Education: Tourney of Young Tycoons

John Ginn, president of the Independent Publishing Co., had a problem. The previous spring he had taken over I.P.C., which publishes morning and afternoon papers in Anderson, S.C. His bosses at Harte-Hanks Newspapers Inc. set certain goals and promised him a bonus if he met them ($6,800 if he did well, $12,000 if he did very well). But by fall the economy turned sour, lots of readers canceled their subscriptions, and advertising began to slip. Ginn’s bonus was in jeopardy. What should he do?

That was the question thrown to 32 graduate students, representing eight major business schools competing this month in the Cornell M.B.A. (Masters of Business Administration) tournament, the nation’s first intercollegiate competition involving business problem solving. TIME Education Reporter Paul Witteman attended the tourney and filed this report:

The M.B.A. tournament is largely the creation of Gary D.J. Orosy, 23, a second-year Cornell student from Montvale, N.J., who likes to wear three-piece suits complete with gold watch tab and chains. He is given to statements like “They don’t crown No. 2 in life.”

Orosy and a classmate were drinking beer one night last year, lamenting the fact that other business schools had higher reputations than theirs. Thus the great idea: Why not invite the others to Ithaca to compete? According to a survey in M.B.A. magazine, business school deans ranked the top nine in employment value as Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Wharton School of Finance, Michigan, M.I.T., Carnegie-Mellon, Northwestern and Dartmouth (Cornell tied for 14th). Harvard loftily declined to compete, and Stanford said Ithaca was too far away, but the others all agreed to send four-member teams.

Aside from institutional rivalry, the tournament offered a comparison of various teaching techniques. Although the contest used the “case method” pioneered at Harvard—that is, the examination and solution of specific problems like that of Publisher Ginn—several of the schools favor other systems. Chicago is known as a “theory” school where students learn general concepts, then apply them to specific cases. Carnegie-Mellon and M.I.T. are strong in statistics and math; their students could “crunch the numbers.” Wharton is reputed to produce hard-nosed decision makers—bottom-line types. Cornell, which uses a combination of the case-study and theory methods, was clearly the underdog. Said Team Member Dick Tushingham: “If we are simply perceived as having achieved parity with the other schools, we will have done something for Cornell.” The results were to be judged by five business experts. They were also judged unofficially by 30 or so corporate recruiters on the lookout for prospective tycoons.

Pizza Break. After the teams were informed of John Ginn’s problem, which took 72 pages in all to describe, they had 22 hours to write a solution. In most cases it was an all-night process. Cornell’s Pat Jeffries worked at a blackboard and worried about his presentation (“I’m an actor, and part of this competition is theater”). Teammate Tom Mulligan nibbled chocolate-chip cookies and poked at his minicomputer. Said Cornell’s Nancy Read in the small hours: “As the evening has progressed we have done nothing but enlarge the scope of our ignorance.” Knowing nods greeted her, and the team decided to take a 1 a.m. pizza break. The reports were limited to five typewritten pages, but there was no restriction on appen dixes. Chicago’s theorists produced eleven. All teams met the noon deadline (Dartmouth with seconds to spare), adjourned for some sleep, then returned to spartan workrooms in the business school to prepare oral defenses.

With Orosy acting as M.C., Northwestern led off. It had proposed a long-term solution—expanding paper deliveries into neighboring communities —but its defense seemed perfunctory. When one judge asked a tough question, nobody knew the answer. Wharton’s faculty adviser, Jules Schwartz, smiled contentedly and wrote on a slip of paper, “They’ve been had. Our guys are going to be more sharkish.” Dartmouth was up next, and Curtis Welling, who already has a law degree, gesticulated in his best courtroom manner as he defended its rather undefined proposal to “establish a long-range planning committee.” Judge Malcolm S. Forbes Jr. of Forbes magazine looked unimpressed: “Your ship has hit an economic iceberg, and you are recommending more suggestion boxes for the passengers.”

Wharton’s “sharkish” approach was to go for a short-term solution: initiating special advertising supplements and also increasing the price of the paper to the carriers, the paper boys. After all, said J. Michael Kenney, “it’s just candy bars and milk shakes to them.” Favored Chicago offered a series of remedies, including a decrease in the number of pages and increases in subscription and advertising rates.

Cornell’s approach was longterm, and its defense articulate. The spokesman, Pat Jeffries the actor, said, “Our analysis indicates Ginn should focus on the next fiscal year.” Cornell recommended increasing the price of the paper and reducing the width of the page from 60 in. to 58 in.

When the arguing was over, John Ginn himself spoke at the awards banquet: “I feel like the guy who went to a psychiatrist and ended up in the showroom window of the biggest department store in town.” He had decided on a long-term approach, he said, and waited until the next year to raise advertising rates and reduce the width of his pages. The I.P.C. now was flourishing.

In the manner of the Miss America contest, the runners-up were then announced—Carnegie-Mellon and Northwestern. And the winner? Cornell. Much cheering and drinking of toasts. Gary Orosy’s idea had been a winner —almost. He did not get a job offer.