Article on the issue of MBA student diversity

When employment lawyer  Thijs Glasz wanted to  broaden the scope  of his career outside  of the law, the logical  step was to join an MBA programme at a  major international business school. But if  he expected to be rubbing shoulders with  fellow legal professionals, he was soon  to be put straight. “There were nearly 250  students on the programme at Georgetown,  but not one single other lawyer,” he says.

Over the past decade, MBA classrooms  have become increasingly diverse. Schools  attract students from the four corners of  the globe and parity between the sexes  is making positive strides. But when it  comes to professional background, a high  proportion are still drawn from the ‘usual  suspect’ disciplines of engineering, finance  and consultancy. It seems that it’s not just  lawyers who are deterred from applying  for what is now regarded as the world’s  ubiquitous business qualification.

But does this really matter? To a growing  number of deans and academics, it does.  For them, limiting the student mix to a  relatively narrow range of experience means that graduates are likely to leave their campuses locked  into accepted patterns of thought and action. Whereas  the recruitment of a more varied pool of students,  drawing from areas such as the arts, academia or  politics, helps to frame business decision-making in a  wider context, making decisions more efficient, more  effective and more likely to avoid the sort of lunacy that  led to the global financial crisis.

Achieving this, however, is not easy. Jenny George,  the outgoing dean at Melbourne Business School,  while sympathetic to the idea of more broadly based  MBAs, points out that the demands of the qualification  can put a limit on absolute diversity. “You can’t get  away from the fact that this is a qualification that  calls for a high degree of numeracy,” she  says. “It’s something that simply can’t be  compromised on.”

A number of schools have tried to  address the challenge of experience  diversity by moving away from a reliance  on the GMAT admissions test, regarded  by many as focusing on quantitative skills.  Stanford, for example, has adopted the GRE  test as an alternative testing filter because  of its emphasis on measuring a candidate’s  capability for abstract, non-linear thinking.

Others highlight how the older profile of  participants on executive MBAs, and the consequent emphasis on an individual’s CV,  means that such diversity is less of an issue.  As Saskia Treurniet of the global executive  OneMBA programme points out: “There’s an  emphasis on a participant’s track record and  their willingness to take responsibility, which  means that we’ve been able to build classes  from such varied backgrounds as fashion  design, NGOs, medicine, HR, media and  entertainment. One of our participants, an  international broadcaster, hit the nail on the  head when she said that that a programme  like this doesn’t call for a financial genius.  What it does call for is someone who is  open-minded enough to share with and  learn from others.”

Delivery models also appear to help  create a more broadly based MBA class.  Bernard Garrette, associate dean at HEC  Paris, argues that the part-time MBA is  particularly good at attracting entrepreneurs  who might not be willing or able to commit  to full-time study. “Getting people like this  into the classroom makes a difference,” he  says, ”because they often have a different  point of view from those coming from big  company backgrounds. They can then bring  their learning directly back to their start-up,  and invest available funds in their projects,  not just their studies.”

However, while the truly maverick MBA  student from outside the usual talent pool  does exist, they are still relatively thin on the  ground. Where they are taking their place  in the classroom, it’s often down to fancy  thinking on the part of their host school.

After four years as a professional opera  singer, Laura Mohre decided that she  wanted a complete change of direction  and approached the ESMT school in Berlin  to join its full-time MBA programme.  “There’s often a perception that the MBA  is exclusively for applicants who are very  numerate and have significant management  experience,” says programme director Nick  Barniville, “but we take the view that it’s for  someone who has taken on responsibility  early in their career, whether it’s in business,  the professions, the public sector or even  the arts.” In Mohre’s case, the school  wanted to make sure that she understood  the business environment to better decide  whether an MBA was right for her. “We  helped her get an internship at insurance  giant Allianz”, says Barniville, “after which  she came back and re-applied. It all seems  to be paying off because she’s performing  very, very well.”

People from non-traditional backgrounds  rarely have an MBA on their career radar.  But Mohre’s example shows that when  someone like her comes along, schools  should take them very seriously indeed.