Harvard Not on Par With Anderson School

I was very surprised and somewhat disappointed to see “Ahead of the Class” (April 22) on the Harvard Business School on the front page of the Business section. To the best of my knowledge, the Anderson School at UCLA is the most technologically advanced business school in the world today, and we are right here in Los Angeles.

My surprise and disappointment is not so much because of the Harvard Business School article, but that even with their upgrade they will not be as advanced as we are currently, and we were not mentioned. Indeed, we are continuously adding newer and better technologies and their uses to all our activities. As further background, the Anderson School has been a leader in information systems for almost 40 years--since 1957, when IBM Corp. created the Western Data Processing Center in our former building. Today information technology is one of the major strengths for which we are known around the world.

We have had our own internal network since 1989 and in 1992 began providing laptop computers to all students in our part-time MBA programs as part of their enrollment packages. We heavily use these computers in our curricula. The students are networked so that they can attend class, turn in assignments and take exams from as far away as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Europe and South America, where they live or travel on business.

Every seat in every classroom in our complex, as well as in our library, is wired and networked for laptop use (more than 2,600 ports) and our staff has access to the resources of the library from individual workstations throughout the complex.

We too have our own home page on the World Wide Web with links to various categories of detailed information about the school. Further, the backbone of our computer system runs 50% faster than Harvard’s does, even after an upgrade.

WILLIAM P. PIERSKALLA

Dean

Anderson School at UCLA