Innovation is the key to future growth.
Yash Gupta, Dean of the USC Marshall School of Business, called on the Los Angeles community to join the business school in helping educate and train the next generation of executives.
“We need to bring the outside in,” Dean Gupta told members of the Los Angeles Economic Development Council. He called on businesses to form strategic partnerships with the business school to offer internships and mentoring programs, and to bring successful executives to campus as professors, visitors, and recruiters.
“We want to make sure that your needs are satisfied. We need to produce the business leaders of tomorrow together,” Dean Gupta commented. To keep the curriculum relevant, the USC Marshall School of Business is re-designing its courses. By the fall 2005 semester, the new curriculum will cross academic disciplines, with an emphasis on technology, science, and innovation.
Dramatic changes in population trends, economies, and technology are also requiring business schools to redesign their programs, Dean Gupta told the gathering.
“Future growth is going to be much more dependent on innovation. How well we innovate will be a function of (the relationship) between industries and universities,” he observed. Moreover, rapid economic growth is occurring in Asia and India, in countries whose populations are much younger than those in the U.S. or Europe. To succeed, business leaders will have to understand different cultures.
“The mosaic of cultures will define how we do business with others,” he said.
Meanwhile, business schools face a number of challenges. The supply of faculty is dwindling. About 1,000 PhDs will graduate in 2005 and of those, a quarter will go into industry, leaving only 750 graduates to fill more than 4,000 teaching positions.
Applications to business schools have also declined sharply in the aftermath of 9/11 and the increased difficulty foreign students have in getting visas. USC has yet to experience a decline in international students. In fact, for the past three years, it has enrolled more foreign students than any other U.S. institution of higher learning. A key reason for this is that USC believes that understanding other cultures is important.
USC Marshall School of Business has also been able to maintain its admissions standards. Students enrolled in the MBA program receive an average of 688 on the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), which Dean Gupta said compares favorably to Stanford University, University of Chicago, and MIT.