David Schmittlein is full of surprises. It is easy to think that, as the newly appointed dean of MIT Sloan, and formerly a professor at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, he may have a US-centric view of management education. Not so. While the top US schools promote the two-year MBA as the gold standard, he has different views.

“The future of management education is not the future of the MBA,” he says – a statement that would horrify most of his US peers, as he well knows. “I would like to be the first North American school that gets this,” he adds.

It is perhaps not surprising that MIT Sloan should be the first of the top US business schools to argue there is more to life than the MBA. Sloan has a small undergraduate programme and the Sloan Fellows programme, a full-time, one-year course for seasoned managers.

For Prof Schmittlein, there should be an appropriate programme for managers at every point in their careers. “We will be driven by growth in the number of programmes [we offer], not by a bigger MBA.” True to his word, he intends to launch a one-year masters programme in management – similar to many offered in Europe – for those who have just finished an undergraduate programme. The school has already announced that it will launch a specialised masters degree in finance and more specialised masters look set to follow.

As to the MBA itself, he believes this will form a critical tool for people in their late 20s who want to change careers. With this in mind, the school is reducing the core of the MBA – the first part of the programme that all students study together – to a single semester. This would be heresy in a more traditional MBA programme, but Prof Schmittlein is unrepentant. “In the backrooms, no one really believes that they need a one-year [core] course.”

This will enable Sloan to offer more focused elective tracks to suit students' individual needs. “People who come to Sloan come for just four or five things,” he says – finance or strategy, for example.

But cutting the MBA to a one-year programme is not on the cards. “The reason that the MBA is two years is because people want to accomplish a thoughtful career transition,” he maintains.

Perhaps even more surprisingly for MIT, which is often viewed as a highly technical university, practical application is to be the order of the day at Sloan. It is a mantra that many business schools recite but few implement. “Creating and managing great projects is the best way to learn management concepts as well as management practice, but it's incredibly hard to do,” says Prof Schmittlein.

MIT Sloan is one of the schools that already does this best, he believes. “We do more project-based learning than any other leading school,” he says (see right).

After 26 years at the Wharton school, most latterly as deputy dean, Prof Schmittlein is well attuned to what the US business world is thinking and he believes there are convulsive changes afoot on business leaders' agendas. Twenty years ago the global supply chain was the all-consuming problem. Ten years ago, e-commerce was the biggest threat – and opportunity. Today, business leaders are worried about two issues, he says: sustainability and what this means for their companies, and how to compete in a “flat” world – how to form partnerships.

These produce specific challenges for Sloan students. “It's not a story of 28-year-olds trying to save the world. It's a story of managing in times of cataclysmic change. It's about what our students do and need to say when they get into these organisations. They are expected to have something to say about this.”

The new dean is beginning to show his colours as a seasoned marketing professor. Telling the world about Sloan students and publicising the school are top of his agenda: “There is not enough visibility that there is a school of management [at MIT]. What does it mean within this distinct university? What's great about MIT as a school of management?”

While many top business schools – Harvard and Stanford to name just two – are working hard to get other university departments, such as engineering or medicine, to work with them in offering joint courses, this is second nature to Sloan. “Our graduates are close to graduates from other departments,” explains Prof Schmittlein. “The school needs to be relevant to them at different times.” The university's much-copied MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, in which students from all departments work together on business ideas, is perhaps the most prominent practical example.

What has helped Sloan master these relationships and its speedy curriculum changes has been its relatively small size. With about 100 faculty and 400 MBA students, it is less than half the size of Wharton or Harvard. The dean expects the number of faculty and programmes – though not the number of students on the full-time MBA programme – to grow. “We're just above being too small and we're not close to being too big,” as he diplomatically phrases it.

With a continued and strong focus on research, it is an agenda that is well-pitched to unite the Sloan faculty. As Prof Schmittlein puts it: “I would like us to recapture the intellectual high ground.”
  
大衛•施米特萊因(David Schmittlein)總是讓人出乎意料。他曾任賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)沃頓商學院(Wharton school)教授，最近被任命為麻省理工學院(MIT)斯隆管理學院(Sloan)院長。這種經歷很容易使人認為，他對于管理學教育有一種以美國為中心的觀點。事實卻并非如此。正當美國頂尖商學院將兩年制工商管理碩士(MBA)課程作為黃金標準加以推廣時，他卻有不同看法。

“MBA的未來并不代表管理教育的未來，”施米特萊因表示。他知道，這一斷言足以震驚他的美國同行。他補充表示：“我們希望成為第一所意識到這點的北美商學院。”

斯隆管理學院成為美國第一所宣稱“MBA并非生活全部”的商學院，也許并不令人意外。斯隆管理學院擁有一個小規模本科項目，以及斯隆學者課程(the Sloan Fellows programme)——為資深經理人準備的一年期全日制課程。

施米特萊因認為，應該為處于職業不同階段的經理人提供適合的課程。“鞭策我們前進的不是MBA規模的擴大，而是課程的增加。”施米特萊因說到做到，他正準備開設一個一年期管理學碩士項目——與歐洲許多項目類似，面向剛剛完成本科課程的學生。斯隆管理學院已經宣布開設金融學碩士課程，今后肯定還會設立更多的專業化碩士課程。

關于MBA本身，施米特萊因認為，對于那些年紀“奔三”、希望改變職業方向的人，MBA是重要工具。認識到這一點后，斯隆管理學院將其MBA核心課程縮減至一學期，這些核心課程是整個項目的第一部分，也是所有學生的必修課。對于比較傳統的MBA項目來說，這簡直就是離經叛道之舉，但施米特萊因毫無懺悔之意。“私底下，沒有人真正認為他們需要修一年的（核心）課程。”

這樣做，使得斯隆管理學院能夠提供更多有針對性的選修課程，以滿足學生們的個人需求。“來斯隆學習的人只想學四五門課。”施米特萊因表示。比如金融或戰略學。

但是將MBA項目縮減為一年不太可能。施米特萊因認為：“MBA需要兩年時間，是因為人們希望完成一個深思熟慮的職業轉變。”

也許更加令人吃驚的是，之前人們往往認為麻省理工學院是一所高科技院校，但實際應用將成為斯隆管理學院的準則。很多商學院經常將實際應用掛在嘴邊，但很少能真正執行。施米特萊因表示：“創立并管理優秀的項目，是學習管理理念和管理實踐的最佳方法，但是這種方法執行起來十分困難。”

他相信，斯隆管理學院是在這一點上做的最好的幾所商學院之一。“我們的項目實踐學習比其它任何主要商學院都要多，”他表示。

施米特萊因曾在沃頓商學院任職26年，最后的職務為副院長，因此，非常了解美國商界的想法。他認為商業領導人的關注點將發生驚天動地的變化。20年前，他們最關注的是全球供應鏈問題，10年前，電子商務成為最大威脅——同時也是最大機遇。施米特萊因稱，今天，商業領導者們最擔心兩個問題：可持續發展及其對自己企業的影響，以及如何在“平”的世界參與競爭——如何建立伙伴關系。

這一切給斯隆管理學院的學生們提出了特別挑戰。“這不是關于28歲的年輕人如何試圖拯救世界的故事，而是在大變革時期如何管理的故事，是關于我們的學生進入這些機構后能做些什么、需要說些什么。大家都期望他們對于這一點能有自己的想法。”

斯隆管理學院的這位新院長已經開始展示他作為資深市場營銷學教授的獨特作風。向世界介紹斯隆的學生并宣傳學校，是他的首要任務。“公眾對（麻省理工旗下的）管理學院的關注了解還不夠。在這所卓越的大學內設立管理學院意味著什么？作為管理學院，麻省理工學院有何傲人之處？”

許多頂尖商學院正努力與其它學院合作——如工程學和醫學，以提供聯合課程，其中包括哈佛(Harvard)和斯坦福(Stanford)。但對于斯隆來說，這就如同它的第二天性。“我們的畢業生與其它學院的學生走得非常近，”施米特萊因解釋道。“斯隆管理學院在各個時期都需要與別的學院保持聯系。”麻省理工學院的“10萬美元創業大賽”(MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition)為許多學校所效仿。在大賽中，來自各個院系的學生齊心協力發展商業理念。這也許是商業實踐的最佳實例。

斯隆管理學院相對較小的規模，非常有助于它掌控這種聯系以及迅速改革課程。斯隆擁有約100名教職人員，400名MBA學生，還不到沃頓或哈佛的一半。院長施米特萊因希望學院的教職人員和課程項目能有所增加，但不是全日制MBA項目的學生數量。他的表達非常具有外交技巧：“我們的規模不算太小，也遠算不上太大。”

通過持續側重學術研究，這樣的計劃非常有利于團結斯隆的全體教員。正如施米特萊因所稱：“我希望斯隆管理學院能重奪智力的高地。”