Dean's Message

As inequality rises in America and tears at the nation’s social fabric, some public polls are suggesting a decline in public belief in the positive impact of the nation’s higher education system. According to a survey conducted recently by New America, confidence in Higher Ed dropped from more than two-thirds (69%) to just over one-half (55%) between 2020 and 2022. 

NY Times columnist, David Brooks, has lamented: “The most educated Americans [are] amassing more and more wealth, dominating the best living areas, [and] pouring advantages into their kids.  A highly unequal caste system [is] forming.”

Other critics are even more outspoken. Writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Chad Wellmon observed, “American higher education has produced many goods.  But it launders privilege, luck of birth and circumstance, and financial and social greed into socially acceptable status under the rubric of merit. And now it exacerbates persistent and worsening financial and social inequalities.”

In my opinion this criticism overlooks the extraordinary outcomes created by our public institutions of higher education. As the first Dean of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University I believe, as did Jon Huntsman, in the unique place Utah State University and this college occupy in the higher education landscape of this country. In explaining his commitment and gifts to USU, Mr. Huntsman said, “There is a remarkable atmosphere on the campus and the community of Logan. The university has a sense of purpose. There is a remarkable quality of life here. These factors will all combine to help us make this business school one of the finest in the country.”

That vision, fifteen years since the USU College of Business was “reborn” as the Huntsman School of Business, is coming to fruition. We take seriously our purpose to be a “career accelerator for our students and an engine of growth for our community, the state, the nation, and the world.” And we are making progress on our strategic objective, “to become the premier, undergraduate business and economics program in the Intermountain West.”

Mr. Huntsman believed that a person should not have to “win the lottery of life, or go into debt to the tune of $300,000” in order to get access to the finest undergraduate business education available in America today—and that Utah State University could provide such an opportunity. “I did not go to Utah State,” he said, “but if I were making a college choice today, I would.”

In this issue of Huntsman Business Magazine, you will read stories of our students for whom access to excellence at an affordable price has not been a false promise. I can proudly and confidently assert that they are representative of thousands of other graduates of the Huntsman School of Business in its first fifteen years. And we are just getting started!

Huntsman at 15

The purpose of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business is to be an engine of growth for our community, the state, the nation, and the world, and to be a career accelerator for our students. Here are just three key performance indicators by which we measure our journey over the past 15 years.