Yale University’s School of Management, which aspires to be among the world’s best business schools, crams its students and faculty into 19th-century homes and former astronomy buildings linked by a rabbit-warren of basements. That’s a far cry from Harvard Business School’s 33-building riverfront campus, which boasts a chapel, health club and its own art collection.
To help catch up, Yale is planning a glittering $180 million structure designed by Lord Norman Foster, who built London’s “Gherkin” tower. The new building, scheduled to open in 2013, will help the school keep pace with its rivals, said Dean Sharon Oster.
Elite business schools are locked in an “arms race” of building bigger and more elaborate business campuses to recruit the best students and faculty and climb magazine rankings, said Yale finance professor Matthew Spiegel. New buildings mean more office space for faculty and more classrooms for profitable executive education programs. Larger schools can also enroll more students, who pay as much as $80,000 per year in tuition, room and board and other expenses.
Business schools are now splurging on high-profile architects to create imposing glass-and-steel structures, with everything from meeting rooms for student teams to cafeterias with organic cuisine and health clubs.
Good feelings
“The better the experience people have, the better they feel about the place, the more likely it will be that they would support it at some point,” said Robert Dolan, dean of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, in Ann Arbor, which opened a 25,084 square metre, $145 million building in 2009.
Since the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania opened its 324,000-square feet, $140 million Jon M Huntsman Hall in 2002, rival business schools have scrambled to keep up.
The University of Chicago opened its $125 million Harper Center in 2004, while Michigan’s building debuted last year. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Business, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will open new facilities this year.