Recently, even more evidence was presented that suggests UW-Madison students are poised to take over the world. The business world, that is.
In a September issue of the business publication Bloomberg Markets, an article stated UW-Madison alumni are tied with Harvard University's for the greatest number of CEOs of Standard & Poor's 500 companies. The S&P 500 group is a conglomerate of companies that are representative of the nation's most important industries.
Both Harvard University and UW-Madison currently boast 15 alumni who lead these powerful corporations. This achievement may seem status quo for a private Ivy League institution, but for a public university like UW-Madison, this indication of the growing number of its alumni in high-profile leadership positions is significant.
Yet this recent triumph for UW-Madison is part of a national trend. Last month, an article in Slate magazine reported that in 1980, Ivy Leaguers made up 14 percent of top executives in the nation, while graduates from private non-Ivy League schools accounted for 54 percent and graduates from public universities only supplied 32 percent. Then in 2001, the Ivy Leaguers had dropped to 10 percent, the private school alumni to 42 percent, and graduates from public universities like UW-Madison had grown to account for 48 percent of all top executives.
Daniel Gross, the author of the Slate article, attributed the numbers to the greater size of public universities, the pronounced determination and self-sufficiency of public school students, and the modern tendency of employers to attach less weight to an Ivy League or private school diploma.
According to Dean Michael Knetter, the UW business school has one of the top 14 undergraduate programs in the country and one of the top 40 MBA programs. Consequently, the program is always in high demand.
\We have a lot of people that want to be in business that aren't getting in right now because we can't accommodate everyone,"" Knetter said.
He added the business department currently holds only 74 faculty members to instruct its more than 13,000 undergraduate and 450 MBA students.
This faculty is especially adept at producing what could be classified as ""transformational"" leaders. Alex Stajkovic, assistant professor of management and human resources, teaches classes in motivation and leadership. He said transformational leaders are identified by their penchant for ""pushing boundaries."" In a business sense, this type of leader usually induces financial growth in a company.
However, it is not solely the business school turning out such high-caliber graduates. Other departments are producing great leaders as well.
""Many of the people who are CEOs aren't business school graduates but are UW graduates in general,"" Knetter said. He said the studies on the success of Wisconsin graduates ""speaks to the overall caliber of the whole university.""
Alisa Robertson, the alumni outreach program manager for the School of Business, called the Bloomberg Markets article simply a ""snapshot"" of the overwhelming success of UW graduates.
""In reality, Wisconsin has so many people who are leading companies of so many sizes and at so many levels,"" she said.
