New England Board of Higher Education » international

A Business School on a World Mission

John O. Harney — Mon, 13 May 2013 11:48:09 +0000

The idea of “doing good while doing well” is hardly new. But the Y Generation’s response to it is different. They are literally taking on a youth revolution that extends from one part of the world to the other, while changing the conversation around social good and entrepreneurship.

My colleague Ahmad Ashkar, founder and CEO of the Hult Prize, one of the world’s leading platforms for social change, would be the first to agree—and has pointed to three major reasons why the youth revolution is taking place: 1) Information communication technology is interconnecting youth from around the world; 2) Corporations are being forced to consider social impact; and 3) Academic institutions—having caught blame in the recent financial crisis—are forced to rethink what they teach.

One academic institution that has taken a leading position on the topic of doing good and doing well is Hult International Business School—formerly the Arthur D. Little School of Management, which is why I am very proud to work as dean of its founding Boston campus.

The school, which was renamed to Hult International Business School in 2003, has grown from less than 70 students on one campus in Cambridge, Mass., to around 3,000 students across five campuses located in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. Hult is also expanding into new and emerging markets, and recently opened a “rotation center” in São Paulo—where a student can take electives after completing the first six months at one of Hult’s home campuses. In 2014, it will also open a new rotation campus in New York and double its capacity in Boston, where the school currently offers a one year intensive MBA and MIB (Master of International Business).

Hult International Business School is one of few business schools that has taken on the concept of doing good and doing well with an array of programs and resources dedicated specifically to action and impact. The business school offers a dedicated master’s degree program in Social Entrepreneurship. (A social entrepreneur is someone that launches social enterprises, or businesses, that focus on both social and financial return.) Each of the students in Hult’s one-year master’s curriculum is taught fundamental values that differentiate them from your average business student.

The school’s teaching principals are based on Action Learning. The concept was pioneered by Arthur D. Little in the mid-1940s and has since been adopted by some of the most prestigious schools in the world, including Harvard Business School and Stanford University.

Action Learning implies that students typically work in teams solving real-life challenges. The professor works primarily as a facilitator of learning with strong emphasis on reflection throughout the learning journey. As a business school, Hult believes in practical hands-on learning rather than purely theoretical business knowledge. The faculty members are real-world practitioners and students work on business challenges and projects throughout the year. The goal is to nurture and enhance business acumen among students to ensure they can plug back in to the business world immediately after graduation.

It was also this action-based curriculum that led to the inspiration for what has become one of the world’s leading platform for social enterprise as well as the world’s largest student competition for social good: the Hult Prize.

As a Hult International Business School MBA student, Ahmad Ashkar came up with the concept after listening to Charles Kane, the founder of local Cambridge-based, One Laptop per Child, speak about game-changing innovation at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Ashkar, having had no previous experience in social entrepreneurship heard Kane talking about selling products to the poor as a means to solve poverty. The concept of selling a product to someone who made less than $2 a day grabbed the attention of Ashkar who, had spent the majority of his pre-MBA career as a real estate banker. It was at than that Ashkar had his “ah ha” moment. He had to raise awareness around the topic of social entrepreneurship and create a platform where his peers from around the world could also be introduced to this novel concept. If this group of students from around the world were going to end social challenges, it was certainly going to be through the use of the model that Kane had discussed in class. In the weeks to come, Ashkar was able to convince Kane to help him construct the prototype for what is now known as the Hult Prize.

In the past four years, the Hult Prize has grown into a global initiative and is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for youth.” The annual contest, which is fully sponsored by Hult International Business School and run in partnership with President Clinton and the Clinton Global Initiative, brings together more than 10,000 participants who submit their game-changing ideas, aimed at solving one of our world’s most pressing social challenges. Each spring, a global, World Cup-style tournament is hosted by Hult’s campuses in Boston, San Francisco, London, Dubai and Shanghai. At these events, university student teams of five pitch social enterprises to executive judges who fly in from all over the region to help select the winner. Solutions are specifically geared towards a particular topic which President Bill Clinton personally selects each September. Following the regional round, winning teams are then flown into Boston, where they spend two months inside an incubator-like facility, where their new and innovative idea will be turned into full-blown prototype along with the development of an investment ready corporation. Last, a final round of competition is hosted by President Clinton on the first day of the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting where the winner is awarded $1 million in seed capital to launch their new company.

So far, this year’s competition has resulted in five global finalists teams (an online winner will also be announced). One of the most spectacular ideas came from McGill University in Montreal. The team, who won the regional final in Boston, proposed reducing food insecurity in urban slums by harvesting and feeding people with high-protein insects and particularly crickets. Meanwhile, the University of Cape Town came up with a prototype of a pre-fertilized, fail-proof seed that can be grown in any climate and with 80% less water than conventional means of farming.

Although it is unclear how much of an impact Hult has had on the students and their ability to solve some of the world’s most critical issues, it has certainly taken an active role in empowering them, while taking the concept of “doing good while doing well” to the next level. The more important question—of whether it will put an end to our most pressing social problems—remains to be seen.

Henrik Totterman is dean of Hult International Business School, Boston.

OECD Invites New England Higher Ed Leaders, Students to Paris for Conference on “Mass Higher Education”

John O. Harney — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 17:37:51 +0000

The OECD invites New England higher education leaders to attend its Programme for Institutional Management in Higher Education's 2012 General Conference on “Attaining and Sustaining Mass Higher Education” to be held from Sept. 17 to Sept. 19 in Paris.

The conference will examine:

Where have we got to in attaining and sustaining mass higher education?
What can higher education contribute to developing skills for the knowledge economy?
How can higher education reconcile its different missions and roles?
How can higher education maintain and improve quality?
What does the future hold for mass higher education?
How can higher education deal with the challenges it faces?

For a list of the many confirmed speakers, click here.

Tuition Fees and Student Financial Assistance: 2010 Global Year

John O. Harney — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:00:36 +0000

Since the start of the global financial crisis a little over two years ago, many concerns have been raised on how it might affect funding to higher education and whether or not it might hasten moves toward greater cost sharing. While, globally, some steps have been taken in this direction, in most countries, hard decisions have yet to be taken on this issue.

Our inaugural annual survey of global trends, in tuition fees and student financial assistance, examined the “G-40” of higher education—that is, 40 countries that, combined, account for 90% of global university enrollments and 90 percent of global scientific research production. Though G-40 is obviously not an exhaustive list, comprehending the main lines of policy in these countries provides an essentially comprehensive global picture without the need to examine policy in all the world’s 200-plus states.

Policy Stasis in Many Countries
Roughly half the countries in the survey—namely, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Finland, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom—saw no change in policy for either tuition fees or student aid for domestic students. A few countries—notably, Hong Kong, Finland and Sweden—did, however, see increases in fees for foreign students.

In most of Canada and in some parts of the United States, Korea, and Vietnam, students were in a situation somewhat similar to the “no-change” countries because tuition increases were offset by concomitant increases in financial assistance. Vietnam, in particular, was notable for large tuition rises (or at least, in the maximum allowable tuition charge) offset by significant increases in student assistance.

No country in the survey reduced its rate of tuition. An exceptional case involves Brazil. No change has occurred in the country’s student aid or tuition policies; fees are essentially free in the public system, but roughly two-thirds of students are taught in private institutions where fees are often very high. However, a scheme is moving the country in the direction of expanding the public system. As a result, even with no change in fee policy, a greater proportion of students are paying lower fees. This trend could be thought of as equivalent to a reduction in tuition.

Students in Chile, China, Germany, India, Japan, Nigeria, the Russian Federation and Spain all saw no change in tuition but improvements in student financial assistance. However, in most cases these improvements were quite marginal. For example, the new loans program introduced in Russia is intended to serve just 10,000 students out of a population of roughly seven million; in Nigeria, the new merit scholarships are similarly expected to reach just a few thousand of more than a million students. The only country to have really significantly improved affordability by enriching student assistance is Australia, where the Youth Allowance scheme was substantially enriched, in particular for students who have to move away from home in order to attend school. Vietnam also saw improvement in student assistance, but this was offset by increases in tuition.

The Asian Trio and Major Student Aid Cuts

Significant decreases in affordability probably occurred in Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines. Though these countries held the line on tuition, all experienced major cuts on student financial assistance—on the order of 30% to 45%. It is neither unheard of nor impermissible for governments to reduce support to higher education in times of fiscal stress. However, the decision of these governments to hold the line on tuition, while reducing direct aid to the poorest, is in fact a highly regressive policy that above all benefits the affluent.

In the developed world, the Netherlands and the Canadian province of Alberta both introduced cuts to student assistance and allowed tuition to rise. However, given the high levels of personal income in Alberta, the effects may not be too severe, even though the aid cuts were about at the same level as in Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, the changes in tuition apply only to the fourth year onwards and the reductions in student assistance are at the master’s level, which suggest that the impact on access of the new policy is likely to be negligible.

Other jurisdictions involving reductions in affordability have taken place in parts of the U.S. with large increases in tuition but only a slight offsetting increase in student assistance. The most notable example is California, where automatic increases in the availability of aid through federal programs such as Pell grants, Stafford Loans, and work-study programs fall well short of compensating for substantial increases in tuition.

Status Quo Minus

In sum, the global situation for tuition fees and student financial aid in 2010 and 2011 is largely status quo, despite the economic crisis. Faced with a looming public sector squeeze, most countries simply made no moves on either tuition or student assistance. Nevertheless, to the extent that states did make policy changes, the more significant ones increased, rather than reduced, net prices.

The most notable diminution of affordability occurred in Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, and some US states (most notably, California). As mentioned earlier—the Netherlands and Alberta, in Canada—increased tuition and reduced student aid but seem unlikely to pose any threats to accessibility. The only state to take a major step forward in terms of affordability is Australia, with its significant expansion of student aid programs. A number of other countries combined tuition freezes with increases in student aid, but the growth of support in many instances was marginal, at best. Our best estimate is that this trend will intensify somewhat in the near future.

While improvement of student aid in Colombia and the elimination of tuition in North Rhine-Westphalia will possibly exist, policy trends in the rest of the G-40 suggest that the overall trend is headed in the negative direction. As stimulus funds to states dry up in the U.S,, as inflation in China begins to feed through into tuition, and as European and North American governments adapt to the realities of deficit reduction and an ongoing demographic shift, the balance of probabilities is for increased costs to students and their families. The only issues will be the extent to which this cost sharing will be practiced in a manner in which student aid will rise to partially offset increased costs (as in Vietnam) or not (as in Pakistan and some other countries), and whether or not access to higher education will consequently be affected.

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Pamela Marccuci is director of Global Initiatives at Higher Education Strategy Associates. Alex Usher is president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, Toronto, Canada. To download the full version of this paper, click here.

This piece originally appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of International Higher Education, the newsletter of the Boston College Center for International Higher Education.

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