EDHEC Business School

If you think EDHEC Business School came out of nowhere, you haven’t been paying attention.

Last year, the French school dropped 10 spots to 57th in The Financial Times MBA Ranking. In the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking, it didn’t even crack the Top 10. Behind the scenes, the school has been investing heavily in areas like ESG and Entrepreneurship. That funding yielded big returns in November when Poets&Quants ranked EDHEC as the top MBA program in Entrepreneurship.

How did EDHEC pull off this feat? For starters, the school had the highest percentage of Entrepreneurship electives: 55% of its catalog is devoted to the field. It also boasted the highest ratio of entrepreneurs-in-residence. In fact, the school reported that it had 347 entrepreneurs-in-residence available during the 2023-2024 school year. Entrepreneurship is considered so valuable that 100% of EDHEC MBAs are involved in a startup in one form or another – and over 60% take an entrepreneurship-focused elective.

EDHEC also ranked among the best for startup money available to students, incubator space, mentorship hours, and the percentage of faculty who teach courses in entrepreneurship and innovation. The school’s Entrepreneurship track ranks as the school’s most popular, attracting 27% of the most recent graduating class. By the same token, 13% of the class had launched their own venture by graduation, with another 10% joining a startup.

You won’t just find entrepreneurship centered in EDHEC’s Nice flagship campus. That said, the school’s TechForward incubator is based in Nice, where students specializing in Entrepreneurship pitch business angels to conclude the program. However, EDHEC also maintains an incubator in the historic Jean Arnault campus in Lille. Even more, the school rents 110 workstations in Paris’ Station F, the world’s largest startup campus – home to over 1,000 startups and 150 funds. According to EDHEC Dean Emmanuel Métais, in a 2024 interview, EDHEC incubates roughly 100 startups per year. Per student, the school also offers three hours of one-on-one entrepreneurship career coaching with Edgardo da Fonseca, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor.

EDHEC doesn’t just teach and support entrepreneurship, they live it.  In 2012, the school spun off a company from its EDHEC-Risk Institute, Scientific Beta, which provided faculty intellectual property to investors. Eight years later, the school sold it for €200 million. Like any nonprofit, EDHEC channeled the proceeds back to the school. This included opening the EDHEC-Risk Climate Impact Institute to focus on climate finance. The school further started a Venture Fund, GENERATIONS Powered by EDHEC, using another €40 million from the sale. This fund, in partnership with RING Capital, supports ventures that are “Responsible by Design” – or RED.

“[These are] startups that, from their inception, will not only try to create a market and to earn money and to grow, but also to tackle a societal issue. This is the kind of startup we really want to see and to incubate,” explains Dean Métais in a 2023 interview with P&Q.

However, EDHEC’s ambitions extend far beyond entrepreneurship, which is just one part of the larger Generations 2050 strategic plan. Already backed by €270 million of pledged commitments, the plan has earmarked €112 million for campus renovations and €40 million for green finance initiatives. That doesn’t count another €41 million split almost evenly between expanding sustainable entrepreneurship and creating EDHEC AI. Along the way, the plan is looking to boost faculty and research staff from 170 to 270 positions.

Lasting through 2028, Generations 2050 is predicated on three broad goals. First, the school wants to develop models that are net positive, not just net zero. This means nursing early-stage startups that align with its RED methodology, along with opening a Centre for Net Positive Business to combat food insecurity and carbonization in the construction industry. Second, EDHEC is looking to advance climate science, opening a Climate Finance School while continuing to build its EDHEC-Risk Climate Impact Institute. Finally, EDHEC is starting its Transformative Journey, a learning pathway designed to guide students on managing organizational transformation using tools from economics and the social and environmental sectors. As part of this transformation, the school will be funding EDHEC AI, a program to boost artificial intelligence coursework and capabilities in the classroom.

According to Dean Métais, Generations 2050 is an outgrowth of the school’s roots. “From its inception, EDHEC has been very focused on the humanities – the human side of business. We were created in the north of France by Catholic industrialists in 1906, and from the very beginning, we placed a huge emphasis on the human side of business. What this says about EDHEC is that we believe business can solve problems, and that business must have a positive impact on the world. We want, through our research and the education we provide to our students – who will soon become decision-makers themselves – to have a positive impact on both business and society.”

Even more, the strategy amplifies EDHEC’s marquee attraction to students, adds Métais. “One of the reasons students choose EDHEC is what we call our “Empower to Transform.” It’s one of the main priorities in our plan. We aim to educate our students to “walk the talk.” We want them to have a real impact, and through the education we provide, we teach them how to change businesses and organizations from the inside.”

EDHEC is home to 9,500 undergraduate, graduate, and executive students, operating campuses out of Nice, Paris, Lonon and Singapore. The full-time MBA program lasts 10 months and houses roughly 80 students from 30 nationalities each year. The school also maintains a 16-month EMBA program along with several Master’s programs. These include a Master in Management and Executive Education programs that are ranked 4th- and 5th-best in the world by The Financial Times respectively.

The school has also stayed busy rolling out new programs over the past year. This past fall, EDHEC launched a Global Economic Transformation & Technology (GETT) Europe Master’s Degree. Through this program, students will earn a MiM from EDHEC, an MSC in Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Management from Imperial College Business and a certificate involving data and technology from ESMT Berlin. The program is a variation of the school’s popular GETT program in Asia, which also includes Sungkyunkwan University’s Graduate School of Business and the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School.

“This partnership exemplifies our commitment to excellence and innovation and offers an immersion into three of Europe’s leading cities as well as expanding the frontiers of technology, entrepreneurship, and management,” says Leila Guerra, vice dean for education at Imperial College Business School, in a statement. “Whilst at Imperial, students will be empowered to become the next generation of venture founders, venture builders, innovators, and investors to create and grow new business opportunities while considering the implications of social and environmental factors.”

Last spring, EDHEC announced that it would add an online MBA program to its portfolio, which launched in the fall with a similar-sized cohort starting this spring. Lasting 24 months and priced at €39,000, the online MBA is the school’s latest foray into the space after offering an online master’s degree in analytics, corporate finance, and international business. True to the school’s Generations 2050 aspirations the program will integrate green finance, black market threats like cybercrime and money laundering, and AI models and applications. To bring the full-time program’s on-site company visits into the online space, EDHEC has developed what it calls “digital learning expeditions” – virtual tours and narratives around top companies in various industries.

Alas, EDHEC is following its ‘walk the talk’ expectation for students – investing heavily to provide a truly relevant education that meets students where they are…and where they want to be. Increasingly, this is why students are choosing EDHEC as the place to pursue their graduate business education.

“I think that especially for the MBA, I hope our positive impact philosophy is something that will mean something to them and educate them to cope with these social challenges that we face,” adds Dean Métais. “I think that the value proposition also is the return on investment. It seems to me that we offer an outstanding experience for a reasonable cost. France is a country in which education is free, so it’s impossible for us to charge the same tuition fees as our U.S. competitors. We want to be in the global competition, so we have to deliver an outstanding experience, but we have to keep our prices reasonable. And, I mean, our MBA is located on the French Riviera, and lifestyle is part of that as well.”

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