Rich Lyons, dean of University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, thinks a lot about numbers. He calculates degree programs' profit margins and seeks new ways to improve "applicant yield," or the proportion of admitted students who enroll. But Mr. Lyons wants his students to care about more than just math.

At Haas since 1993, excluding a short stint as chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Mr. Lyons became dean in 2008. After taking the helm he introduced four "defining principles"—question the status quo; confidence without attitude; students always; beyond yourself— to provide a more articulate message about the school's strategy, which he says goes far beyond teaching the business side of business.

Rich Lyons, the dean of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business Noah Berger/Haas School of Business University of California, Berkeley

"[Academically,] there is nothing we do that no other business school does," the dean says. It's the culture—one that prizes humility, creativity and curiosity—that sets Haas apart, he adds.

Mr. Lyons, 51 years old, spoke with The Wall Street Journal about gaining financial independence from the university and the battle for student talent. Edited excerpts:

WSJ: The Anderson School of Management at University of California, Los Angeles, has been pushing for more financial freedom within the University of California system, though recently it has run into some roadblocks. Is that a path you would pursue at Haas?

Mr. Lyons: We've already moved in that direction. We have control over faculty salaries, faculty hiring, [some] student fees. One thing that's different is that we have a [state-supported] undergraduate business school [meaning the business school can't set undergraduate tuition].

Our operating budget is about $100 million and we have a roughly $20 million line item [from the state], but we're nowhere near 20% funded. There is no public funding for the three self-supporting programs [evening and weekend M.B.A., executive M.B.A. and master's in finance], and we send the [university] 15 cents of every dollar of that revenue. When you add up those payments [as well as student fees and a 7% charge on gross revenue from nondegree executive education], our net public subsidy is zero.

At the full-time M.B.A., we're effectively toggling from a state-supported program to a completely self-supporting program. We just renegotiated to get the financial freedom to compete [by controlling the budget].

WSJ: What does the new full-time M.B.A. funding model look like?

Mr. Lyons: Total revenue from the full-time M.B.A. is around $20 million. [The university gets] 15% of that. The new financial model for the full-time M.B.A. program is designed to be revenue neutral for both Haas and Berkeley at [its] current scale. If we increase revenues by expanding the program, we [still] retain 85 cents on every dollar. Now the incentive is there to right-size the program.

WSJ: What size is right?

Mr. Lyons: The first move likely would be to expand the size of the cohort. So instead of four cohorts of 60, as we currently have, you could imagine four cohorts of 70.

WSJ: One of your defining principles is "question the status quo." Isn't there some irony in a business school preaching that idea, when risk can be dangerous in a business setting?

Mr. Lyons: If you are in anything but a profoundly stable environment, you need people thinking about adjacencies. It has more to do with this habit of mind where you're saying, "There's got to be a better way to do this."

WSJ: Stanford Graduate School of Business is less than an hour's drive away. How do you compete?

Mr. Lyons:Speaking ill of one's competitor is not a good thing, so I'm going to answer more abstractly. We have a different culture and it's not for everybody. I don't think anybody in the industry would say anybody that fits [at another school] would fit here, and vice versa.

WSJ: Who else do you consider your competition?

Mr. Lyons: Top-10 schools. Our yield is around 60% for our full-time M.B.A., so we admit around 400 people. There are five or six schools that have 30 [applicant] overlaps and a couple where we have 60 or more.

WSJ: Your yield is rather low for such a highly ranked school, which suggests you may be a "safety school" for some applicants. How can you improve that figure?

Mr. Lyons: One way is to throw more of your budget at financial aid. Some of that is diverting the existing operating budget; some of it is saying to alumni, "This is the human capital battle that is defining our standing in this industry. Help me fight more effectively."

And [during] the three weeks after you've been admitted, I could call you. I could provide you with a mentor from our alumni association. You haven't even made the decision to come yet, but we're going to get you in touch with the senior vice president at the firm that you're interested in.

WSJ: Do you factor into admissions decisions where else someone might be accepted, particularly if it's a school against which you have a lower "win" rate?

Mr. Lyons: That's one of the unintended consequences of getting too focused on data like these. Our admissions director finds [protecting the yield] unsavory, and so do I.

What worries me more is that you're looking for path-bending leaders, but are you admitting the right people? Somebody who got a 3.8 as an undergrad, checked every box, took no scholarly or professional risks, you think they're going to be breaking new ground? If competitive dynamics are such that as an industry we have a de facto "no stumbles" policy, then we are almost surely not selecting the kind of human capital that society needs.

Write to Melissa Korn at