From AI-integrated curricula to fully virtual campuses, the landscape of higher education has changed significantly in the past few years alone – and this is just the beginning.
When you think of the business school of the future – in say, 2035 or 2040 –?what do you envisage?
While it’s hard to predict what the business school of the next two decades might look like, we can already see that institutions are challenging the traditional models of learning and finding new ways to keep students engaged.
As the world of work continues to be shaped by evolving technologies, shifting workforce expectations, and global uncertainty, the institutions that prepare tomorrow’s leaders must also change quickly.
The good news is that students and higher education professionals get to decide what the future of business education looks like. Here are some of the things we may see in the business school of the future:
A rise of AI and technology
Maybe it’s a similar site to what we have now; campuses – online or in-person –?full of students who are busy building the skills they need for the modern workplace, growing invaluable networks and working with top-of-the-range technology. They’re privy to brand new research that will transform workplaces for the better, and they’re using that knowledge to help companies solve real business problems.
Or perhaps it’s gone the other way. Business schools are struggling for funding because it’s more financially beneficial for those would-be students to go straight into the workplace. There’s less research and academics are constantly pressed for time and money. Perhaps business schools don’t exist at all…
Higher education is at a turning point, and luckily, as higher education professionals, you get to decide this outcome.
There’s a popular planning technique called The Reverse Plan in which you start from your desired outcome and then work backwards to create a plan of action. But designing a perfect business school is no easy feat, particularly when there are so many challenges in the higher education industry currently.
In speaking with those currently shouldering the responsibility of creating the business schools, and programmes of the future, we’ve identified several aspects for educators and aspiring students alike to consider:
Creating programmes which teach real-life skills
Currently, less than a quarter of recent university graduates believe they have all the skills they need for their current role, revealed a new Workplace Intelligence survey sponsored by Hult International Business School. And 55 percent say their college education didn’t prepare them at all for their job.?
The top reasons for this, leaders say, are that recent graduates don’t have real-world experience, they lack a global mindset, and they don’t know how to work well on a team. Employers say it costs too much to train grads, they simply aren’t leaving higher education with the right skill sets, and they have poor business etiquette. In fact, over a third of employers would rather hire a robot or AI over a recent graduate.
Yet the problem seems to take root before higher education. “The educational demographic has changed. The students are not ready when it comes to college. Many of our schools even say they have to teach students high school mathematics,” says Lily Bi, President and CEO, at AACSB International.
A recent AACSB State of Business Education report found that the lack of graduate readiness and employability actually has a high or critical impact on the operations, strategy, and outcomes of business schools today. Impacting how they evolve – perhaps as much as industry shifts, technological advancements and generational preferences will.
Embracing Technology and AI
The report, developed through months of focused engagement with diverse stakeholders, business school deans, administrators, educators and industry leaders, emphasised that graduates must be prepared to thrive amid disruption, rather than training for specific roles that may quickly become obsolete.
This was a sentiment echoed at AACSB’s ICAM conference in Vienna earlier this year. “We are facing a major shift in our era of higher education,” Alain Goudey, Associate Dean for Digital and Full Professor of Marketing, NEOMA Business School.
A key part of that is readying graduates to navigate swiftly evolving technological capabilities.
When it comes to ensuring graduate readiness, AI presents two opportunities. As an enabler, AI enhances skill development through personalized learning, creates industry-relevant use cases, and expands access to education for a broader range of students. As a critical skill, employers are actively seeking talent who can strategically leverage AI to drive innovation, efficiency, and competitive advantage, according to AACSB’s survey.
NEOMA Business School is one of the most tech-forward business schools in Europe. This approach to teaching has seen it launch a 100 percent virtual campus which sees professors and students interacting using personalised avatars. More recently, the school is strengthening its commitment to artificial intelligence by announcing a partnership with Mistral AI, a global leader in open-source generative AI models.
Starting in September 2025, 2,000 students will have access to Le Chat and the school aims to integrate Mistral AI technologies into NEOMA’s educational processes, research projects, and internal operations.
“We are entering a period where we are going to face this mix of artificial intelligence and biological intelligence. And, above all, we will also need C intelligence: critical thinking intelligence, creativity, contextual cultural intelligence, compassionate intelligence, and so on,” states Goudey. “As a business school, we need to understand how to balance technology and humanity, and we also have to train people.”
Similarly Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business is creating an AI platform that integrates multiple LLMs and allows faculty to create custom bots for case studies and simulations. As the school’s dean, Paulo Goes mentioned, “Faculty are just thinking about what they can do, and that’s where the innovation comes”.
Retaining our humanity
Human skills are also becoming increasingly important with the use of AI in business, 83 percent of the employees and leaders surveyed in AACSB’s survey agreed.
Business schools, then, must adapt to prepare leaders for this AI-driven world, by emphasising skills like digital literacy, ethical decision-making, and leveraging data for strategic innovation.
Porto Business School’s (PBS) dean, José Esteves says that to thrive in the age of AI, leaders must have both opening behaviours that promote exploration, creativity, and divergent thinking; and closing behaviours that drive structure, accountability, and implementation. They also need the flexibility to switch between these two modes in response to dynamic conditions.
For this reason, PBS developed the Dynamic Learning Model, an educational framework designed to equip leaders with the mindset and tools n required in the AI-driven world. In practice, this means empowering leaders to think creatively, use critical thinking and act with real-world impact. Esteves stresses the need for ambidextrous leaders – those who can explore the new and optimise existing knowledge. That’s why PBS embeds this dual capability into every stage of learning.
Evolving Program Structures
A viral PwC report that analysed nearly a billion job ads in six continents across 80 industries found that every industry is expanding its usage of artificial intelligence (AI) – including those less obviously exposed to AI, such as agriculture.
The findings show that the skills sought by employers for AI-exposed jobs are changing 66 percent faster than for other roles, while workers with AI skills command a 56 percent wage premium – up from 25 percent last year. Rather than taking jobs, the report suggests roles are growing in virtually every AI-exposed occupation.
Employers are therefore searching for effective ways to teach their employees new skills. In response, companies are increasingly looking to micro-credentials, experiential learning, and real-world problem-solving as essential complements to traditional degrees.
Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford has developed “mini Executive MBA” postgraduate diplomas as an option for businesses trying to build these skills. Kathy Harvey, Associate Dean for Global Networks and Innovation at Saïd Business School, noted these are a “profitable, shorter, smarter, more sustainable version” of their programmes. She added that they were like “a little piece of the Executive MBA cake”.
While the school started with a one-year MBA (unlike the traditional two-year American model), they’ve continued to innovate with these shorter, specialised offerings, which enable students to continue to take on bite-sized, specialised learning around their professional lives, keeping their skillsets relevant. The model has been popular. Harvey mentioned they currently have six such diplomas and are about to launch a seventh.
But when it comes to full-time programmes, the future is more uncertain, as flexibility continues to be a pressing need for applicants. “Is the two year MBA really on its way out? Are we going to have a three- or four-year MBA?” Harvey asks.
To stay on top of the demands placed on them, business schools must reimagine their curricula, find new innovative ways of learning, and reinforce the lasting value of a business education.
Debashis Chatterjee, the Director of Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) put it well, when he explained what the future might look like if we don’t start defining these programmes more clearly. “The MBA will become the Master of Business Ambiguity. AI will be Awareness Incorporated, and the ROI will be the Return On Individual,” he said. “We have to redefine these terms once again because we are in a cognitive revolution”.
IIMK has therefore implemented what they call the ‘three Ds’ approach: Digitisation, Diversification and Diversity – digitising education to reach students across 22 states in India through 13 to 14 different programmes. As Debashis Chatterjee explained, “We said, okay, people can’t come to us, we must go to them.”
“If you look at what’s out there in India, we have a population of 700 million young people looking for education. This is not just aspiration, but also desperation. People want to be there [in person], but they can’t. So we have to reinvent the MBA because it is the thing to do.”
Addressing Uncertainty and Geopolitical Challenges
Despite continually shifting political movements across the across the world, dictating students’ study options by impacting their safety, and mobility between countries, the business schools of the future, must continue to keep their focus global, rather than local, creating opportunities for everyone to learn.
“Creating the workforce for the future is also something that’s starting now. We must ensure that we’re providing citizens with global perspectives, and that they can work in any culture, in any environment,” said Olayinka David-West, Dean of Lagos Business School at AACSB’s conference in April.
Scott Dawson, Dean at the University of Colorado Denver, agrees. “We have very strong values around making education work for all,” he says. “A lot of our core positioning is about opening doors and lowering barriers to success. For the future of business education, persistence is a key issue we’re trying to tackle, with scholarships being super important to help our students succeed.”
Martin Boehm, Executive VP at Hult International Business School adds, “As education institutions, we typically fulfil different roles. It’s about teaching, education, research, and being a voice in society. We have that responsibility to speak up, to share our research and highlight what is good about global markets and international mobility.”
Creating financial innovation and sustainable practices
As business schools and universities around the world contemplate what the future might hold for higher education, AACSB’s Lily Bi, says we must think about what this ideal business school of the future should look like, and strive for it.
“The ideal Business School for the future has 11 beacons guiding tomorrow in four segments,” she shares. “Starting from what we teach – human-centred leadership and tech fluency; to how we teach – learning through practice, industry integration, and flexible learning pathways; to how we strategically operate – financial innovation and global orientation; and finally how we get impact – societal impact, broadened faculty roles, and impactful research.
“As business school educators, we constantly talk about change, we promote it, we preach it to our students, and we push them to be creative and innovative, yet often we are reluctant to change ourselves. It is time we practice what we preach.”
By, Chloë Lane
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