David Schmittlein is full of surprises. It is easy to think that, as the newly appointed dean of MIT Sloan, and formerly a professor at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, he may have a US-centric view of management education. Not so. While the top US schools promote the two-year MBA as the gold standard, he has different views.

“The future of management education is not the future of the MBA,” he says – a statement that would horrify most of his US peers, as he well knows. “I would like to be the first North American school that gets this,” he adds.

It is perhaps not surprising that MIT Sloan should be the first of the top US business schools to argue there is more to life than the MBA. Sloan has a small undergraduate programme and the Sloan Fellows programme, a full-time, one-year course for seasoned managers.

For Prof Schmittlein, there should be an appropriate programme for managers at every point in their careers. “We will be driven by growth in the number of programmes [we offer], not by a bigger MBA.” True to his word, he intends to launch a one-year masters programme in management – similar to many offered in Europe – for those who have just finished an undergraduate programme. The school has already announced that it will launch a specialised masters degree in finance and more specialised masters look set to follow.

As to the MBA itself, he believes this will form a critical tool for people in their late 20s who want to change careers. With this in mind, the school is reducing the core of the MBA – the first part of the programme that all students study together – to a single semester. This would be heresy in a more traditional MBA programme, but Prof Schmittlein is unrepentant. “In the backrooms, no one really believes that they need a one-year [core] course.”

This will enable Sloan to offer more focused elective tracks to suit students' individual needs. “People who come to Sloan come for just four or five things,” he says – finance or strategy, for example.

But cutting the MBA to a one-year programme is not on the cards. “The reason that the MBA is two years is because people want to accomplish a thoughtful career transition,” he maintains.

Perhaps even more surprisingly for MIT, which is often viewed as a highly technical university, practical application is to be the order of the day at Sloan. It is a mantra that many business schools recite but few implement. “Creating and managing great projects is the best way to learn management concepts as well as management practice, but it's incredibly hard to do,” says Prof Schmittlein.

MIT Sloan is one of the schools that already does this best, he believes. “We do more project-based learning than any other leading school,” he says (see right).

After 26 years at the Wharton school, most latterly as deputy dean, Prof Schmittlein is well attuned to what the US business world is thinking and he believes there are convulsive changes afoot on business leaders' agendas. Twenty years ago the global supply chain was the all-consuming problem. Ten years ago, e-commerce was the biggest threat – and opportunity. Today, business leaders are worried about two issues, he says: sustainability and what this means for their companies, and how to compete in a “flat” world – how to form partnerships.

These produce specific challenges for Sloan students. “It's not a story of 28-year-olds trying to save the world. It's a story of managing in times of cataclysmic change. It's about what our students do and need to say when they get into these organisations. They are expected to have something to say about this.”

The new dean is beginning to show his colours as a seasoned marketing professor. Telling the world about Sloan students and publicising the school are top of his agenda: “There is not enough visibility that there is a school of management [at MIT]. What does it mean within this distinct university? What's great about MIT as a school of management?”

While many top business schools – Harvard and Stanford to name just two – are working hard to get other university departments, such as engineering or medicine, to work with them in offering joint courses, this is second nature to Sloan. “Our graduates are close to graduates from other departments,” explains Prof Schmittlein. “The school needs to be relevant to them at different times.” The university's much-copied MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, in which students from all departments work together on business ideas, is perhaps the most prominent practical example.

What has helped Sloan master these relationships and its speedy curriculum changes has been its relatively small size. With about 100 faculty and 400 MBA students, it is less than half the size of Wharton or Harvard. The dean expects the number of faculty and programmes – though not the number of students on the full-time MBA programme – to grow. “We're just above being too small and we're not close to being too big,” as he diplomatically phrases it.

With a continued and strong focus on research, it is an agenda that is well-pitched to unite the Sloan faculty. As Prof Schmittlein puts it: “I would like us to recapture the intellectual high ground.”
  
大卫•施米特莱因(David Schmittlein)总是让人出乎意料。他曾任宾夕法尼亚大学(University of Pennsylvania)沃顿商学院(Wharton school)教授，最近被任命为麻省理工学院(MIT)斯隆管理学院(Sloan)院长。这种经历很容易使人认为，他对于管理学教育有一种以美国为中心的观点。事实却并非如此。正当美国顶尖商学院将两年制工商管理硕士(MBA)课程作为黄金标准加以推广时，他却有不同看法。

“MBA的未来并不代表管理教育的未来，”施米特莱因表示。他知道，这一断言足以震惊他的美国同行。他补充表示：“我们希望成为第一所意识到这点的北美商学院。”

斯隆管理学院成为美国第一所宣称“MBA并非生活全部”的商学院，也许并不令人意外。斯隆管理学院拥有一个小规模本科项目，以及斯隆学者课程(the Sloan Fellows programme)——为资深经理人准备的一年期全日制课程。

施米特莱因认为，应该为处于职业不同阶段的经理人提供适合的课程。“鞭策我们前进的不是MBA规模的扩大，而是课程的增加。”施米特莱因说到做到，他正准备开设一个一年期管理学硕士项目——与欧洲许多项目类似，面向刚刚完成本科课程的学生。斯隆管理学院已经宣布开设金融学硕士课程，今后肯定还会设立更多的专业化硕士课程。

关于MBA本身，施米特莱因认为，对于那些年纪“奔三”、希望改变职业方向的人，MBA是重要工具。认识到这一点后，斯隆管理学院将其MBA核心课程缩减至一学期，这些核心课程是整个项目的第一部分，也是所有学生的必修课。对于比较传统的MBA项目来说，这简直就是离经叛道之举，但施米特莱因毫无忏悔之意。“私底下，没有人真正认为他们需要修一年的（核心）课程。”

这样做，使得斯隆管理学院能够提供更多有针对性的选修课程，以满足学生们的个人需求。“来斯隆学习的人只想学四五门课。”施米特莱因表示。比如金融或战略学。

但是将MBA项目缩减为一年不太可能。施米特莱因认为：“MBA需要两年时间，是因为人们希望完成一个深思熟虑的职业转变。”

也许更加令人吃惊的是，之前人们往往认为麻省理工学院是一所高科技院校，但实际应用将成为斯隆管理学院的准则。很多商学院经常将实际应用挂在嘴边，但很少能真正执行。施米特莱因表示：“创立并管理优秀的项目，是学习管理理念和管理实践的最佳方法，但是这种方法执行起来十分困难。”

他相信，斯隆管理学院是在这一点上做的最好的几所商学院之一。“我们的项目实践学习比其它任何主要商学院都要多，”他表示。

施米特莱因曾在沃顿商学院任职26年，最后的职务为副院长，因此，非常了解美国商界的想法。他认为商业领导人的关注点将发生惊天动地的变化。20年前，他们最关注的是全球供应链问题，10年前，电子商务成为最大威胁——同时也是最大机遇。施米特莱因称，今天，商业领导者们最担心两个问题：可持续发展及其对自己企业的影响，以及如何在“平”的世界参与竞争——如何建立伙伴关系。

这一切给斯隆管理学院的学生们提出了特别挑战。“这不是关于28岁的年轻人如何试图拯救世界的故事，而是在大变革时期如何管理的故事，是关于我们的学生进入这些机构后能做些什么、需要说些什么。大家都期望他们对于这一点能有自己的想法。”

斯隆管理学院的这位新院长已经开始展示他作为资深市场营销学教授的独特作风。向世界介绍斯隆的学生并宣传学校，是他的首要任务。“公众对（麻省理工旗下的）管理学院的关注了解还不够。在这所卓越的大学内设立管理学院意味着什么？作为管理学院，麻省理工学院有何傲人之处？”

许多顶尖商学院正努力与其它学院合作——如工程学和医学，以提供联合课程，其中包括哈佛(Harvard)和斯坦福(Stanford)。但对于斯隆来说，这就如同它的第二天性。“我们的毕业生与其它学院的学生走得非常近，”施米特莱因解释道。“斯隆管理学院在各个时期都需要与别的学院保持联系。”麻省理工学院的“10万美元创业大赛”(MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition)为许多学校所效仿。在大赛中，来自各个院系的学生齐心协力发展商业理念。这也许是商业实践的最佳实例。

斯隆管理学院相对较小的规模，非常有助于它掌控这种联系以及迅速改革课程。斯隆拥有约100名教职人员，400名MBA学生，还不到沃顿或哈佛的一半。院长施米特莱因希望学院的教职人员和课程项目能有所增加，但不是全日制MBA项目的学生数量。他的表达非常具有外交技巧：“我们的规模不算太小，也远算不上太大。”

通过持续侧重学术研究，这样的计划非常有利于团结斯隆的全体教员。正如施米特莱因所称：“我希望斯隆管理学院能重夺智力的高地。”