attract the very best students. A school builds a reputation over time and that reputation is what brings in the right students. Outstanding faculty, the key asset of any school, also takes years to recruit and develop. The administration of a school must arrange incentives to constantly foster great student experiences and to recruit the kind of faculty who will have a major impact on practice through research and writing.

In enabling an excellent education experience, a great business school offers a bundle of experiences to students including learning, networking, and corporate exposure. Learning is critical to an excellent experience, and here there are many modes of learning: student-to-student, where students’ work experience is a key; faculty-to-student, where faculty expertise is so important; and experiential, such as projects, where the challenge of the project determines the learning.
Further, networks and a helpful group of alumni are few of the most valuable assets that come with the MBA. The quality of the alumni career achievements, alumni’s willingness to help and alumni financial support are important considerations. Corporate support adds to this and comes in many forms including, assistance in course materials and visiting executives; faculty research and case writing; employment of students and financial support.

Diverse sources of revenue is another critical factor, as a great business school cannot compete at the highest level if it depends only on tuition for all or a large percentage of its revenues. A great business school needs the support of alumni and others to make every student of every program a top priority. Therefore, revenue sources other than tuition are essential including annual giving, endowment earnings, executive education, publishing, licensing fees, etc.
Continuous improvement of curriculum is cardinal to meet the needs of future business leaders. This entails continuous monitoring of business and constant questioning of which set of skills are needed to keep the graduates at the forefront of the industry today.

Tuck does very well on all of these factors, but I believe that its distinguishing characteristic is the student access dimension. Students at Tuck get unprecedented access to thought leading faculty, with many small-scale classes. They get unparalleled access to their fellow students through living and learning together. Our alumni is helpful and very involved, leading to the highest giving rate of any business school. Our corporate relations are excellent, with employment rates that lead the world.
 

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Topics: Campus Recruitment, Strategic HR, C-Suite

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