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 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, Dean Sharon Oster said.
“You can’t be in a dump if everyone else is in a spectacular building,” Oster said.
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, Yale finance professor Matthew Spiegel said.
New buildings mean more office space for faculty, more classrooms for profitable executive education programs, and room for more students, who pay up to $80,000 to attend per year.
Business schools are 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.
“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 270,000-square-foot, $145 million building in 2009.
Since the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania opened its 324,000-square-foot, $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, Mass., will open new facilities this year, and Stanford Graduate School of Business, near Palo Alto, Calif., will follow in 2011.
Also planning new buildings are Columbia Business School in New York and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Ill.
Harvard’s buildings, the first of which were built in 1927, sit on a 40-acre bend in the Charles River across from the rest of the university. More recent additions include a glass-and-concrete chapel with a koi pond, housing for 400 visiting executives, a health club with three basketball courts and a student union designed by Robert A.M. Stern.
The University of Chicago’s new business school building was designed by Rafael Vinoly, who was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1910 Robie House across the street. It is oriented around a six-story, glass-and-steel atrium that acts as the school’s “living room.”
The social space has helped change the view that the business school is a haven for math geeks and social misfits, said Stacey Kole, a deputy dean.
“We’re working hard to break that perception,” Kole said. “When you come to campus, you see more activity. It’s a much more positive place to be.”
