Sheppard was in India recently to announce Duke's global expansion plan. According to which Fuqua is going to launch its cross-continent MBA programme (starts in August 2009) to be conducted in six different parts of the world — New Delhi, Shanghai, London, Dubai, St. Petersburg, Johannesburg, Durham.

In a candid conversation with BW Online's Chetna Mehra, Sheppard talks about issues such as the core values of Fuqua, reason for global expansion and the impact of global recession on B-Schools.

Every institute has its set of core values which it seek in the students who are going to be the part of the institute. What are your core values?
Our mission since 1984 is to teach and conduct research; to create leaders of consequence. And one of our values is to be consistent about our mission. We follow the three dualities. Every student at Fuqua:

• We expect to be a great member of the team and be able to lead, when it is their turn to lead;
• We expect to be a really brilliant disciplinarian and a globalist;
• We want to be really, really smart and real.

It's this juxtaposition of the opposites that is at the core of who we are.

There are schools that are turn out really smart people but they isolate themselves from the realities of the world. It's our intent that we turn out the student who can drink champagne with the rich and famous and can drink chai with those who that's all they can afford.

And we consistently hear from our recruiters that they prefer our students because they are much better team members. Somehow they are more real and natural. So, that's one way to think about the leader of consequence. The other way, the leader of consequence is, they understand the world and that it's evolving and they have great judgement.

So, in order to achieve the three dualities, we have to be doing what we are doing. But also, if our job is to prepare you to be a leader of consequence, than means, we have to have you anticipate where the world's going and we have to exercise our judgement on what to do about it.

Why is Duke University investing $500 million for its global expansion?
The job of the great university is to prepare tomorrow's leaders. The present forms of business schools don't do that. If I turn out a student who understand the US really well, who understands finance really well, but doesn't connect to the policy issues that are impacting business, the environmental issues that influence the business and the larger context under which business is embedded - then, I am not turning out a leader of consequence.

But if you look at the events of the last few months, I think it's fair to say there are a whole series of people who didn't understand the world, who didn't understand the business in the larger context, who did not actually exercise the judgement they should have exercised. Our mission is to train the people who actually did understand the world, did exercise judgement.

Do you think after witnessing the ongoing financial crisis, it is time B-Schools start thinking of changing the way finance is being taught?
I don't think it's a finance problem. I think it's a general management problem. I think actually the managers of those firms didn't think like general managers, they thought like financial managers. And the advice that we give to business schools is that don't ever turn them out to be financial purists.

If you are brilliant, but real, then you can actually, see it, smell it, you can see the effect it's having on real people. You can watch people take loans who shouldn't take such loans. But if you are brilliant and isolated from the society, then you are not going to see it.

We are very disciplined about making that happen in all of our programmes. So, the curriculum designed has a disciplinary component to it, there is a globalist and team component to it, there's a leader component to it, there's a make-you-really-smart component to it, there's a make-you-real-component to it.

But, along with these don't you think risk management should also be taught more thoroughly in the B-Schools?
Well, actually risk management is pretty well taught at business schools. One of the problems is most risk analysis is linear - we use basic, linear statistical methodologies to assess risks. Multiple derivative products are non-linear products by definition. So, you have to think about risk differently. So, I think the problem is we are applying the wrong risk tools to the product. We have to have the risk analysis keep up with the innovation. That didn't happen.

How you are predicting the coming placement season to be amidst the financial turmoil taking place in the world?
Students who graduated from Fuqua this year are 6 per cent ahead of the last year. They came out in July, in the middle of the crisis and are actually 6 per cent ahead.

And that is because…
(laughs) It's because we turn out great kids.

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