“Our distinctive advantage is providing business education in the context of a university”

Peter Tufano, the Dean of the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, has championed the concept of a “business school embedded within the University”. Tufano, who was in India recently at the Oxford India Business forum, discusses his school’s plans in India and trends in management education. Edited excerpts:

How has the MBA course and management education evolved in your Business School?

The fundamental approach that we are taking in the business school is to deliver an education as an embedded part of the Oxford University. What that means is rather than looking at things separately, we try to take advantage of their faculty and the university experience. We have a one plus one programme where students come for 2 years to pursue masters in specialised topics. In the second year they do an MBA to combine technical expertise with management skills.

How has the global economic slowdown impacted your MBA programme?

Our programme is remarkably international and by that I mean that everyone in the school is a minority. We have about 20 per cent of our student composition from North America, 18 per cent from Europe including the UK, 6 per cent from Africa and 6 per cent from India. So, throughout the programme everyone experiences a world where they are a small part of the larger environment. On the teaching side, we have an equivalent of that diversity- the curriculum that students go through represents where they come from and is relevant to where they may go. We try to make sure our student body reflects the overall composition of the evolving business schools which sets it apart from the ups and downs.

What are your plans for India?

We have had a week long standing arrangement in India - through the forum where we have our people from Oxford engage with people from India to talk about responsibility in business Also, it is very important to us to get a sizeable number of students from India into our programme so that India can be well represented. Additionally, we want to make sure that our Indian alumni continue to be nurtured in their career.

But what we are not likely to do is open up a campus in India, because our distinctive advantage is that we provide business education embedded in the context of a university. So we are able to do this is because we are sitting there in Oxford and we can easily have our students interact with non-business students in the university and have our faculty interact with non-business faculty. For us to unilaterally come to India, we would, in essence, no longer benefit from that relationship. So unless Oxford as a university would make a decision to conduct a lot of activities here, we would be unlikely to come by ourselves.

UK has seen a dip in the overall number of Indian students because of the discontinuation of the post study leave to stay and delays in visas. Has this affected the number of Indian applicants?

It hasn’t affected us so much. It is however a general issue, we believe that free flow of students is the best thing for the educational system. And as a business professor and its dean, I feel that this exchange between cultures is important to help advance global businesses so I am saddened when countries make it more difficult for students to study abroad or in countries other than their home countries.

How does Saïd Business School encourage entrepreneurship?

Not just at Oxford but more generally what we are seeing is that while there continues to be interest in finance and consulting or more traditional careers, there is also tremendous interest in entrepreneurship. In any one year between 8 to 10 per cent of our students will start a firm and around 16 to 18 per cent of our students will end up working for a start-up or social ventures of some sort (many of which are entrepreneurial in nature). So, a substantial section of our students are drawn to this type of career and this is, I think, relative to 30 years ago when I did my MBA, a substantial difference.

Indian businessmen have been making rich donations to American universities. How have the scholarships process and funding process evolved for Indian students in Said Business school? Are you in talks with Indian corporations or corporate leaders for more scholarships or funds?

As a dean, I am constantly in talks with people who might want scholarships from India or other parts of the world. I believe that schools like mine need to make sure that scholarship funding and loan funding, and students from all parts of the economic spectrum can come and get a great education in a place like Oxford. So, we haven’t been the beneficiary of some of the large headline grabbing donations like the American universities have done. But we continue to talk to various people who might want to support students from India to study at Oxford.

We also have a lending facility so that students can borrow money for their education- you may think that banks are queuing up to students who are studying overseas but that’s not always the case. So we have set up a special purpose facility to fund student loan with an organisation called Prodigy, which is an intermediary that structures student loans.

What challenges do corporations and top executives of companies face in today’s environment?

Companies today have to think globally as opposed to locally both for their workforce and to sell their products. They also need to think globally on where there competitors may come from. So these factors make it more exciting for a businessman/businesswoman today but also make it more difficult.

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