B-schools reach out to MBA students' spouses
At business schools across the country, it's becoming the norm for partners and spouses of MBA students to feel just as much a part of the b-school community as the students themselves, says a Jan. 23, 2012 article for U.S. News and World Report. With clubs, speaking engagements, and off-campus events designed for partner participation, MBA students and their significant others are enjoying the new family-friendly focus of many business schools.
Harvard Business School's Partners' Club and the Columbia Better Halves group at Columbia Business School are just two of the many popular partners' clubs popping up at b-schools around the country. With statistics like those reported in the article for Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, which state that almost 40 percent of its students are accompanied by partners or spouses, it seems that this trend meets a real need in the b-school community.
"It's pretty disruptive to uproot your family and move back to a relatively small town and go through an intense schooling program when you're used to a different lifestyle working in the professional field," Joseph Ogden, an assistant dean at Brigham Young University, Provo's Marriott School of Management, says in the article.
He notes that the spouse association helps lessen the impact by giving spouses and partners an opportunity to meet and discuss their experiences. Partner associations can even help with more practical concerns like babysitting duties or housing resources. For the large numbers of MBA students who enter school with a family or significant other, groups like these can be a comforting support.
