When MBA students at Stanford Graduate School of Business – long seen as the spiritual home of startup swagger and big ideas to change the world – openly declare, “We’re not learning anything,” it’s time to listen.

In a striking piece published by Poets&Quants, Stanford GSB students voiced frustration over what they perceive as a growing gap between the promise of a world-class MBA and the reality of their academic experience. The critiques? Courses that feel outdated and aren’t building skills, professors that lack enthusiasm for teaching, too few places for popular classes, and an administration that hasn’t listened and adapted to a changing environment.

The student concerns extend to classroom engagement, and an approach that signals which five to seven candidates may be called on the day before class. “You know what that teaches the students?” one student asks. “It teaches them that they don’t have to read or prepare before class if they’re not on the list. It teaches us that we don’t have to learn.”

The irony is that anyone admitted to the Stanford MBA has demonstrated an outsized capacity to learn and rise to challenges. The GSB has the most selective MBA on the planet, with often more than 18 applicants competing for each of the 430 places in the program. The incoming class routinely has the highest GPA average of any business school, and often the highest average GMAT or GRE test scores.

A Reputation To Maintain

Of more than 50 MBA candidates who worked with Fortuna Admissions to secure their place at Stanford last year, many also received offers from other M7 schools including HBS. They chose Palo Alto for many reasons, that included the Bay Area location, the calibre of their classmates, an emphasis on an interpersonal leadership journey, a more relaxed learning environment, and the prestige of the Stanford degree.

The GSB has a grade non-disclosure policy, meaning students are generally not allowed to share their grades with potential employers. This policy, along with others like it at top business schools, aims to foster a collaborative environment and encourage students to explore a wider range of academic and extracurricular opportunities without the pressure of grades impacting their job prospects.

But students are worried about the reputational impact that might impact on their job prospects. “If Stanford MBAs start underperforming in internships or jobs because they haven’t built real capabilities, that affects all of us,” a student explained to Poets & Quants. “It affects the perceived value of our degree.”

The curriculum is struggling to keep pace with the seismic changes reshaping the future of work – particularly AI. This isn’t just a Stanford problem. It’s a signal flare for business education globally.

The MBA’s Existential Question

For decades, the MBA degree was a ticket to transformation: professionally, financially, and intellectually. But the rise of on-demand learning, industry micro-credentials, and AI tools that automate much of what MBAs were once trained to do – from financial modeling to slide-building – has prompted an uncomfortable question: What exactly are we paying $200,000 to learn?

Stanford GSB isn’t alone in facing this reckoning. Across top-tier programs, students are asking for more than networking mixers and group projects. They want real academic rigor, future-proof skills, and a curriculum that feels intellectually alive – not just administratively efficient.

The former dean of Chicago Booth and Yale SOM, Ted Snyder did two accreditation reviews of Stanford GSB and 14 reviews of other top schools. He believes this problem is not new, and not specific to Stanford GSB. 

“At many top business schools, Students, Faculty, and Deans enter into a three-way agreement to not take academics seriously,” he explains in a Linkedin post.  
1. Students want to focus on careers and networking;
2. Faculty want to avoid lousy teaching ratings;
3. Deans are happy to let things slide and concentrate on other matters.

Snyder argues that there are fundamental differences between organizing a great talent pool and building a great business school, and feels that Stanford GSB is especially susceptible to the weakening of academic standards because students and faculty are in the heart of the high-tech industries.

The AI Tsunami Is Already Here

In 2024, PwC estimated that nearly 40% of global work tasks could be automated by AI within the decade. Business schools, once havens for PowerPoint prowess and theoretical frameworks, now face a world where GPT-4.5 can out-analyze a consultant, and code-free platforms can spin up an MVP in hours.

Students know this. Increasingly, they’re not just comparing MBA programs to each other – they’re comparing them to bootcamps, startup incubators, and even YouTube.

And so, the cries from Stanford – “we’re not learning anything” – aren’t anti-intellectual. They’re the opposite: a plea for depth, challenge, and relevance.

Signs of a Rethink Across the Top Schools

Other leading business schools are listening – and responding.

The Wharton School is introducing a new MBA major in artificial intelligence for business, which includes courses on applied machine learning, data science, neuroscience, data engineering and a required ethics course, Big Data, Big Responsibilities: Toward Accountable Artificial Intelligence. 

With support from the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative, courses will be directly informed by Wharton faculty research, giving students access to academically rigorous and practically relevant knowledge in real-time.

“We are at a critical turning point where practical AI knowledge is urgently needed,” said Eric Bradlow, Vice Dean of AI & Analytics at Wharton. “Companies are struggling to recruit talent with the necessary AI skills, and students are eager to deepen their understanding of the subject and gain hands-on experience.”tier

It’s no longer enough to know how to read a P&L – you’re expected to ask how AI bias might distort the hiring algorithm behind it.

Berkeley Haas is bringing AI into the MBA classroom in real-time. A new course, Harnessing AI for Business Success, taught by data leader Roopesh Varier tezches students how to use AI strategically in marketing, finance, and operations – and how to decide when a human touch is needed.

The class has had very positive feedback. “I took this course to catch up on all of the trends,” says Hayden Xu, MBA ’25 who worked in consulting at EY-Pathenon before the Haas MBA. “Most of what I am learning here is new, including the powerful data analytics I am using with the AI assignments.”

INSEAD’s MBA reflects the growing impact of Artificial Intelligence across industries by offering a wide range of electives that either focus on or integrate AI-related topics. From foundational and strategic perspectives to practical applications, students explore how AI is transforming leadership and industries. Courses include Foundations of AI for Managers, Building Generative AI Products & Businesses, AI Entrepreneurship,among others. 

And INSEAD professors are loving this new challenge. Theodoros Evgeniou, Professor of Technology and Business described one of the AI courses as, “One of the most intense and thought-provoking sessions I’ve had at INSEAD, about AI, business, society, politics, geopolitics.”

Even Harvard Business School, bastion of the classic case method, has begun experimenting with AI-enhanced case delivery and tools to help students stay on the pulse of AI, including a new Data Science and AI for Leaders (DSAIL) course. Through daily interactions with AI agents, students build fluency in how these technologies can enhance decision-making, automate complex tasks, and unlock new business opportunities.

“If the 20th century was defined by the MBA wielding Excel, this century will be defined by MBAs working hand-in-hand with AI agents – reimagining organizations, business models, and operating models from the ground up,” says Professor Karim Lakhani.

The message is clear: static content no longer suffices.

Students Are Pushing the Change – and That’s a Good Thing

What’s striking about the Stanford situation is that students themselves are driving the demand for reinvention. They’re not rebelling against learning – they’re fighting for better learning.

They want:

• Classes that go beyond the obvious: fewer lectures on “how to be a leader,” more robust frameworks for decision-making in uncertainty.
• Real exposure to complexity: not just Harvard cases from the 90s, but analysis of algorithmic governance, synthetic media, or AI-driven supply chains.
• Accountability: if they’re paying a premium, they expect their faculty – and their peers – to show up intellectually, not just socially.

This pressure from within could be the most important force reshaping the MBA since the financial crisis.

A New Definition of Rigour

Of course, rigour doesn’t mean reverting to rote memorization or econometrics for the sake of it. The future of MBA learning will be defined by integration – of disciplines, of humans and machines, of theory and practice.

Rigor in 2025 means understanding not just how a model works, but when to trust it. It means navigating ethical gray zones in product development, data use, and automation. And it will mean leading teams where half your “employees” are AI agents.

These aren’t optional. They’re core competencies in a workplace that is changing faster than most business school curriculums can update.

So What’s Next?

The Stanford story might sting, but it’s also a turning point. When students at the world’s most prestigious business schools say “this isn’t good enough,” that’s not failure – that’s fuel.

Ted Snyder is hopeful for the next steps of the school. “I served with recently appointed GSB Dean Sarah Soule on a search committee and was impressed. What a great opportunity for Dean Soule to get Stanford GSB back on track.”

It’s a wake-up call for business education to shed its complacency and rebuild itself not just for the jobs of today, but the uncertainties of tomorrow.

If MBAs are to remain relevant and worth the price tag, they must move from being networking rituals to becoming intellectual launchpads. The kind that don’t just teach you how to lead in the world that was, but how to shape the one that’s coming.

The future of work won’t wait. Neither should the MBA.

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