Unfinished Business: Dean Rajan Appointed to Historic Third Term

In the university’s announcement about your third term, the provost cited your leadership in taking “smart risks on new ideas.” What’s your personal philosophy on risk-taking? How do you determine which risks are worth taking?

I feel we’ve been more open to risk-taking than our peer institutions, and it’s worked because we’ve been open to shutting things down if they’re not working.

Starting to teach undergrads was a huge risk—our original idea for a business major completely failed, so we took a side turn and created a track in the econ major, which allows undergrads to take electives at Booth. Eight years on, the Business Economics Specialization is the most popular major in the College.

To me, risk-taking is about having a clear strategic vision of what you’re trying to achieve. It’s about trying to figure out a way around the problems that you’re facing in an innovative way. It’s not about copying other people. In addition to those things, we have to have faculty backing and support to move ahead with any new initiative or program. If we don’t have that, it’s doomed to fail.

When you began your first term, you said, “I wanted to be dean at a school where I would be proud to be a faculty member.” What have you learned about the faculty since then?

That statement is still true. The caliber of our faculty, and the level at which they operate, is a completely different level than any of our peer schools. I believe that is the core distinguishing feature of Chicago Booth—the quality of faculty we are able to attract, support, and retain.

We have the best faculty in the world in most of our disciplines, which is amazing for one institution to say. At the margin, all of our resources have gone into preserving that.

In my first faculty meeting here, I told the faculty I was never going to interfere in the way they govern themselves, because I trusted them to have the judgment to do it. And I told them I wanted some big things changed in the school and I wanted their support to do it. I’ve gotten that over the last nine years.

Why do you think an MBA will remain a worthwhile investment, and why do you believe Booth is the best place for future MBA students, given the changes AI is bringing to the labor market?

The great thing about the MBA is that it’s eternally morphable into whatever you need it to be. Our MBA Programs have evolved significantly over the last 10 or 20 years. That’s what makes it the perfect degree, as long as you’re willing to adapt it to the times.

One big advantage we have in AI: Our faculty are leaders at empirical research—that’s what Chicago has always been known for. We’re the best school at working with data in all forms—experimental data, empirical data—taking it, making decisions, and using it to change organizations and society.

In the last two years, the big investments we’ve made have been in computing power, which I would never have guessed. We spend a lot on research professionals who help faculty. As long as we have faculty at the leading edge of research, they’ll bring that into the classroom. You can take a base-level accounting class like people did 20 years ago, or Bradford Levy’s AI and Financial Information class.

We’ll keep adapting our MBA Programs to whatever is needed to best support the students going through them at that time.

As you head toward becoming the longest-serving dean of Booth in more than 80 years, what are the two biggest things you want to get done in the years ahead?

First, I want to find a way to maintain and sustain our part-time programs—the Sokolov Executive MBA Program and the Evening and Weekend MBA Programs. Making structural changes to the way we operate in the US and global markets to ensure success in these programs is, in my view, the single biggest challenge the school faces.

We have great assets—the faculty, the brand, alumni engagement—and leveraging them to get these programs in front of the people who will benefit most is a big goal of mine over the next few years.

Second, we have been the fortunate recipients of significant philanthropic investments by our alumni. I want to continue that momentum through the completion of our capital campaign.  Finding additional sources of funding for faculty research support and student scholarships is critical. My ultimate goal is simple—I want to ensure that the school is financially sustainable for the foreseeable future.