Darden’s Dean Bruner Talks MBAs on PBS

darden-dean-brunerLast Friday, Nightly Business Report on PBS featured Darren Gersh‘s intriguing interview with Dean Robert Bruner of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business in which the pair talked about whether the recession will ultimately be a valuable lesson for upcoming grads.

Here are some excerpts from that conversation…read the whole story here.

Dean Robert Bruner: It’s difficult to say that pain is healthy and that dashed hopes and disappointment is healthy. But I think that in the long run this generation is going to emerge stronger and wiser because of this experience. I tell the students, you’d really rather have an experience like a crash early in your professional life than late. So this generation will probably emerge much more sane about risk taking, much more prudent about thrift and investing.

Gersh: And yet business schools train the people who brought us this financial crisis by and large. I’m wondering, is this a time for reflection at places like Darden among professors about whether or not you did the right thing?

Bruner: No one can look at the events of the last two years dispassionately. No one can ignore the pain and dislocation that this has caused. I think we need to focus henceforth much more carefully on the way we think about risk, the way we assess it, the way we mitigate it. I think business schools need to embrace the consequences of the use of derivatives much more widely and help our students and the companies they serve use them more judiciously.

(Dean Bruner image courtesy of Darden School of Business)

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