Top brand enters the market
When is a business school not a business school? The question could be put to the London School of Economics and Political Science, long-regarded as one of the great brands of UK higher education. Last month it established a department that looks set to become a cornerstone of UK management education.
Sir Howard Davies, director of the LSE, is adamant: “We wouldn’t want to call it a business school. We are in the pre-experience market,” he says. “If you call yourself a business school most people would say it offers an MBA programme, the average student is 28 years old and it charges ￡25,000 a year. We’ve never really been in that territory and therefore we don’t think it would be sensible to move into it.”
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Nonetheless it has long recognised a need to co-ordinate better the expertise from departments. LSE has operated, says Sir Howard, at “less than the sum of its parts”.
The department of management was set up to conquer this, bringing together the interdisciplinary institute of management, the informations systems group, the industrial relations group and the operations research group. This gave the unit more than 60 faculty. Negotiations are underway to include accountancy although the accounting and finance professors are still outside the department.
Although Sir Howard insists this is not a business school, LSE is attracting professors groomed in the business school world. Top of the list is economist Saul Estrin, who has moved from London Business School to head up the new LSE department. Other hires include Luis Garicano from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and Paul Willman from Oxford’s Sa?d business school, where he was director of the doctoral programme. Prof Willman was a colleague of Prof Estrin at LBS.
Prof Estrin, a privatisation specialist, has huge plans for the department, which will move into the refurbished Public Records Office, next to LSE’s central London site.
This means an expansion in programmes and students. First for Prof Estrin is to increase the number of students in masters degrees in management, intended for students with little or no work experience. Second is a joint masters degree in management and economics, which will probably be launched in 2008. Other joint degrees will follow.
Prof Estrin stresses these are not “mini-MBA” programmes. “In business schools you teach from the specific to the general. In pre-experience programmes you go the other way round.”
He says a full-time MBA is not on the cards. “Executive education is more of a twinkle in my eye than an MBA,” he says. In customised executive education, LSE has signed up with Duke Corporate Education to offer client programmes in Europe and Africa.
Prof Estrin’s estimates his plans will take eight years to implement. “The plan is about leveraging LSE’s strengths without lowering academic standards, without lowering student quality.” Many business schools in the UK and Europe will be watching LSE very closely.
另类“商学院”
商
学院怎么才不算是“商学院”？这个问题或许可以去问伦敦政治经济学院(LSE)。多年来，伦敦政治经济学院一直被视为英国高等教育最杰出的品牌之一。上个月，该院又成立了一个新的部门，后者似乎将成为英国管理教育的一块奠基石。
该院院长霍华德?戴维斯爵士(Sir Howard Davies)口气很坚定：“我们不想把这个部门称为商学院。我们进入的是‘无工作经验(pre-experience )’的一般硕士市场。”他表示：“如果自称为商学院，那么多数人都会认为，它提供的是工商管理硕士(MBA)课程，学生年龄平均28岁，每年收费2.5万英镑。我们从未真正进入过那个市场，因此我们认为，现在进入也是不明智的。”
尽管如此，伦敦政治经济学院还是很早就认识到，它需要更好地协调各系之间的专长。霍华德爵士称，该院的运营“并未达到聚合各部门力量应该达到的效果”。
为了解决这个问题，学院设立了新的管理系，将原来的跨学科管理研究所、信息系统组、劳资关系组和运营研究组合并到一起，并拥有了60多名教师。此外，虽然会计和财务学科的教授目前仍不属于该系，但将会计组包括进来的谈判也已在进行。
尽管霍华德爵士坚持说这不是个商学院，伦敦政治经济学院却正在引进全球各地商学院的教授。排在招募榜第一位的是经济学家萨尔?埃斯特林(Saul Estrin)，他已经从伦敦商学院(LBS)转到LSE，担任新管理系的负责人。其他受聘者当中，还包括芝加哥商学院的露易斯?加里卡诺(Luis Garicano)，以及牛津大学塞伊德商学院(Sa?d)博士项目负责人的保罗?威尔曼(Paul Willman)。威尔曼教授曾在伦敦商学院和埃斯特林教授一起共事。
埃斯特林教授是私有化方面的专家，他为伦敦政治经济学院的新管理系拟定了庞大计划。
新管理系将搬到重新装修后的英国公共档案馆(Public Records Office)，紧邻该学院在伦敦的中心校区。搬迁意味着课程和学生数量的扩大。对埃斯特林教授来说，首先就是增加管理硕士学位的修读人数。这一学位面向那些很少或没有工作经验的学生；第二就是增设管理和经济双硕士学位课程，它可能在2008年推出。其它的联合学位课程也将随后推出。
埃斯特林教授强调，这些并非“迷你MBA”课程。“商学院教学遵循从具体到一般的思路，而‘无工作经验’课程则刚好相反。”
他表示，新管理系不可能开办全职MBA项目，“在我眼中，高管教育比MBA更吸引人。”在定制高管教育方面，LSE已经和美国的杜克企业教育学院(Duke Corporate Education)签约合作，将在欧洲和非洲为客户提供定制课程。
埃斯特林教授预计，他的计划将需要8年时间来实现。“计划的核心是放大伦敦经济学院的强项，同时不降低学术水准，不降低学生质量。”
英国及欧洲的很多商学院都将密切关注伦敦经济学院的进展。
