Does the GSB Really Have an International Scope?
Carlos Tramutola, MBA2
Issue date: 10/29/01 Section: Opinions
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There is a clear trend in the GSB’s class demographics: the percentage of international students is dropping and reached an alarming 23.5%. This is a fact. In this article, I will argue that this is inconsistent with the GSB’s mission.
The mission of the GSB is to be “the world leading school of business”. This means that we want to have the largest impact on the way in which the whole world does business. There are two ways to accomplish this: impacting future business leaders from all around the world, and impacting business leaders who will command worldwide organizations.
The school should then be focused on: (1) bringing the best 360 students from all around the world, and (2) being the best school in teaching how to do business worldwide.
The first is far from happening. Even if Stanford went back to its “regular” 30% of international students, it would be hypocritical to call it a globally diverse class. The US represents 30% of the world economy and less than 5% of the world population. The imbalance is clear when one considers the composition of the classes: almost 90% are either North Americans (including 3% Canadians and 4% Mexicans) or US permanent residents. I certainly am not implying that students from any one country are better than those from another; I am just arguing that the GSB is not impacting students from all around the world.
Now imagine for a moment that Toyota and Volkswagen, or Ericsson and Nokia, didn’t exist. It’s all about GM, Ford and American companies doing business worldwide. In that case, it would be enough to bring together the best American students, develop them as leaders and mix them with a few of us in order to have the “customer perspective” outside of the US. Then the GSB would have the intended impact on how the world conducts business. But this is not happening either.
Most of the faculty doesn’t teach much about business outside the US. And it is not a revelation if I say that over 90% of the case studies are “domestic” cases. One reason for this may be that North American students are, understandably, more interested in “domestic” cases. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We just need to be clear that we are not accomplishing the GSB’s mission.
The mission of the GSB is to be “the world leading school of business”. This means that we want to have the largest impact on the way in which the whole world does business. There are two ways to accomplish this: impacting future business leaders from all around the world, and impacting business leaders who will command worldwide organizations.
The school should then be focused on: (1) bringing the best 360 students from all around the world, and (2) being the best school in teaching how to do business worldwide.
The first is far from happening. Even if Stanford went back to its “regular” 30% of international students, it would be hypocritical to call it a globally diverse class. The US represents 30% of the world economy and less than 5% of the world population. The imbalance is clear when one considers the composition of the classes: almost 90% are either North Americans (including 3% Canadians and 4% Mexicans) or US permanent residents. I certainly am not implying that students from any one country are better than those from another; I am just arguing that the GSB is not impacting students from all around the world.
Now imagine for a moment that Toyota and Volkswagen, or Ericsson and Nokia, didn’t exist. It’s all about GM, Ford and American companies doing business worldwide. In that case, it would be enough to bring together the best American students, develop them as leaders and mix them with a few of us in order to have the “customer perspective” outside of the US. Then the GSB would have the intended impact on how the world conducts business. But this is not happening either.
Most of the faculty doesn’t teach much about business outside the US. And it is not a revelation if I say that over 90% of the case studies are “domestic” cases. One reason for this may be that North American students are, understandably, more interested in “domestic” cases. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We just need to be clear that we are not accomplishing the GSB’s mission.