Classy rooms: business schools upgrade accommodation

Educationalists argue that learning is better achieved in a stimulating environment. And environments do not come much more stimulating than the Global Executive Program being run by Thailand’s Sasin School of Management this August. 

Participants will be taken by private boat to Sala Bang Pa-In, a 24-bedroom island retreat 50 minutes north of Bangkok, in the former Siamese capital city of Ayutthaya. The classrooms have panoramic views, with classes taught by a visiting professor from Harvard Business School and by a leader of the 2018 rescue of boys from the flooded Tham Luang caves — among others. Evening seminars will be held outside, around a firepit.

This level of luxury accommodation is becoming a requirement for a growing number of business schools — including many featured in the FT ranking of executive education schools, which face global competition for executive education students.

“There is an arms race for facilities in business education,” says Graham Miller, Rodrigo Guimarães chair & professor of sustainable business at Portugal’s Nova School of Business and Economics. “The business model is one that is potentially attractive to different partners — whether that is hotel groups or companies looking for naming rights on university buildings.”

Such investment does not come cheap. The University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School is midway through converting the city’s Victorian era Osney Power Station, on the banks of the river Thames, into a 121-bedroom “boutique” executive education centre. It had to raise £60mn to get the project off the ground.

Eleanor Murray, Saïd’s associate dean for executive education and senior fellow in management practice, says the venue — which will replace an edge-of-town 1960s education centre — is a chance to bring executive education students closer to the Oxbridge experience.

The building will blend industrial-revolution-era architecture with state of the art technology, including four purpose-built classrooms. Attendees will attend “formals” in a dining hall, an Oxbridge tradition aimed at bringing together students from different academic disciplines to network.

“We see ourselves in an international market and we are constantly reviewing our facilities against those of other schools,” Murray says. “Our clients are also increasingly building [executive education] facilities of their own.”

Last year, the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business made a similar move: it opened a 199-room boutique hotel, called The Forum, on the site of a 50-year-old dormitory-style accommodation block on its Charlottesville campus. The new complex, owned by Darden’s affiliated foundation, the Darden School Foundation, has two restaurants, a 22,000 sq ft of conference space, and a botanical garden with more than 10,000 exotic trees and shrubs.  

This transformation of an old plot that was next to a drainage ditch was made possible by a record $68mn donation from Frank Sands — a student from the class of 1964 — topped up with philanthropy from others and a bank loan. 

Although students can learn without leaving the hotel, The Forum is 200 yards from Darden’s main teaching building, which is also used for executive education classes.

The business school is not in the business of hotels, but we are in the business of education, so . . . we need to do it properly

The Forum is operated under contract by IHG Hotels & Resorts’ Kimpton brand, which runs it as a commercial enterprise — meaning that members of the public can stay, although rooms are reserved for executive education students.

A year after opening, it is making a profit, which is ploughed back into the school for scholarships and funding for new faculty appointments, as Darden dean, Scott Beardsley, explains.

“The most important part of the project is that it has enhanced our learning experience,” Beardsley says. Profitability is, to him, the “cherry on the cake”.

“The business school is not in the business of hotels, but we are in the business of education, so . . . we need to do it properly,” says Beardsley, adding that the old accommodation was “not ideal” for those expecting a premium experience.

“Students love coming here, but so do many recruiters, who use the facility for events to hire our students on behalf of their clients,” Beardsley points out. He says that up to 1,000 people can use the building at any one time, either as guests or for learning on site.

Roberta Tinch, president of Inova Mount Vernon Hospital, recently stayed at The Forum during Darden’s four-week Executive Program. “We are senior executives, investing a lot time and money . . . so being able to walk into a space and be comfortable and have a great experience is greatly appreciated,” she says. “I got Covid and had to quarantine in my room, but everything was there so I could continue my studies. The Forum is night and day different to what Darden had before.”

Beardsley says he looked at what other US universities had done when preparing for the Darden hotel project — notably, facilities at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California and the University of Pennsylvania.

“It was about forming a community, bringing people together,” he says. “Coming out of Covid, we knew people needed to see other people. It is a beautiful facility that serves a purpose. It is not a business project, but it is not business stupid, either.”

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Darden is not the only school to outsource its executive education accommodation to a hotel chain. Alliance Manchester Business School in the UK attached a 19-storey hotel to its executive education centre when it rebuilt its campus and four years ago — handing the contract to run it to the Hyatt hotel group.

Nevertheless, there can be reputational risk when a third party manages student accommodation, warns Andrew Crisp, co-founder of education research business CarringtonCrisp. “It must be run to a standard that students expect from the school’s brand,” he says.

If it is, however, it can prove highly cost-effective, he suggests. “These types of high-end buildings do not come cheap, but it is ultimately a good business decision because, if you own the hotel, it means that more of the money students spend on attending courses is coming back into the business school.”