Q&A with Stefano Bonini, Professor and Stevens School of Business Director of International Partnerships

What characteristics are you looking for when you develop new partnerships?

I look for strong academics because I want students who are challenged by our themes and our academic skills in terms of our faculty. We're strong in certain areas, and we want these incoming students to take the best that we can offer. Likewise, I want students who are strong enough to be challenged by the best of our faculty, so academic quality number one. It is also essential that there is one partner, one point of contact, who is invested in these things because they take time and promoting the agreement is not just something that you have on a web page. You need to have someone who actually tries to promote

How do you evaluate how well these partnerships are going, and what are the key metrics you look at?

We try to elicit feedback, and we have never had a single complaint. In terms of what you can observe, it’s finding the patterns that work. Of the schools that have come for the dual-degree program, almost all of them have come before for a Finance Week, and they love the place. The key metric of success is whether they come back and how many come back.

What are your goals for the dual-degree programs going forward?

My goal is to expand by trying to keep the price point low so that we can successfully hire students and expand the number of agreements. By increasing the number of schools, we can have a solid footprint of partnerships with universities that can hopefully continue giving us students for the long run.

How important is the successful placement of graduates?

I think that we need to be cognizant of the fact that any graduate program, not just a dual-degree program, relies heavily on placement statistics. Recruiting more students is good, but we cannot do that by saying, ‘Oh, well. They're going to go back to their home country and find a job.’ People need to perceive that there's value in terms of finding a good job and getting their money back soon. The alternative is they can come to the U.S. for a year and have fun, but is that worth the money? The word spreads pretty quickly in that sense. We need to make an effort to make sure that we bring in people that we can place and support their placement efforts.

How do you use UPO’s placement success to demonstrate the value of the program?

I use it all the time, and UPO itself uses it internally. It’s like a flag that you want to wave in front of everyone. I do that by using the placement data of other students who placed well, maybe not necessarily in the U.S., but they did place very well and are having exceptional careers. It goes back to having quality students that we can train, and we can morph into even better job market candidates. You need to have students who have stamina, who have willingness, and who will bring something that employers want to the table.”