Which U.S. Business School Has The Most International MBAs?
Maria |
April 26, 2022

It is not a secret that international students play a significant role in the MBA industry and how b-schools are ranked in terms of the number of enrollees. However, with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting everyone throughout the world, on top of the former Trump administration’s anti-immigration rhetoric and policies, the number of international students has declined dramatically.

In this episode of Business Casual, Maria, Caroline, and John discuss the numbers and figures behind this statement and how COVID-19 affected the travel restrictions that held down many international enrollments.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.090] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wich Vila. And we are going to talk about two things today, international students in MBA classes, both in the US and European schools. The latest data has come out, and it’s pretty fascinating data because, among other things, it shows a real rebound in international students at US business schools after a fairly significant drop during COVID-19, as well as the drop due to sort of anti immigration rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration. And then we’re going to talk about the latest financial report from the Harvard Business School, which has this really wow and crazy number on their endowment. Their endowment at Harvard Business School is now $5.3 billion. We’re going to find out if Maria, one of the most illustrious Harvard MBA alums, plans on donating more of the money to that big endowment. But first, let’s talk a little bit about those international student numbers. I was surprised to see a number of schools approaching in the US 50%. Stanford is at 47. Columbia is just under 50%.

 

[00:01:31.310] – John

Harvard is at 37. Wharton is at 36. Big disparity between those schools in a way which are considered pure schools. What do you make of that disparity? Do you think Harvard and Wharton are holding down their international numbers, while MIT, Stanford, and a few other schools are just letting it fly?

 

[00:01:53.280] – Caroline

Well, I think it’s hard to know. Right, because I’m not sure what their ideal class composition is. I would think that it’s not surprising that a smaller class might have a higher percentage of international students.

 

[00:02:06.460] 

Right.

 

[00:02:06.750] – Caroline

Because if you have three or four students from a particular Latin American country in the Stanford class, that’s going to be a much bigger percentage of the overall class than it would be at Harvard. So I didn’t find it surprising that Stanford does have that higher percentage of international students. And I think also Silicon Valley is just a huge draw for the international community, and it’s already a very international population here just up in the Hills above the Stanford campus. To me, it’s not at all surprising that Stanford would have such a high percentage of international students. It would be interesting to know if the schools have a target percentage, because clearly, as you say, it went down due to it’s gone down due to the pandemic. It went down in previous classes because of Trump and his immigration policies. And so clearly that the schools have absorbed more international students. And I would think that they see that as a positive development post Trump, post COVID. But I don’t know what their target percentage would be. I would imagine that they don’t want to go above half the class being international because they also have to think about their domestic stakeholders, which are the most important stakeholders.

 

[00:03:29.430] – Caroline

And I think that there can be some pushback from alumni at these schools if they think the school is going to international because they may see it as a detrimental to the domestic population.

 

[00:03:41.640] – John

The other thing I think you see in the numbers is I imagine that most international students would prefer to be on the coast, either the east or the West Coast, so that a Stanford or Columbia has a natural advantage in drawing more international students. And I think partly that’s true because New York is still an incredible magnet for talent and it is just an attractive city to live in for a couple of years. And then Stanford, for the reasons you just mentioned, being at the center of Silicon Valley, the world’s most dynamic economy in our generation, Columbia, as I mentioned before, was just under 50. They are actually at 48%, which is a new record for Columbia. That’s up from 44% last year. And the previous school record at Columbia was 47% in 2019. Out of the top 27 schools, nine schools out of the 27, and five of the top ten are now at 40% or more foreign student enrollment compared to just one school, Columbia in 2020. And 22 of the 27 schools are at 30% or more, up from just nine schools previously. And that also is evidence of the rebound international students from the Trump years when they were definitely down.

 

[00:05:08.660] – John

And then the effect of COVID, which through travel restrictions, held down many international enrollments because even students who were accepted had trouble getting here and traveling. Maria, why do you think Harvard is that far below a Stanford, which is always considered to be its neck and neck peer school? So Harvard is at again, 37%, Stanford at 47%, a ten percentage point increase in a smaller class at Stanford, of course. What do you make of that? Is it alumni pressure from domestic?

 

[00:05:46.130] – Maria

First of all, I think it depends on how you’re going to define this sort of representation. Yes. Percentage is one way. But when you look at the class size at HBS, as Caroline alluded to earlier, there are actually almost twice as many international students by sheer numbers at Harvard Business School than there are at Stanford. Right? 370 something versus 200 at Stanford. So, yes, as a percentage, Stanford clearly has more. But both Wharton and Harvard, in terms of total numbers, have significantly more as absolute numbers. Now in terms of why those numbers are what they are, I mean, obviously this is one of the many admissions Crystal balls that I think we all wish we had secret access to. I suspect that they are. I think Caroline also alluded to that. They’re really trying to craft a class, which is exactly why if they weren’t trying to craft a class, then the entire class would just be McKinsey consultants and private equity guys from that would be the entire class. Right. They very intentionally want people from manufacturing and people from agriculture and people from Pharmaceuticals. And so I think for the same reason, there must be some sort of a rough I wouldn’t say a quota, but there’s probably some sort of a limit to how many international students they would take.

 

[00:07:05.610] – Maria

And it’s probably even by region or perhaps even down to by country on some levels, because I think what they’re doing when they’re crafting a class is they’re trying to predict the future for where on average, these folks are going to go both in terms of their professional success, but also geographically. And in order to extend their reach, they need people all over the world who are alums, but they also need to balance it with folks in the US for financial reasons. I think I think folks who stay in the US tend to make more money on average, and hopefully they donate that money back, which is probably something we’ll refer to a little later. I wouldn’t necessarily think the headline as exciting as that headline is, I don’t think the headline should be like Harvard is way behind Harvard. They’re so far behind. But of course, I’m a little biased.

 

[00:07:55.890] – John

Yeah. I mean, the other thing is it depends on who’s applying, right? Everyone knows that male Indian IT engineers are overpopulated in the elite MBA applicant pool, and no school wants to accept so many of them, even though they are well qualified to attend and do well, so that they form a sort of dominating sector of a business school class. So some of this is obviously dependent on who actually applies. What does that applicant pool look like? And if there’s more diversity in the international applicant pool, I think the school has a greater ability to admit more, because you can argue that. Okay, we’re taking you from Middle East, from Africa, from Australia and New Zealand, as well as Europe. Not only China and India in the mix preserves this sense that we’re crafting a truly diverse global class. Now you look at the US numbers, and they still pale in comparison to the best business schools in Europe. Ncr 95% London Business School 92% HTC, Paris 92% Ie Business School in Spain, Madrid 91 IESC in Barcelona, Spain 85 and when you look at the numbers and you see the dramatic differences, what does it mean to be a student in those classes?

 

[00:09:20.700] – John

And how culturally different is it?

 

[00:09:22.510] – Caroline

Caroline, when you said that Harvard and Stanford and so on pale in comparison to these other schools, he didn’t need to qualify as the best schools in Europe. They are the best schools. But the international diversity in these classrooms really has a huge impact on the learning experience, and it is a very different experience. And that’s why a lot of people are drawn to those international schools. And it’s also true that it’s easier for a school sitting in France or Singapore or London to attract an internationally diverse audience because you have so many more countries that are right on your doorstep compared to if you’re a school that’s in Chicago or Atlanta, Georgia. Right. So it’s also natural that they would have more international diversity. But it does have a big impact on the nature of the learning experience and the dynamic nature of the debate in the classroom. And from what I’ve heard from talking to professors who have taught both at schools like in Seattle on a business school and at the top of American schools, it’s actually much harder to teach at the international schools because you have such a diverse group of students.

 

[00:10:40.950] – Caroline

It’s a more challenging environment for the professors because you have so many different perspectives flying at you from every direction. Right. If you have a dominant culture in a classroom, there is more likely to be a dominant way of seeing things, and therefore, minority voice might be more hesitant to speak up. And I’ve seen that from my own experience. And in Seattle, there is no hesitation to speak up if you have a minority perspective, because everyone at a school like in Sierra is in the minority, because there’s that incredible diversity. It is a very different environment. And to me, that’s the best learning environment because you are learning alongside people who come from completely different background, perspective and mindset to you and will open your eyes to things that you would have never imagined. So to me, that’s a huge compliment to learning about business is learning about business across cultures and the complexity of working across borders.

 

[00:11:50.310] – John

In fact, doesn’t NCI cap enrollment by country and insists that no more than what, 5% of the class will ever come to NCI from another country. Is that right?

 

[00:12:02.310] – Caroline

I mean, there’s no specific cap, and it does vary sometimes. So right now it looks like there’s no more than 5% of any individual nationality. And typically the biggest nationalities that it’s yet are American, French, and Indian. And sometimes those percentages have been higher, but it’s rare that any of those would go above 10% in any given year. But what the scores try to do, rather than have a strict cap on nationality, is to diversify the applicant pool as much as possible. Right. So it’s through the school’s outreach marketing efforts, which is a big challenge as a relatively small institution INSEAD is not part of a big University, as a lot of its competitors are, and therefore it is more challenging to do global marketing as a relatively small institution. But I think the school has been quite successful at leveraging its alumni network internationally to build its visibility around the world, and that has reaped benefits over time in attracting some of the best applicants from really across the world.

 

[00:13:17.220] – John

Now when you look at these numbers, I wonder how comparable they actually are. You made the point off the air that you suspect that more of the US international students or those who qualify as international students and reported as an international probably have dual passports, and I’m not going to say that that diminishes them as an international student. One could argue the opposite. But how does that play into these numbers, do you think?

 

[00:13:47.370] – Caroline

Well, that also means that it’s hard to there’s the opportunity there for the schools to play a little bit with the statistics.

 

[00:13:56.390] 

Right.

 

[00:13:56.650] – Caroline

Because if someone is both a US passport holder and has another passport, does the school then put them as a US citizen in statistics or as an international citizen? They can only pick one or the other, so we don’t know how they are counting that. And there may be different practices at different schools. And it’s not just citizens.

 

[00:14:19.260] 

Right.

 

[00:14:19.460] – Caroline

It could be green card holders, people who have been working in the US and may only have one passport, as is my case. But I’ve been living here for some time and working in the US. I think that sometimes the international elements at the school may not be as strong as it first appears when you look at these statistics, because a bunch of those people are likely you said dual triple passport holders or green card holders, essentially people who’ve been spending quite a bit of time in the US before they go to the school and therefore may not bring as much of an international perspective as someone who is coming straight from Tokyo or Rio de Janeiro. And that’s not so much the case at the international schools where most of the people are, for example, inspire doesn’t have a huge population coming in from France. Right. Who are working in France. France does not have the same sort of international diversity in its workforce that the US has. So I think that has an impact. And what I’ve heard from some international students at some of the top US schools is that it can happen that you have a clique of the international students who hang out together and the American students who tend to hang out together.

 

[00:15:46.010] – Caroline

And I’m sure that varies a lot by class and by school. But I’ve definitely heard that from some international students that they feel that there’s a bit of a divide between the international and the domestic students, and the international students tend to gravitate towards each other as a group and vice versa for the domestic students. And that doesn’t happen at a school like London Business School or incident, where there is no dominant group.

 

[00:16:14.880] – Maria

Right.

 

[00:16:15.180] – Caroline

Everyone is a small minority.

 

[00:16:18.150] – John

What’s your take on all this?

 

[00:16:19.790] – Maria

Yeah, I think that the topic of the dual passport holders is actually really important for candidates to keep in mind, because I think it’s even that much harder, I think for people from, say, in India or perhaps China, they might look at the statistics and say, oh, well, roughly 8% of the class has a South Asian citizenship. But once you start digging into the LinkedIn profiles and you start looking at the individual students that are going to these schools, many of them, if they’re not born and raised or raised in America, many of them went to College in the United States, then returned to their home countries and then come back to the US for their MBA. I do think that is a valid that would be a really valuable statistic to know, in part to let the international students who are applying know that. Well, yeah, it’s 37% of the classes international, but of that 37%, a number of these folks have had significant experience or education in the United States. So in terms of like, truly international, like Caroline said, like someone who’s getting off of the airplane from Tokyo and they’ve never been to the US before, that sort of student is even more rare.

 

[00:17:34.480] – Maria

But yeah, I think it’s very interesting to me. I think that admissions offices are in a position of having to read the tea leaves, and I’m sure they probably do this with a ton of solicited or unsolicited feedback from others within the University of where is the economy going 10, 20, 30 years from now? And so who do we need to be letting in today? So that 10, 20, 30 years from now. Our alumni are the ones who are the Titans of industry. So, for example, in the past few years, I’ve started seeing more success with people from aerospace. Right. Where several years ago it wasn’t hard to get in with it, but it’s just I feel like it’s because of all of the satellite race and there’s so many things happening with satellites now. So people with certain backgrounds that maybe 20 years ago might not have been as attractive now that there’s this potential opportunity for a zillion dollar business in, say, like, I don’t know, commercial space flight or whatever it is, I think they are trying to read the tea leaves of the economy and let in people accordingly. Now, why a certain percentage roughly of the class should be international versus us, I don’t know, but I do suspect it has to do with where the alums end up living.

 

[00:18:46.070] – Maria

I do think that at least a lot of my friends from business school who were international students did, in fact, settle in the United States. And I think it’s just like that’s where the more the salaries do tend to be higher in the US. So I think they may also be looking at it from that perspective, too. But who knows, right? We’d have to kidnap. All we have to do is just kidnap some AFCO members and hook them up to a lie detector. So don’t I’m not trying to tell you what articles you should write for your publication, but I’m just saying if you need a suggestion for a story.

 

[00:19:20.370] – John

I like that idea. Oh, no, I’m going to get arrested directors and put a live detector on them, particularly about holistic admissions and the importance of GMAT and GRES. But hey, that’s a whole other story. We’ve talked about a lot of other different times. The other thing is that domestic applications at US business schools are down significantly and have been going down for a number of years outside of the big pandemic spike. So the fact is that there are fewer domestic applicants trying to get into these schools and more international applicants. And that may be one other reason why these numbers are much higher than they’ve been in the past. For the US business schools, I think it’s a good thing. I think the more global B schools are, and after all, its faculty and students that make the school truly global, the better off the education is going to be, regardless of the nationalistic tendencies that have put some people off on globalization in recent years. The other thing I think that many people believe that international students are more likely to pay in full tuition compared to some domestic applicants, and it could put less pressure on scholarship money that different schools have to hand out.

 

[00:20:46.610] – John

That’s not universally true, because obviously, if you have a student from a country like India, for example, where these tuition rates in the US are mind boggling to many Indian Africans, and they may really need assistance, you’re going to have to fork over some money to help them out. But in general, there is this belief that international students tend to pay full freight on how true it is, frankly. But there it is. Okay. The other thing which really caught my attention was the latest financial report from the Harvard Business School. And let me say flat out Harvard every year, and I give them great credit for this. They are among the most transparent of all business schools. They unleash an incredible amount of data on their programs, on the cases that they sell on every aspect of their financials from all the money that comes in and all the money that goes out. And it’s the most thorough accounting that any business call in the world makes it’s almost akin to a ten K report on a public Corporation. It’s that thorough. The big number that really flew off the pages for me was the size of Harvard Business School’s endowment, which has always been large and the largest in the world for any business school.

 

[00:22:13.480] – John

But in fiscal 2021, which ended at the end of June, their endowment was valued at $5.3 billion. It’s mind boggling because for a business school to have an endowment that exceeds most universities and colleges overall kind of blows your mind. Now, Maria, as a proud alumni of this school, I wonder if you look at those numbers and you say, well, really, should I keep giving my money to Harvard Business School? Yeah, I love the school. I benefited from it. So did my husband. But do they really need another cent?

 

[00:22:54.510] – Maria

I mean, a data point like this certainly doesn’t help it certainly doesn’t sound the alarm and get me jumping out of my seat to try to donate more money. Yes, it’s such an interesting again, I think that all of these schools, they take a long term view as institutions. And one of the ways they do that is they are amassing these endowments. They’re being very disciplined in how they spend them. I believe HPS only will they have rules where they only allow themselves to spend 5% of the endowment each year, which might explain why they’re constantly asking for money. It’s interesting, right? Because I would love to be in addition to being a fly on the wall in the admissions office, I would also love to be a fly on the wall in the endowment operating budget meetings, because I would love to see maybe that 5% is too conservative. Maybe we should be spending more, but being able to do it so that we I don’t know, maybe we double the class size and then that allows us to then double the endowment 30 years from now. So I wonder how those investments are looked at.

 

[00:24:09.120] – Maria

I do know that a lot of the endowment is earmarked very specific ways. So the large donors, of which I am not one, my donation is probably like couch change. Probably like, oh, look, I pulled this out of the couch. It’s Maria’s donation. But a lot of the larger donors, they do say, I want my money to go to this. I want to endow a real estate professorship. I want to endow a entrepreneurial competition, whatever it is. But yeah, I just don’t know what is the end goal with this much money. Are they saying, like, well, maybe we’ll keep it away for a rainy day? How many years worth of operating expenses does that $5 billion cover? Probably a few. But yeah, it’s an interesting question. Why does any University have to have I can understand, like, oh, well, in case we want to build a new building or in case there’s a whole year where, I don’t know, a pandemic happens and 20% of our students don’t show up, I can understand wanting to have some sort of a financial cushion for those sorts of things. But $5 billion cushion is a pretty big cushion.

 

[00:25:29.750] – John

Yes. Especially when, okay, the school’s annual expense is about $780,000,000. So it could literally give everyone a free MBA education and basically pay all of its bills for, let’s say, what is that? Is that 15 years, 14 years if it used its endowment without taking in a dollar? Of course, that’s not the way it works. I should say that the 5.3 billion was a massive increase on the year earlier number, which was 4.1%. And sure, some of that came from very generous alums. And the couch changed. That was contributed by Maria, but most of it was a result of unusual, extraordinary returns in the markets. The annual return on the endowment in fiscal 2021 was 33.6%, which kind of blows my mind. The year earlier was only 7.3%. And that’s much more in line with what you might have expected. But 33.6% increase in the value of the endowment just by the investments that the school made, really an incredible performance. So just setting aside for a moment the massive size of that endowment, and before I do that, we should just not to make Caroline feel jealous or embarrassed, we need to note that INSEAD endowment is just a puny piece of this.

 

[00:27:09.520] – John

Right, Caroline?

 

[00:27:11.270] – Maria

That’s right. Yeah.

 

[00:27:12.390] – Caroline

We calculated it’s about 8% of the Harvard Business School endowment, 185,000,000. Yeah. I mean, what is mind boggling as well is that Harvard Business School endowment is about 10% of the Harvard University endowment, which is bigger than the GDP of most countries. I mean, it’s just these numbers are mind boggling. But with those returns, Maria, I think you should give them some more of your accounts change and get them to invest it for you. I mean, if you can make 33% in a year.

 

[00:27:43.770] – Maria

Honestly, for real, that should be an alumnus benefit that you get to put some money in alongside theirs, almost like as a private equity investment, put some of that 401K money into whoever they’re doing a great job. And so what the heck?

 

[00:28:02.430] – John

That is a great idea as an alumni benefit that would benefit the school as well, because they can take a little piece off the top, number one. But number two, it gives them more clout in the market and more influence over their investments by having even more money to play with. I like that idea, actually, I think someone in the alumni office should start putting together a proposal and bringing it up to the Provost and President of Harvard. Here’s what’s interesting, too. There was a point at which during the pandemic, Harvard said the business school expected its revenue to plunge by 115,000,000 and that they would lose $22 million in this fiscal 2021. In fact, they had an operating surplus of 26 million, a $48 million swing from their prediction, which goes to show how well the school is managed. It goes to show how smartly diversified the revenue streams are from because they had big increases from their online initiative, fairly significant increase there, as well as an increase in Harvard Business School publishing. They do the Harvard Business Review, and they do their website there. And actually, they sold a record number of business school cases to other schools and organizations in the year.

 

[00:29:30.990] – John

So that brings in a chunk of change. Plus, they took more money from the endowment, given the size of it. And all told, they actually didn’t have a loss at all. But they had a pretty comfortable $26 million surplus, which is really remarkable, honestly. You look at the numbers and they remind me of numbers that compare nuclear weapons in the United States against other countries, because it just seems so unfair that one business school has numbers like these that are really not even comparable to most other business schools. Now, Stanford has a fairly significant endowment, but still not 5.3 billion like Harvard does. And Warden has a fairly decent war chest, but also nowhere near what the Harvard numbers are. And this brings me to a point that Malcolm Gladwell, the fairly famous New Yorker writer, has made over and over again asking, why do Alums and why do people continue to contribute to schools that actually don’t need their money when there are other schools, particularly community colleges, Incidentally, that largely educate first generation students that badly need the money? Why do you think that’s?

 

[00:30:56.190] – Maria

So, Maria, I’m a social justice warrior, so I’m like, I think garbage should totally give it to the community colleges in Massachusetts. Well, first of all, speaking earlier, as we were talking about, like, trying to read the tea leaves about crafting a class, this is exactly why these schools choose the students they do. They choose the kids that they think 30 years from now are going to give a $10 million donation. That’s kind of the hope. Why do people give why do I give my little couch change to them every year? I think there’s this notion of Karma. There’s sort of this idea of, wow, I owe a lot to the school. I owe a lot to the experience and the education that I got there. And in order as if paying the full freight and all the student loans that I did, as if that weren’t enough, I think there’s sort of this idea of like, oh, I sort of owe it to them again from this Karma perspective. But, yeah, if they want to start kicking back from that, they want to issue a dividend to all living alumni. That might be I personally think that’s a great use of the funds.

 

[00:32:05.170] – Maria

But who knows, Caroline.

 

[00:32:06.550] – John

If you’re giving to INSEAD connected to Karma as well.

 

[00:32:10.150] – Caroline

It’s a very interesting question. Why do alumni continue to give when the schools are so wealthy? And I tease my husband about this because I think that INSEAD  is much more worthy recipients of our hard earned dollars than Harvard and Stanford, who he goes to those schools. But I think there’s a sense of loyalty, right? There’s a sense that you’re grateful for the education you got and you want to give back. And the schools do a very good job of making you feel good about participating. They care a lot about participation rates, and they emphasize that it’s not about how much you give. It’s about participating. And they measure what percentage of your class has given so far this year. And there’s sort of competition between the classes. And I’m really proud because 2003 D is one of the biggest donor classes in the history of incentives. So I’ve got to help to keep that up.

 

[00:33:10.100] – John

It’s almost like they’re guilty when they’re giving your money.

 

[00:33:13.030] – Caroline

So they’re very good. Well, they’re very good at making you feel good about being part of the community and participating in this, and then also at communicating. Look at the wonderful students who have been able to come to thanks to the scholarships that your money has gone towards. And when I donate to Instagram, I can choose what I want it to go towards. So I want it to go to I think the options are it can go to research, you can go to scholarships, or it can go to the Dean’s fund, which is at Ilian’s discretion, his little slush fund. And so I always choose scholarships. Right. Because I was an MBA scholarship recipient, I had the honor of managing the scholarship budget when I was at the school. And there are very difficult decisions to make.

 

[00:34:03.340] 

Right.

 

[00:34:03.570] – Caroline

Because there are a lot of people who want to go to the school who really can’t afford it and absolutely do need that support. And so I’m happy to continue to contribute to that every year. But I do think that perhaps harbor could give some of that money to some of the worthy scholarship recipients at Internet. Right.

 

[00:34:24.470] – John

I will say they give a lot to their own students. In fact, the latest numbers, even though overall support was down largely because the class size was down, the average scholarship support for an MBA student at Harvard Business School is now more than $81,000 over the two years. And roughly half of the entire student body gets scholarship support. A comparative number. Back in the class of 2017, the average was 69. So it’s gone from 69 in 2017 to in 21 $81,000. That’s a lot of moolah to help kids who are going to make a lot of Mula go to school. Maria, I’m sure you were a full ride.

 

[00:35:12.000] – Maria

No, I actually didn’t get any scholarship at all.

 

[00:35:16.850] – John

Hearing these numbers must just make you want to keep your accounts changed.

 

[00:35:22.020] – Maria

Well, what’s funny is that I went to Princeton for College, and the year I think it was the year after I graduated, they announced that going forward, they were doing away with student loans for undergraduates or something like that. And I was like, why is it the year after I graduate, why can’t they apply this retroactively? So hearing numbers like, oh, it’s $80,000. I’m like, oh, that’s nice. I was in a weird place because I had been working in Hong Kong prior, and so I was making a lot in US dollars. But also I was spending a lot because it’s one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in. And so they just looked at that top line number and they were like, Nope, nothing for you. And I was not savvy enough at the time to actually think, to question it the way nowadays people are like, hey, why? I was like, okay, well, I guess it is what it is. I’m going to suck it up. But yeah, still like Caroline said, when they send out the information, it’s all about like it’ll be the picture of the student, you know, like the worthy student who it’s never like, Hi, I’m a private equity bro.

 

[00:36:25.870] – Maria

It’s always like some worthy student who works for an NGO in the Sudan. And so you’re like, oh, my money is going to help that person. They tug on your heartstrings quite a bit.

 

[00:36:41.420] – John

There you have it. Okay. For those of you who are listening in and you’re hearing, wow, the average college board for an MBA student, Harvard is now more than $81,000. It should take a little bit of the sting out of that first sighting on the website of the actual cost of the degree because a lot of the degrees are getting discounted and not only at Harvard to a lot of other schools, but Harvard certainly has the wherewithal to be so generous. Well, thank you, everyone for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve just heard Business Casual our weekly podcast with Caroline and Maria. Thank you.

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Which U.S. Business School Has The Most International MBAs?
Maria |
April 26, 2022

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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