Andrea Fosfuri Is the New Dean of the PhD School

THE FULL PROFESSOR OF MANAGEMENT HAS GIVEN UP A SABBATICAL TO TAKE ON THE POSITION. I'M GOING TO WORK ON STUDENT SELECTION AND PLACEMENT PROCESSES, HE SAYS.

The new Dean of Bocconi's PhD School, Andrea Fosfuri, has postponed a sabbatical period so he wouldn’t miss the opportunity to take the position. «It's an interesting role,» says the Full Professor at the Department of Management and Technology, who took office on 1 November. «It has to do with research, which is my main interest, and since the Dean is a member of the Academic Council, I will participate in the decision-making process that leads the development of the University.» Because he was previously a Program Director for the PhD in Business Administration and Management and attended a PhD in Economics, he was also the person with the right expertise. «But in some ways, every PhD is different, so working with the Directors will be crucial,» he says.
 
The PhD School is, in a way, Bocconi's most exclusive school. Its five programs (Business Administration and Management; Economics and Finance; Legal Studies; Public Policy and Administration; and Statistics and Computer Science) have a total of about 200 students. Unlike students in other schools, they do not pay a fee, but are funded by scholarships. They also benefit from an exceptional professor-student ratio and a lot attention from faculty. For the University, it is therefore an investment, justified by reputational and long-term considerations.
 
«First of all, the existence of high-quality doctoral programs is one of the factors that differentiate a research university, as Bocconi aims to be, from a teaching university,» says Prof. Fosfuri. «And today’s PhD students will be tomorrow’s Professors – not necessarily at Bocconi, but all around the international academic world, as Bocconi’s policy is not to hire its own PhDs immediately after graduation. Some may return after having gained experience abroad, but all of them will contribute to Bocconi’s good name and its international network.»
 
A good PhD School is also a tool for recruiting new Professors on the international market. «Scholars interested in research, such as those Bocconi aims to recruit, need good PhD students to collaborate with,» explains the new Dean.
 
«The two lines of action I will follow,» says Prof. Fosfuri, «concern the selection of students, in order to ensure that our school is increasingly attractive, and the placement of graduates. We already have several cases of excellent placements as both Assistant Professors and Postdocs at institutions such as Harvard, the National University of Singapore, Stanford, Wharton, Oxford, Cambridge and INSEAD, but we must ensure that a virtuous mechanism is triggered, which cannot ignore the need to engage the faculty and which acknowledges the commitment of supervisors, so that these cases are increasingly frequent.»
 
Any changes, such as the recent introduction of new curricula operated by Prof. Fosfuri's predecessor, Pierpaolo Battigalli, will have long-term effects because, on average, students complete a PhD program in 5 years. Prof. Fosfuri’s sabbatical will have to wait a little longer.

by Fabio Todesco