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Speaker A Yesterday at this conference, I was talking to a group and I said, as a dean of a faculty, you always.
Speaker B Want to kind of do something which.
Speaker A Is unique and different and make your mark in many ways. And I looked at our situation and here in Toronto for example, they've talked about if Toronto became the ro capital of Canada or even North America, it.
Speaker B Would probably be a competitive advantage for the city of Toronto. Companies would come here knowing there's this resource. So I thought in our case at the Ashford School of Business, the University.
Speaker A Of Manitoba, by most measures we are.
Speaker B A small school, a very good school, but very small. And so how would we make a name for ourselves in a reputation? And I could have said by teaching.
Speaker A Ro in the curriculum, but that's a difficult thing to do, it's awkward. Deans don't control curriculum, it's a faculty.
Speaker B Thing and so forth. So that's be a long shot at best. But what I could do on the administrative side in selecting MBA students and when I mentioned we started this new program back in 1999 now, and it was going to be different from a lot of ways, and just one of.
Speaker A Them being eleven month in and out.
Speaker B But I thought if we could scrap the traditional selection methods, which is looking.
Speaker A At the GMAT grade point average and work experience off of a resume and.
Speaker B Make our decisions and put that aside or do away with it and go only on capability. And so before you could be selected.
Speaker A To the program, you had to go.
Speaker B Through a capability assessment using the requisite methods. And then we would choose people with the highest capability, because if we're there.
Speaker A To turn out potential managers or future managers, what does the GMAT have to.
Speaker B Do with that and grade point average? The answer is it's been proven very little, okay?
Speaker A The GMAT only correlates with grade point because that's what GMAT measures, right? So it's immaterial. And grade point has never been correlated with managerial success, okay?
Speaker B So if we use capability, first of all, this is unique and we can make our marketing world say, man, here's a school out there doing something very interesting and very useful. And it would cut down what I call the crapshoot of hiring MBA grads. Because now you don't care if the.
Speaker A Grade point is 4.0 and a five point system.
Speaker B You're taking somebody who is right here on the curve and has passed an MBA. By the way, we do a pass.
Speaker A Fail, no grades, okay? Because they're immaterial.
Speaker B And once they are certified as graduated, man city, you're going to hire this.
Speaker A Person here who's on the stratum three and reaching stratum four in probably about two years.
Speaker B And then we can say to the student, here's what your career looks like, here's why we took you in here.
Speaker A And then to your employer, listen, here's.
Speaker B Where I'm coming and is there a spot for me three years out, because I'm going to be looking for one. And you need to answer me right now, just so you know what the lay of the land is, what a powerful selection tool. Okay. That's all.
Speaker A Great. Okay.
Speaker B And the faculty were very polite and said that would be an interesting idea. Interesting would be a euphemism for other terms. But the practicality is we just couldn't do it.
Speaker A Okay. There's all kinds of bureaucratic things.
Speaker B The science base was of some concern, how do we defend this? And I could have, but it was going to take us five years to get it through. Okay. If we could at all. And I'll tell you, I'll make this prediction. It's usually like an economist. I'll tell you what's going to happen. I just can't tell you when. Some school somewhere, someday will adopt capability as the admission requirement for an MBA program. I'll tell you this, they should, and sooner or later they will. And when they do, and the evidence.
Speaker A Is in, after a period of time, it would replace the GMAT and all.
Speaker B The other traditional selection techniques. Close.