Campus Review Volume 27 Issue 12 | December 17 | Seite 29

workforce
campusreview.com.au
And then we went through this period
where, especially in America, an MBA
became not so much about training to
be a manager, but a credential and an
experience you could use to transform
your career. And that’s what triggered that
shift towards younger and younger people
doing the MBA.
When it became that expected next step
if you wanted to move into management,
the average age of people doing the MBA
went from mid-30s to late 20s. That’s
almost a 10-year drop in the average age,
and that happened from around 1980 to
the start of the 2000s.
That trend has been slower in Australia.
So, our average age at UQ (30s) is still really
high in global terms. And it’s also true for
the other Australian universities that are
up there in global MBA rankings as well –
Melbourne, AGSM, University of Sydney.
And in part, that reflects the fact that it’s
still been serving that managerial training
purpose in a lot of cases here in Australia.
Given that many successful founders of new
companies are uni dropouts or only attained
a bachelor’s, has that affected the type or
number of people interested in MBAs?
That’s difficult to unravel because of the
prominent examples of people that have
dropped out of university and then founded
successful businesses. Richard Branson,
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates are the ones that
spring to everyone’s mind. And then a lot
of people make the extrapolation that “they
didn’t get a degree, so I don’t need one”. But
if you look at successful founders, the vast
majority still have undergraduate degrees.
And in terms of entrepreneurship, the
data is that older founders are significantly
more likely to be successful than younger
ones. So, people that have a little bit of
industry experience and knowledge have
better odds of success.
In terms of trying to unpack the impact
on MBA enrolments, it’s hard because for
the most part the MBA has been viewed
as a managerial tool or training method
rather than a degree designed to build
entrepreneurs. But if you look at the US,
some of the leading schools like Harvard,
Wharton and Stanford have put an emphasis
on teaching entrepreneurship to their MBA
students, and there’s been a whole string
of really successful startups that have come
out of those schools as a consequence.
It’s been interesting for us, because
we teach innovation in our program,
but we teach it much more from the
corporate innovation standpoint than the
entrepreneurship standpoint. But even with
that, w e’re starting to see a really significant
rise in the number of our alumni that are
founding businesses. And I think that hasn’t
been through design on our part at all. So,
it appears to be just the case that that’s an
increasingly attractive option for people, so
people are just moving in that direction.
On that note, if there are entrepreneurs
coming out of it, but also people just going
into management roles, what feedback
have you received from these people and
employers about the value of the MBA?
There are two parts. First, the feedback
we’re getting from employers is generally
good. It’s interesting, because there’s
data to support the fact that in Australia,
employers value education a little bit less
than they do in the US and Europe. And
they value MBAs a little bit less as well.
That’s reflected in the amount of recruiting
they do coming out of MBA programs, the
amount they’re willing to pay people that
have that qualification.
We’re working hard to get in touch with
what it is that employers need from people
with this qualification, so we can be as
attuned to industry needs as possible.
That’s a bit tricky because sometimes
the things they say are different from how
they act. So, you also have to have an
understanding of what problems they are
struggling with right now and whether there
are things we can do to help them. That
was actually the impetus for UQ adding
the innovation course. Since we added
that course, a lot of the feedback from
employers has been along the lines of:
“This has been really valuable.”
Would you say there’s a gap between supply
and demand for MBA grads and employers?
There doesn’t seem to be. If you look at
the employment outcomes – both the
percentage of people coming out of MBA
programs with jobs and with substantial
raises – the stats are really strong.
On the other hand, we’re a little bit of
an outlier, because that’s not as much the
case in America right now, or Europe. So
it’s a little bit hard to know. Perhaps it’s just
the fact that our graduates look different in
terms of experience and age, so that might
be buffering us a little bit from some of the
things that are driving change over there,
or it could just be that the same change is
going to hit us here in another three, four
years and we haven’t seen it yet.
NYU’s school of business added an EQ
(emotional intelligence) requirement to its
admission process. Has UQ done this?
I’m not aware of anyone in Australia that
has done that, but it’s a terrific idea.
This gets to the bigger question in all of
this: What is the value of an MBA in the 21st
century? I think it’s hard to say, “We can
teach you,” because any framework that
somebody comes up with is always going to
be lagging behind what’s happening on the
ground by three or four years, or even more.
On the other hand, if you look at a report
from the World Economic Forum (WEF)
that came out earlier this year, it did a huge
global survey of employers. The WEF asked
them: “What skills are you looking for from
business grads?” It was things like ability
to deal with uncertainty, negotiation and
people skills, and network building. All of
those things rely on EQ. So, if you think
about which skills people need to gain from
an MBA, it’s all those things.
You could make an argument that we
should be looking at EQ as an entrance
requirement or measuring it as an exit metric.
I’m also interested in teaching or requiring
EQ in the context of the rise of conscious
capitalism and the post-GFC world, where
banks and financial institutions are perhaps
less trusted than they used to be. Do you
think it’s also important in that context?
I think it’s important in that context and it’s
not just banks and financial institutions. All
institutions are trusted less at the moment,
and that’s driving the rise of populism in
politics globally. It’s driving all kinds of things.
EQ’s connected with all those issues,
and that’s the stuff we need to look at. It’s
interesting because of the ‘future of work’
stuff. There are two ways to go. One is to
figure out how to build AI systems that take
over everything. The other is to say: “What is
it that people do that machines can’t?” And
that’s the interpersonal interaction side of it.
That’s the way I’m trying to push the
program a bit, but even that’s a bit of a bet
about how I think the future is going to
look. For me, it’s a fascinating place to be at.
I think anyone looking to do an MBA
should think about what they expect the
world of work to look like in 5–10 years
before they make their decision.  ■
*Name changed to protect privacy.
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