To offset the costs of admitting more doctoral students, the Fuqua School of Business plans to let its incoming MBA class grow by 20 percent.
Douglas Breeden, dean of the business school, said he does not think the increase will sacrifice the quality of students admitted into Fuqua, pointing to a larger number of applicants to business schools nationwide, due in part to the sagging economy. Another admissions assistant has been hired to handle the additional predicted interviews.
Fuqua currently accepts about 10 percent of approximately 3,500 applicants to its daytime master of business administration program. With the proposed increase, the class size will grow from about 340 students this year to 400 next year. The additional masters students will help fund additional growth to Fuqua's doctorate program. Doctoral students usually do not pay their own tuition, and also receive around $20,000 in stipends a year each, funded in part by grants but also by their schools.
"Ph.D. students cost a school money," Breeden said. "They are not revenue-producing and they are an expense on top of that. But a great university has to have a great Ph.D. program."
One of Breeden's top priorities is to increase its research output from both graduate students and faculty.
Fuqua, which has one of the smallest programs among top-tier business schools, currently supports 65 doctoral students, up from 57 last year. Breeden, who just competed his first year as dean, hopes to increase that number to 100 within five years.
Breeden said that with fewer job positions available and increasing applications to business schools, Fuqua could admit additional MBA students from the same pool of applicants without decreasing the class' quality. Breeden pointed to an increase in both the average GMAT score of applicants--from 690 to 701--and their average grade point average--from 3.43 to 3.59.
"We are turning away very good students," said Richard Staelin, deputy dean. "There are lots more in reserve."
Staelin cautioned, however, that he would like to receive about 300 more applicants to maintain the school's selectivity. He also added that additional applicants will be important when the economy improves and the number of applications decreases.
Breeden said one possible pool of qualified applicants is U.S. students, whose applications have decreased by 24 percent in the last few years, while the percent of international applications has tripled.
Staelin added that another main concern for the school is to maintain what he called Fuqua's "collaboration and innovation," and its "small school atmosphere."
"The challenge that we have is to expand and to maintain still the culture we have here," he said, pointing to the recently completed Fox Student Center as a hub for Fuqua student life.
One area that will require additional attention will be career services, said Dan Nagy, assistant dean and director of MBA programs. He said other concerns, such as rising class sizes, should be minimized, as the school fulfills its plan to increase the faculty's size to 100. In the last two years, the faculty grew from about 60 to 80.
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