Harbus

Issue date: 10/26/09 Section: News

He's one of the first people to speak to us on Orientation Day and one of the last we'll hear from before graduating. Dean Jay Light has an overarching impact on all of our lives here at Harvard Business School, and he is energetic, excited for the future and a refreshingly candid interviewee. He sat down with The Harbus and gave his thoughts on class sizes, the economy, Ben Bernanke and what he likes to do in his spare time:

HARBUS: There have been rumors of an eventual expansion of the MBA class size to 1,000 and the potential of adding another section. Can you comment on this and the reasoning behind it?

Jay Light (JL): So facts-so let's talk some facts. Typically, we target 900 to 910 students. I don't see the class size increasing to anywhere near 1,000. This year the target was 2% higher, and we have about 937, for a few reasons:

First of all, the number of applications we had was up, with great quality applicants. The first round last year was up 25%. So we said wow, our admit rate is going to be one of the lowest we've had; does that make sense?

Secondly, we needed to because of what was going on in the financial markets and the endowment, to cut back on expenditures in the budget. So the question is, how do you reduce the net expenses of the MBA program while still holding fellowships steady? And our solution was to admit a few more students, and that allows you to keep the fellowships. In fact, we increased fellowships by $1 million last year. It was not necessarily an easy thing to do.

It is unlikely right now that we will go to an 11th section, but these are things that we talk about all the time. We talked about the idea and explicitly decided not to this year. It has to do with making sure we maintain the quality of the classroom experience in all sorts of ways.

HARBUS: Do you think a class size of 95 is too large to allow for a personalized learning experience? Do you think that a size of 70 or 50 would be better?

JL: No. I think there is a flat optimum. I think the case method is better in large class sizes. I've taught a lot of class sizes in my life. I think 60 people is too small. You don't get the diversity of opinion. An individual student may say, "Oh, this is great, I get to talk more." But from the point of view of the quality of the
discussion, I think it continues to ramp up as the number of students in the class goes up, to the 80-100 range.

HARBUS: In the past few years, HBS has opened six research offices around the world, including in China and France. Where do you see HBS moving in the future internationally?

Continued...

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