Oxford v Cambridge: The race between Saïd Business School and the Judge Bus - ChaseDream

Oxford v Cambridge: The race between Saïd Business School and the Judge Business School
Peter Brown meets the Dean who pushed Oxford's business school ahead of Cambridge
Published: 11 May 2006
Watched by Al Gore, Robert Redwood, eBay's Jeff Skoll and 600 others in the Nelson Mandela lecture theatre, Professor Anthony Hopwood, retiring dean of the Saïd Business School, looks confident and happy as he introduces the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. He has the air of a man who has wheeled and dealt in high circles.

Ever since the 1260s, when John Balliol and Walter de Merton stumped up the cash for the colleges named after them, Oxford has been adroit at finding rich sponsors with an eye to posterity. Few have been as good at it as Hopwood. This year, 21 per cent of the school's income will come from donations, endowments and trusts. "Which I think is one of the highest in Europe," says Hopwood immodestly.

He took over seven and a half years ago from the economist John Kay, whose brief reign ended in a flurry of indignation at the university's disinclination to pay a market rate to management lecturers. On that subject, Hopwood's "softly, softly" policy of making friends rather than enemies in high places has paid off, to the point where the school has considerable autonomy. "We still can't pay the same salaries as top US institutions or even London Business School. We'd like a little more freedom, but we've come a long way," he says.

And as he points out, there are many other attractions to working - and learning - in Oxford. The figures prove it. Bucking all the trends, the Oxford MBA intake was up to 225 this year from 170, and applications are 40 per cent up, with a high (690) GMAT average.

Three of Said's students were in this year's winning Boat Race crew. In the Financial Times's world MBA rankings, too, Oxford is ahead, at number 20, while its older opponent at Cambridge, the Judge School of Management, lies 35th.

But can Oxford keep it up? MBA rankings are drawn up largely on the basis of post-course salary increases, and the younger the intake the more impressive those will be. Oxford's average age is 29, compared with 26 - and falling - in most of America. The next leg of the race could be tougher than the first.

Pondering this from within the school's glass-fronted facade is Professor Colin Mayer, who will take over as dean in September.

His aim, he says, is to see the Saïd as a top 10 world player within five years. The first step, he says, will be to reform the management stucture at the college to reflect its improved status.

Those who know him describe him as approachable, efficient, a good behind-the-scenes operator and very, very bright. An Oxford graduate himself, he can move seamlessly between the corridors of study and power. In the Nineties, he helped to set up the influential economics consultancy Oxera, which he says helps to keep him informed on the big business issues.

Although he has been at the business school since its inception, he was chosen as dean by the university only after a global executive search. An expert on corporate governance, he has been setting up Saïd's latest venture, the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, complete with a generous £5m donation from The Hundred Group.

Married with two daughters, he lists his interests as piano, jogging, reading philosophy and science. The philosophy, he says, feeds into his argument that, in financial centres, trust is more important than regulation. And as for science, he says bullishly that at Oxford "there's been just as much innovation activity, and perhaps rather more, than at Cambridge". The Saïd is becoming known for its entrepreneurship teaching.

Mayer has been at the heart of the Oxford economics scene for many years, and it is the strength of the school's relations with the wider university, some might say, that have helped to push Oxford ahead of Cambridge. "We've got faculty in 27 out of the 29 colleges in Oxford," Hopwood says. The implication is that Cambridge is behind both in salaries and in integration.

Oxford can also point to a seemingly never-ending list of initiatives. Hopwood, whose background is in accountancy, reels them off: "We've looked forward into a world of business that's rapidly changing. We're strong in relation to new emerging sectors of the economy, particularly those that are knowledge-intensive. As well as the Skoll Centre we have an international summit in media and communications. We host the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation. We've got the Clifford Chance Centre for the Management of Professional Services and they've just increased funding by 48 per cent.

"We have 'Silicon Valley comes to Oxford' - we bring over techies and venture capitalists young and old, and they do master classes and plenaries with our MBA students. And L'Oreal have endowed a chair in marketing."

Why did L'Oreal choose Oxford over, for example, Cambridge? Geoff Skingsley, global HR director, explains: "The school was full of new ideas. It more or less sees the world as its potential recruiting ground. And that matches our strategy perfectly."

Hopwood is proud of his pupils. "A lot of colleges initially thought management was going to attract second-rate students. When they saw them, people wanted to have our students. They are highly articulate with backgrounds in history and philosophy as well as business."

One battle Hopwood appears to have lost, however, is the drive to establish management as a discipline in its own right. The school's undergraduates (an intake of 80 to 90 a year) still mostly study for joint honours in economics and management. But in an "assets swap" with Templeton College, the Saïd school has taken over executive education - "it is very personalised, not a sausage factory" - and announced a new diploma in financial strategy. And a small Executive (part-time) MBA programme, which takes about 35 students a year, has been launched.

Hopwood's ability as a fund-raiser is doubly important for a new school which cannot yet rely on large alumni donations (though an Annual Giving Officer has just been appointed). He can be justly proud of it, especially since it was achieved against a fight with cancer. He is now in remission and looking forward to a two-year sabbatical. "I have some very exciting plans". Oxford must hope that Colin Mayer's will match them.

If Vinay Melon, 29, ever had doubts about taking an MBA at the Said Business School they disappeared this spring when he found himself representing the university on a week-long tour of India by Oxford's Chancellor Lord Patten of Barnes (Chris Patten). It culminated in lunch with Dr. Manmohan Singh, the India Prime Minister.

"Meeting my own Prime Minister like that - it was something that only Oxford could have offered," says Melon, who looked at Cambridge and two US schools before plumping for the Said.

"I was a journalist in India, wanting to get into management and Oxford was planning a media and management centre. Also, my wife was able to find work here; she could not have worked in America.

"There are fantastic visiting speakers in Oxford, and being part of the university - I'm at Jesus College - gives it an added magic. It's very pressured, but working in teams of five different nationalities on assignments with 48-hour deadlines is exhilarating."

It is widely accepted that Oxbridge are world class in undergraduate study and many graduate studies, but their b-schools are second tier in Europe.

Cannot imagine how a school with admission rate above 50% can be world top 10. (Of course, Financial Time can change its criteria to make this happen.)

Just because it's affliliated to Oxbridge does not mean its b-school will be world class in the long run. Harvard's engineering school has long been ranked out of top 20, so does Yale's.

据我所知，牛剑的录取率都没有超过50％，按照bw上的讨论来看，剑桥大概是1：6，牛津大概是1：4。和us top mba的录取率差不多。

以下是引用流沙在2006-7-30 20:19:00的发言：

据我所知，牛剑的录取率都没有超过50％，按照bw上的讨论来看，剑桥大概是1：6，牛津大概是1：4。和us top mba的录取率差不多。

Rochester: a top 30 school in US. many other top 20-50 schools have similar data.

	2005	2004	2003	2002	2001
Selectivity	52%	42%	36%	25%	27%
Yield	63%	57%	n/a	98%	27%

	2005	2004	2003	2002	2001
Selectivity	37%	37%	37%	27%	32%
Yield	37%	40%	40%	41%	44%

	2005	2004	2003	2002	2001
Selectivity	30%	25%	20%	15%	8%
Yield	42%	45%	51%	52%	48%

不好意思，只看到forum的讨论就把数据拿过来用了。Oxford的情况我不太了解，只知道它正处于快速扩张阶段，每年招收的人数都大幅增加，估计想和HBS一样做成一个巨无霸式的商学院吧。在这样的背景下，它的录取率上升也不足为怪。重要的是生源质量，这个和录取率并没有必然的反比关系。

另外，个人觉得选学校着重的是个人的目标和学校的强项能很好的fit in，而不是排名。即使进入top 1的学校，也不代表其中的所有学生都能脱胎换骨了，关键还是在自己。

以下是引用bluebluestone在2006-8-26 1:14:00的发言：

我知道的今年要去牛津读MBA的中国学生有7个左右，说下目前知道的大概情况供大家参考。大陆，一个两年前曾被2所美国top10录取，因故没去，今年也录取他的另一所是Insead；一个是要拿志奋领奖学金的；美国，一个今年手里还有2个magic7的offer；另一个在那里已经拿了顶级学校的硕士；香港两个不太清楚，其中一个CFA3。

共同的特点是工作比较长，最少的5年。选择学校时考虑的因素有时间成本，学校强项（比如VC），想回国发展，就业情况等等，这些都是很实际的，或许还有些虚的东西，呵呵。

还有听说今年申请人数增加了40%，录取学生平均GMAT690。

以下是引用bluebluestone在2006-8-26 1:14:00的发言：

还有听说今年申请人数增加了40%，录取学生平均GMAT690。