Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Educating Leaders for 800 Years
That is the current tagline on the website of our Saïd Business School at Oxford University. It is a good one. It cuts to the heart of what makes Oxford so special, as the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and one whose reputation and pedigree are unmatched in producing brilliant minds, great leaders, prominent authors—even saints. In fact, the exact age of the university is unknown, so that the school might have legitimately said "Educating Leaders for 1000 Years", but to their credit, they prefered to stick to what can be factually documented.
One of the things that most struck me, however, when I visited the Saïd Business School was its great modernity. Actually, no: the word "modern" does not do the school justice—rather, it exudes the confidence and success that make you immediately feel that you are someplace cutting edge. UK MP David Marquand has described the School as the "future of Oxford University", and once I visited the place I could easily see how one could arrive at such a conclusion. Since the MBA programme at Oxford is comparitively young, the push to build a world-class business school shows Oxford, not at rest on its prestige and past achievements, but actively deploying its wealth, energy, and expertise into establishing itself as a preeminent world leader in business education. Seeing such forces mustered is an exciting thing.
I had a lot of concrete reasons to choose Oxford for my MBA, and I could catalogue the list of them here, but I think it would make for boring reading. Instead, I hope that what I have said captures something of what the atmosphere and energy is like at Saïd Business School, which in itself says a great deal.
