Stanford to let students tailor MBA studies
Borrowing a page from the Internet industries it helped spawn, the Stanford Graduate School of Business is redesigning its MBA curriculum around individual students.
The new customized education model, set to be unveiled today, represents the most far-reaching business curriculum changes in the past 30 years at Stanford, said Garth Saloner , chairman of the 11-person task force that recommended the changes. The elite Palo Alto, Calif., institution, which has spun off high-tech companies such as
``We, like many schools, now admit students that have a huge diversity of backgrounds and experience," Saloner said , noting that the school's MBA candidates range from those who have worked on Wall Street for years to people fresh out of the Peace Corps. ``But we've pretty much been putting them through a one-size-fits-all program."
Starting in the fall of 2007, however, Stanford's curriculum will be tailored to each student. Students will have no required courses after a common program in the first quarter. Instead, they'll be able to choose from a menu of courses in traditional core disciplines such as finance, operations, and marketing. Students new to the business world can learn the basics of financing in one course, for instance, while hedge fund veterans can explore higher-level issues in another.
In their first quarter, incoming MBA students will take seminars with faculty members who will become their academic advisers and help them assemble a set of electives to cover specialty skills such as negotiations or sectors like healthcare. Stanford also will add a ``global context of management" course and underwrite an international studies or internship program for all students in their first year.
Stanford's business school faculty approved the proposed changes on May 24, though they are being revealed publicly for the first time today. ``If we're successful, I really do think this is something other schools will emulate," said Saloner, a Stanford business professor who is director of the school's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.
Saloner said the customization move plays to the strength of Stanford's relatively small size. The school admits about 375 MBA candidates each fall, about the same number as MIT's Sloan School of Management. Harvard Business School, by contrast, admits 900.
One high-tech chief executive said the curriculum changes at Stanford parallel the changes in content being fueled by the Internet across a number of industries. ``The concept, I think, is excellent," said Ralph Folz , CEO of Molecular Inc., a technology consulting firm in Watertown. ``That's exactly what's going on on the Web with a much more customized and bite-sized approach to content. It's happening in publishing, it's definitely happening in television. Everyone's trying to deliver the right content to the right person at the right time."
Other business school leaders were already buzzing yesterday about the anticipated curriculum changes at Stanford.
``This is clearly a very thoughtful program," said Richard L. Schmalensee , dean of the MIT Sloan School in Cambridge. ``We expect to learn from it. Who knows? We may copy some of it."
At the same time, Schmalensee noted that Sloan already has been moving in a similar direction in customization, reducing its core curriculum requirements to one semester several years ago.
Harvard Business School spokesman Jim Aisner wouldn't comment specifically on the Stanford changes. But he noted that Harvard is continuing to reevaluate and upgrade its own program.
``We're always changing the way the engine's running," Aisner said. ``There are constant changes and tweaks in our curriculum, though the larger overhauls take place over a longer time frame. This is a unique institution, and there's lots of advantages of having the size and scope of 900 students in each class."
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com. 
