Darden dean: We want students to know they can fail

Here is an interesting point of view from Robert F Bruner, dean, the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia.

“We want students to know they can fail. It’s a classic feature of case method that students can fail,” he says, on a visit to Bangalore to meet corporate houses and Indian students. Only when they fail can they learn from that and avoid making the mistakes again, thinks Bruner, who’s recently authored ‘The Panic of 1907’, his earlier book being ‘Deals from Hell: M&A Lessons That Rise Above the Ashes’.

Perhaps it is this philosophy that makes Darden unique, so much so that it was ranked fourth in the 2007 Forbes Magazine rankings of the best MBA programmes, and third in the 2007 Financial Times survey of executive education programmes.

Darden’s programmes are unusual as they are based on the case study method. Students prepare for three case study sessions every day, each session lasting 85 minutes. In all, they explore 600 cases during the course. In fact, the school is second only to Harvard in publishing case studies. While Harvard has 6,900 cases published, Darden 3,900, of which 2,400 are current.

What’s so special about the case method? Bruner, a staunch promoter of the method, believes in ‘learning that sticks,’ and case studies leave a lasting impression. Darden offers a two-year MBA programme, a PhD programme and many executive education programmes.

The number of Indian students at Darden has tripled in five years. What are the reasons? Besides the school’s outreach, it’s the Indian students’ desire to receive global exposure and education, especially in the US, that has resulted in the upsurge, says Bruner. In fact, Darden’s India Alumni Chapter led by V N Dalmia, chairman of Dalmia Continental Pvt. Ltd., was Darden’s Outstanding International Chapter in 2004 and 2005.

Article source: The Times of India