Seven years ago, Ricardo Lim, then the associate dean of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), was already talking about the tides of change sweeping the graduate-education market in the Philippines.Despite its history and stature, AIM, he noted at that time, faces stiff competition from equally competent schools that were offering Master in Business Administration (MBA) courses.
Not long after, the tides indeed swept AIM as Asia’s premier business school became mired in its own labor, management and tenure issues.
Today Lim, one of AIM’s major pillars, had just been appointed dean to replace Victoria Licuanan. And the time’s ripe to revisit the thoughts he shared in 2004 and a view of the path he would lead the 53-year-old school in the next five to six years.
Here are nine things the BusinessMirror got from talking to Lim five days after he transferred to his new post at the educational institution at the heart of Makati’s central business district, where many captains of industry studied.
1 Aim high. Stressing that an MBA is still attractive not only on one’s curriculum vitae but also as training ground for business, Lim is eyeing a return to the AIM’s glory days when it had 180 students. That was in 1998. These days, AIM has 117 MBA students, which is just enough to fill two sections.
“We would like to hit three sections within the next [school] year, not this September,” he said.
More than numbers, Lim also wants a “good balance” in terms of nationalities.
Lim said a good percentage of these students would come from India, which now accounts for 60 percent of its student population. “Because India is successful economically, we can still expect they would still form the bulk of our students,” he said.
On the other side of the classroom, Lim said he also plans to continue hiring international faculty, as well as develop homegrown talent. The plan is to tap those who are finishing their doctoral dissertation as institute fellows, where they can have the school’s support.
“We will house them and give them a haven. Of course, in return we hope they would teach at AIM,” he said.
Lim added that AIM would also continue tapping visiting faculty, which he said is not expensive as hiring them full-time.
He noted that providing an annual salary upward of $25,000 for full-time faculty is considered low as per industry standards.
“For a Filipino teacher, that’s a lot of money. But for a Korean or a Hong Kong professor, that’s slave wages,” he said.
Keeping such lofty standards justifies the steep tuition AIM charges: $16,000 a year for a two-year MBA course.
2 Swing low. But Lim keeps his expectations in check, in view of the competition for students, as well as faculty.
That’s because most Asians are still partial to American business schools. AIM tried recruiting students in China, he said, but the preference for US schools is still strong.
“Southeast Asia still has this mentality that the best business schools are in the US so they tend to send their top guns there,” he explained.
Nonetheless, since the US economy is not exactly in tip-top shape these days, Lim believes this offers opportunities for Asian business schools to emerge as attractive alternatives.
However, this is also spurring competition at home. Lim noted that some schools like De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila are now becoming aggressive in the market for MBA students.
“And they have products that are a third of the price than ours,” he added.
The entry of foreign schools and those offering alternative—online—courses keep AIM on its toes.
“[Competition] is waxing and waning, on an ebb and flow, but continues to be relevant and intense,” he said.
3 See the forest for the trees. While these are threats to AIM, Lim said he considers these challenges—and he’s more than willing to face them.
“As dean, it’s a much bigger kingdom-looking. As associate dean, I had the luxury of focusing on specific customer segment—young business school students—and on delivering a standard school product called the MBA,” he said.
Now he’s more focused on the “un-business, nonprofit type of endeavors in our development.”
“I’m looking at research, not to do much with business practice but with environment, with corporate social responsibility, corruption and governance, and a wide range of issues, some of which are connected with business, some are not and go beyond running a business,” he explained.
He’s also tasked with “making sure there is quality across the board, in the faculty you employ and the learning in the classroom.”
“More than ever before I look at these things now because I’m answerable to, all of a sudden, seven to eight times more different people—constituents and stakeholders—than ever before. It’s raised one whole level of complexity,” Lim said.
He cites a quote from baseball great Yogi Berra, who once said, “When you come across a fork in the road, take it.”
“I always felt when there’s a challenge, I take it. I test myself. When I was asked to write a book, The Phinma Story [in 1996], I’ve never written before but I plunged head on and it turned out well,” he said.
4 Never lose sleep. Despite the daunting challenges, Lim said surprisingly he’s been sleeping more soundly since becoming dean. Aside from becoming more mature, he said he doesn’t have time to agonize over things that he can’t control.
“Another difference between being an associate dean and dean is the opportunity that you can be more detached since you’re more into the overall picture and direction-setting,” he said.
Likewise, he doesn’t sweat the small stuff like being required to have a Doctor of Philosophy degree. That was an issue against his predecessor Licuanan. But Lim shrugs it off not because he has a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Southern California but because he believes it’s not a major factor.
He cited his alma mater, which he said had, at one point, an investment banker as its dean. The banker didn’t even have a master’s degree but he was brought in to raise funds and unite faculty—which he did, Lim said.
“Having a PhD is not the all-single formula; you need to hire somebody to get the work done. Having said that, I hope I’m one of those good administrators who set targets and get things done. But, of course, you need an academic in a dean to understand the people he’s managing,” Lim said.
“Maybe the AIM board felt I have enough of both academic and administrative expertise.”
5 Be honest. Lim acknowledged that there are differences among faculty, especially on the issue of tenure, and that some of these have been brought to the courts for resolution.
AIM removed the tenure system three years ago, according to Lim, to test it, citing some schools in Hong Kong and the US as models.
“I don’t know if it’s a detrimental decision. It’s too early since we just instituted this new system recently. We’re still trying to find out if there are other things that could motivate good faculty to come here apart from tenure and salary. There may be other factors involved,” he said.
But he admits that tenure has been asked by young faculty wanting to teach in the AIM.
“Of course, young people would want to have tenure. We tell them, ‘No.’ But we reserve the right to institute it in the future. But it’s not like we hide it. We make it clear that we’re trying a new system where there’s no tenure,” he said.
There are still no plans to reinstitute tenure for incoming faculty, he added.
Lim added, however, that while differences among faculty exist, he hopes that by focusing on quality, rigor, brand, and taking pride on AIM, “temporarily all legal troubles would be forgotten.”
“I hope we can rally around to see an exciting future for AIM so that faculty members can do more exciting things like research and new techniques,” he said.
6 Stop worrying about the atomic bomb. Lim is currently reading Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
Rhodes’s book is about the making of the atomic bomb, which Lim describes as “very scientific—not so much on the event itself or how its explosion created horrendous consequences.”
“It’s about how [Robert] Oppenheimer was able to marshal these brilliant minds and negotiate with the army despite the fact they’re eggheads,” he said.
Lim’s eyes sparkled while explaining that the book also tells of “managing Nobel laureates with big egos and big personalities.”
For Lim, what’s always interesting are the personalities. Bryson’s book, for instance, details the inventors and originators of the common things we see today.
While he gets ideas from these nonfiction books, especially history and biographies, for his work, Lim said he reads more for pleasure.
“I like to sit down in a secluded corner with my iPad and with nobody bothering me,” he said.
For work, “I go on the Web, which is a nice little maze where you can connect things together to learn. I read a combination of news and academic reports.”
7 Keep a sense of humor. But keep it to yourself and your close friends, Lim said, noting that being dean has upped his public stature a notch higher. He discovered this after posting something “vividly irreverent” on an online social network site.
Still, when asked him about the Three Stooges poster and the cartoon strips cut from newspapers at his old office, Lim’s eyes lit up and suddenly remembered the simple humor.
Competition’s tough enough and just because he’s now the dean, Lim doesn’t have to be stiff also.
(Photo by Roy S. Domingo)
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