As a Member of Congress from one of the fastest growing States in the country, we hire close to 2,500 new teachers a year, close to 5,000 support staff and faculty.
It's pretty challenging in a small country to develop a business school with a world-class reputation because of the problem of attracting a critical mass of top-class researchers.
If you can promise a vital and vibrant research environment as well as great students to your faculty, you can recruit some top faculty. The top faculty on your roster will then help you to attract further top students in your program.
I always wanted to start a school. I talked about it in college - but I didn't do anything about it.
One of the major jobs of the Harvard president is to choose the deans. I've had the opportunity to choose a considerable number of deans already, so I've learned a lot in the process in doing it.
I think it's pretty well established that great schools are predicated on great faculty. That is not a Wisconsin market; that is a worldwide market.
Universities hire professors the way some men choose wives - they want the ones the others will admire.
One of the terrific aspects of MIT in those days was the enormous variety of experimental work that either took place there or was talked about in seminars by outside speakers aggressively recruited by the faculty.
We are in an international marketplace for talent, and American colleges and universities need to be able to attract students and faculty from around the world if we want to sustain our excellence.
Colleges would compete by adding professors, enhancing programs, or building nicer facilities. So they competed by making institutions better.
Harvard is famous for being an 'absorbing state' for faculty with almost no one leaving it for another institution, which is why the decision of granting tenure is a life long commitment.
The field of 'economics and organization' is still young and needs support. I have been a chaired professor much of my academic life and know that such chairs are important for recruiting and retaining faculty.
It's impossible for any institution to compete unless you can afford world class faculty.
Another goal is to look to the resources we have and to see how we could do better to plan, in a sense, for the faculty and infrastructure that we will need to study Asia well into the 21st century.
