CA: Many of the top schools have made efforts to focus on globalization and increase that opportunity. But none of the other top U.S. schools are in the Global Network. Is that by design?
BD: There are a couple aspects to this. So none of the top U.S. schools had been a part of the Global Network because the focus was on being global and we were the convening school. The idea was that we would be the US-based school and then all the other schools would be outside the U.S. One of the most recent schools to join was Berkeley Haas, on the other coast. Haas is now a part of the Global Network, and we chose them very carefully in the sense that they are a similar school to ours but on the opposite side of the country. I think that has been a nice edition. But of all the other schools, Canada- and Mexico-based schools are the next closest. And then Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. All the continents are covered.
It is a different way to approach globalization, in the sense that most other top business schools will engage outside of their borders through one-to-one partnerships. These are fine, but they tend to be exchange programs or something that’s linear and very limited. The idea behind the network is that it amplifies the connections you can make as a student. For example, we have Global Network weeks. These are a week-long series of courses that you will take at one of the other Global Network schools. They happen for us in the fall and the spring when school is on break so it doesn’t disrupt your courses. It is intentionally done that way. You might go to Koç University to take courses. You would be taking courses at Koç from faculty there, but with students from the other participating schools. Usually 19 or 20 other participating schools take part. You are in classrooms with students from Hitotsubashi in Japan or Technion in Israel. You connect much more globally than if you were just doing an exchange program or a short duration program in another country, and just with students from that school.
CA: Again I think that’s a great illustration of sort of the ways in which what Yale is doing is different from other schools. Do you anticipate further growth with the Global Network? Will there be some more U.S. schools, just as you get bigger you need to have more? Or what does the future look like for that?
BD: There was actually a meeting last week, in Paris. The Deans of the global schools all met to talk about governance issues, and talk about other schools joining. The composition of the Global Network is 30 or 32 schools, right now. My sense is it won’t get much bigger because it can get unwieldy if it grows much more. There might be a few more schools joining, there might be some refreshing schools coming in, and schools going out. That kind of rotation is probably not atypical. I don’t think it will get too large because then the governance challenges get that much more serious.
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