Reaching out across the Atlantic Ocean

The new director of Cranfield Management School wants a partnership with the US, says Kathy Harvey

Cranfield's nearest off-campus attraction may be Milton Keynes, but the university's school of management has had no difficulty in luring MBA students from all over the UK and abroad to its Bedfordshire campus. Competition for its flagship MBA programmes – among the most expensive in the UK – remains high and Cranfield's reputation as a top business school is well established. Hardly anything for the newly appointed director of the school to worry about then.

Not quite. Professor Michael Osbaldeston, still settling into the director's office on the Cranfield campus, is aware that competition is going to get tougher over the next few years, with the best schools jostling for position. Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge may have been late entrants to the MBA market, but they have still managed to shoot up the rankings and attract high-calibre international students. And increasingly, success for UK schools will depend on their position in a global marketplace. So, can Cranfield lay claim to an international reputation? "My assessment is that we are a well-established UK school with a growing European reputation, but we couldn't claim yet to be a truly international school," admits the new director. "It'll take some time, but on a long term basis it is possible."

Osbaldeston's appointment at Cranfield ended a year-long search for a successor to Leo Murray, a former tobacco company executive who parachuted into academia and stayed, successfully, for more than 16 years. His successor can claim a longer apprenticeship in management education, having spent 20 years at Cranfield's rival, Ashridge, before going to Shell International as its head of Global Learning.

Though clearly glad to be back in a world he knows well, Professor Osbaldeston believes he gained some invaluable insights during his three years in a corporate environment. "At Shell, I soon realised that only a few business schools knew how to invest in building relationships with corporations. Fewer than half a dozen of the world's business schools were really good at it and were beating a path to my door." His aim for Cranfield is to do just that with a wide variety of companies.

Fundraising and flag waving are an increasingly important part of any dean's role and it is likely that he will spend a large part of the next year wooing outsiders – not only from companies. Competitors such as London Business School have teamed up with US schools and launched so called "global MBAs" taught in more than one country. Osbaldeston thinks it's time Cranfield did the same. "I have a shopping list of places we could usefully link up with," he says, "and I expect to be visiting some of them this summer. Ideally we want a partnership with a school which has a similar philosophy to us, with good executive education programmes and a slant towards practical, applied research."

Raising the global profile will also involve attracting more international students and faculty, and carrying out research in other countries. He describes Cranfield's own research rating – it scored four in the most recent government assessment with five* being the highest mark – as "hugely disappointing" but sees no reason why, with some more focus on individual academic research projects, that can't be improved.

The commercially produced rankings, like those compiled by the Financial Times, are increasingly on the minds of business school deans. In the latest FT tables, Cranfield came 12th in Europe and 54th in the world. "We're not going to let the rankings determine strategy, but we can do something by greater internationalisation and research," says Professor Osbaldeston.

For the first time this year, international students formed just over 50 per cent of the total numbers studying for the full-time MBA – something he sees as positive. Cranfield alumni, many of whom hold senior positions in multinational corporations, are, he claims, more likely to judge its reputation by the quality of its latest graduates.

While supporting the one-year MBA, the school now has plans to expand its part-time programme. In future, Professor Osbaldeston anticipates Cranfield academics conducting more short "in-house" courses for organisations away from the university campus – acting as academic ambassadors for the school's reputation.

So, how long will it take to achieve Cranfield's global ambitions? "I've set myself a time frame of five years, but we can achieve a great deal in the next 12 months."

After three years travelling the world, negotiating with academics on Shell's behalf, Professor Osbaldeston says he will be glad to see the back of Heathrow airport. An office on a Bedfordshire campus seems quite an attractive proposition.