Beyond Rankings & ROI: What Business Schools Must Become To Survive

The traditional MBA has had a remarkable run. For decades, it served as the unquestioned golden ticket to career advancement, a rite of passage for ambitious professionals willing to pause their careers and invest heavily in their future. Business schools thrived in this environment, building gleaming campuses, recruiting star faculty, and promising transformative experiences culminating in lucrative job offers.

But today’s landscape tells a different story.

Applications at many top-tier business schools have plateaued or declined. Companies increasingly question whether MBAs bring sufficient real-world skills. Alternative credentials proliferate while executive education faces disruption from nimble providers. Even the hallowed MBA brand finds itself under siege from skeptics questioning its relevance in a world where entrepreneurship, technology, and purpose-driven business seem to demand different competencies altogether.

Let’s be honest: business education needs reinvention, not refinement.

THE BRUTAL TRUTH ABOUT BUSINESS EDUCATION TODAY

The metrics that business schools trumpet, starting salaries, rankings, selectivity, increasingly feel like artifacts from another era. These backward-looking indicators mask deeper issues plaguing business education:

Homogenized curricula. Visit five different top business schools, and you’ll likely find remarkably similar core curricula, pedagogical approaches, and even case studies. This convergence has created a monoculture that’s increasingly disconnected from the diverse, rapidly evolving business landscape graduates actually enter.

Abstract over impact. The pursuit of academic prestige still drives faculty incentives at most institutions. Research that gains academic citations frequently bears little relevance to practitioners. Meanwhile, teaching receives polite acknowledgment while publication in abstruse journals remains the primary path to tenure and influence.

Credentialism over transformation. Many programs remain designed to credential rather than transform, to sort and signal rather than develop and challenge. The right names on transcripts and resumes often seem more important than the right capabilities in graduates’ repertoires.

Isolation from reality. Despite initiatives like experiential learning and global immersions, many business schools remain remarkably insulated from actual business. Faculty members with limited practitioner experience teach theoretical frameworks that may not survive first contact with organizational complexity.

Privilege reinforcement. The business school ecosystem continues to reinforce existing privilege. The high costs of premier programs, the cultural capital needed to navigate admissions, and the emphasis on pedigree in recruitment all work to maintain rather than disrupt patterns of access and success.

These criticisms aren’t new, nor are they universally applicable. Yet they persist because they contain uncomfortable truths that the business education establishment has been reluctant to fully confront.

WHAT TODAY’S STUDENTS ACTUALLY WANT

The disconnect between what business schools offer and what students increasingly seek has never been wider. Today’s business school candidates, millennials and Gen Z professionals, bring fundamentally different expectations:

Purpose and impact. Today’s students aren’t content with promises of personal wealth. They demand education that equips them to tackle meaningful challenges, climate change, inequality, technological disruption, while building rewarding careers. They want business schools that embrace rather than sidestep difficult conversations about capitalism’s evolution.

Ethical grounding and systems thinking. Students are not just looking for tools to climb the corporate ladder, they want to understand how business decisions affect people, planet, and society. Schools must embed moral reasoning, climate literacy, and systems thinking across the curriculum, not silo them into electives.

Integration, not isolation. The notion of stepping away from work for two years seems increasingly anachronistic. Students seek programs that allow them to move between learning and application in continuous cycles rather than maintaining artificial barriers between education and practice.

Global equity and non-Western models. Students from around the world question whether Western-centric frameworks can address the challenges faced in their local economies. Business schools must incorporate perspectives from the Global South, indigenous economic models, and pluralistic approaches to enterprise.

Skills for complexity. In a world of unprecedented volatility, students want more than analytical frameworks. They need practice navigating ambiguity, building resilience, leading through uncertainty, and adapting to continuous change, capabilities that traditional business education has struggled to develop.

Community, not competition. While competition has been baked into business school culture, today’s students often value collaboration and community more highly. They seek environments where cooperation and collective growth take precedence over individual achievement and ranking.

Accessibility and inclusion. Prospective students increasingly question whether a business education ecosystem designed primarily for traditional elites can truly serve a diverse global business community. They demand programs designed from the ground up for accessibility, inclusivity, and true diversity of perspective.

Entrepreneurial readiness. Increasingly, students aim to build businesses, not just join them. This demands more than an entrepreneurship center, it calls for a foundational reimagining where venture creation, experimentation, and resourcefulness are integral to the core curriculum.

Perhaps most fundamentally, students want business education that acknowledges the profound disruptions reshaping business itself, not as future possibilities to consider after mastering traditional approaches, but as the very context in which all business education must now take place.

THE SCHOOLS LEADING REAL TRANSFORMATION

Amidst this challenging landscape, a cadre of institutions is pioneering approaches that may offer templates for business education’s future. Their innovations go beyond incremental improvement to reimagine fundamental aspects of the business school model:

Embedded in ecosystems. Rather than positioning themselves as ivory towers, forward-thinking schools are embedding themselves in business ecosystems, co-locating with startups, establishing innovation districts, and creating porous boundaries between classroom and marketplace. These physical and programmatic connections ensure that ideas, people, and problems flow continuously between academia and industry.

Problem-based architecture. Instead of organizing around traditional academic disciplines, innovative programs increasingly structure themselves around complex problems requiring interdisciplinary approaches. Climate solutions, healthcare transformation, financial inclusion, digital ethics, these become organizing principles for faculty, curriculum, and student experiences.

Unbundled and modular. The monolithic degree program is giving way to more flexible architectures, stackable credentials, continuous learning offerings, and hybrid models combining formal coursework with workplace-based projects. This modular approach acknowledges that careers now demand continuous skill evolution rather than one-time credentialing.

Technology as medium, not just subject. While most schools now teach digital topics, the most innovative institutions embrace technology to transform teaching itself, using AI to personalize learning, virtual reality to simulate complex scenarios, and digital platforms to connect global learning communities in ways impossible in traditional classroom settings.

Radical accessibility. A few pioneering institutions are confronting the privilege problem head-on, reimagining every aspect of their model, from admissions to financial models to curriculum design, to serve talented individuals regardless of background. These schools view diversity not as a box to check but as a fundamental requirement for business education’s continued relevance.

Measures of success. The most forward-thinking institutions have begun developing new metrics of success that go beyond starting salaries and rankings. They track graduates’ social impact, measure development of complex competencies, and assess their influence on organizations and communities over decades, not just at graduation.

These schools recognize that business education doesn’t need tweaking — it needs reinvention. They understand that the future belongs to institutions that solve for impact, not just prestige.

WHAT MUST CHANGE 

For business schools to truly renew their relevance and value, several fundamental shifts must occur:

From faculty as content experts to learning architects. Business school professors must evolve from subject matter authorities to designers of transformative learning experiences, integrating technology, practitioners, and real-world contexts in ways that develop not just knowledge but wisdom in their students.

From fixed curriculum to adaptive learning. The notion of a static curriculum applicable to all students looks increasingly outdated. Schools must develop responsive, customizable learning pathways that adapt to individual needs while ensuring mastery of essential capabilities.

From competitive selection to developmental approach. Business schools that define excellence through exclusion perpetuate elitism while missing opportunities to develop diverse talent. Leading schools will shift toward models focused on developing potential rather than selecting for privilege.

From transactional to relational. The traditional model treating business education as a one-time transaction must evolve toward lifelong learning relationships. Schools that build enduring communities bound by shared purpose rather than just shared credentials will thrive.

From risk aversion to experimental culture. Ironically, institutions teaching innovation often remain deeply conservative in their own practices. The future belongs to schools willing to experiment with new models, learn from failure, and continuously evolve.

From isolated to interconnected. No single institution can address all the complex challenges facing business education. Schools must build collaborative networks—sharing faculty, curriculum, technology platforms, and even students, to create ecosystems greater than the sum of their parts.

From device-agnostic to immersive-first design. As spatial computing and devices like Apple Vision Pro move from novelty to necessity, business education must redesign learning experiences for immersive environments where digital and physical realities blend. Schools clinging to flat screens and 2D presentations will seem as outdated as those that resisted PowerPoint in the 1990s.

From elective ethics to integrated moral reasoning. Ethics and responsibility must be embedded in all business disciplines. Whether it’s finance or operations, students need tools to assess systemic impact, make principled decisions, and understand their role in shaping society.

From entrepreneurship as a track to entrepreneurship as a mindset. Schools should no longer treat entrepreneurship as a niche interest. Problem-solving, resourcefulness, and iterative experimentation must be core to every student’s development, regardless of career path.

From sustainability as add-on to sustainability as lens. Climate change and resource limits are no longer edge cases, they’re the context for all business activity. Schools must reframe finance, strategy, marketing, and operations through this foundational lens.

From students as customers to students as co-governors. Schools must give students a voice not just in course feedback but in curriculum governance and institutional decisions. The most relevant institutions view students as intellectual partners, not transactional participants.

These shifts will require not just new programs but new mindsets — a fundamental re-conception of what business education is and how it creates value in a world that increasingly questions traditional credentials.

WHY THIS MATTERS BEYOND BUSINESS SCHOOLS

The stakes in business education’s transformation extend far beyond academic institutions themselves. Business schools have shaped generations of leaders who make decisions affecting billions of lives. Their graduates allocate capital, determine organizational priorities, and influence policy worldwide. The values and capabilities these institutions develop, or fail to develop, ripple throughout society.

In an era of unprecedented challenges, climate emergency, technological disruption, social polarization, economic inequality, humanity needs business leaders equipped to navigate complexity, committed to sustainable value creation, and capable of mobilizing diverse stakeholders around shared purposes. Business schools remain uniquely positioned to develop such leaders at scale.

The question is whether they will embrace this opportunity, even at the cost of disrupting their existing models.

GENERATIONAL TECTONICS: WHEN DIGITAL NATIVES LEAD

The business education landscape now faces unprecedented generational friction as digital natives begin to occupy leadership positions. Today’s MBA candidates, having grown up with ubiquitous computing, social media, and algorithmic recommendations, bring fundamentally different expectations than faculty who still remember analog workflows. This isn’t merely about technological fluency but about divergent mental models for how information flows, decisions get made, and learning occurs.

Gen Z students express growing frustration with pedagogical approaches rooted in information scarcity. When a professor builds an entire session around revealing analysis that students could generate themselves in seconds using readily available AI tools, the credibility gap widens. These students have spent their formative years crowdsourcing solutions, collaborating in digital spaces, and learning through multimedia, then enter classrooms where linear lectures and static case studies remain dominant.

The most innovative schools are turning this generational collision into creative opportunity. These institutions involve students as co-creators of learning experiences, leveraging their digital fluency while supplementing it with conceptual frameworks and critical perspectives that transcend technological change. They recognize that the generation raised on TikTok and multiplayer gaming might have much to teach educators about engagement, community building, and iterative development.

Faculty who thrive in this environment don’t position themselves as gatekeepers of knowledge but as guides through complexity. They recognize that in a world where any fact is seconds away on a smartphone, or instantly available through smart glasses with whispered queries to AI assistants, their value lies in contextualizing information, challenging assumptions, cultivating wisdom, and building discernment that algorithms cannot replicate.

As one young faculty member recently observed: “Our students don’t need us to tell them what. They need us to help them figure out which what matters, and why.” Schools embracing this mindset are creating educational experiences that leverage rather than resist generational differences, preparing graduates for business environments where similar dynamics increasingly define leadership challenges.

THE COURAGE TO TRANSFORM

The narrative around business education often oscillates between uncritical celebration and wholesale dismissal. Neither serves students or society well.

The truth is more nuanced: business schools have created enormous value while simultaneously calcifying around models that increasingly fail to serve their core purposes. Their fundamental promise, developing leaders capable of creating sustainable value in complex contexts, remains as vital as ever, even as the mechanisms for delivering on that promise require reinvention.

The most exciting story in business education today isn’t about which school topped the latest ranking or which MBA program commands the highest starting salaries. It’s about the emergence of new models that maintain the ambition of traditional business education while reimagining how that ambition translates into learning experiences, organizational structures, and measures of success.

These schools are embracing ethics as core, entrepreneurship as essential, climate as context, technology as medium, and diversity as strength. They are involving students not just as recipients, but as co-designers of a system that reflects their values and prepares them for the realities they will face.

Leaders who recognize this shift aren’t waiting for permission to reinvent business education. They’re building new approaches within existing institutions, launching alternative models outside traditional structures, and creating networks that transcend organizational boundaries. They understand that the future of business education won’t be determined by tradition or inertia but by the courage to transform.

For prospective students evaluating business schools, for faculty contemplating where to build careers, for employers considering where to recruit, and for societies depending on responsible business leadership, this transformation matters. The institutions that recognize this moment as an existential opportunity rather than an existential threat will not just survive but define business education’s next era.

The golden ticket of business education’s past may be tarnished, but its future, if its stewards embrace rather than resist transformation, holds the potential to be even more valuable: not as a credential but as a catalyst for developing the leadership our complex world so urgently needs.

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Dr. Raul V. Rodriguez is Vice President of Woxsen University in Hyderabad, India, where is also the Steven Pinker Professor of Cognitive Psychology. Benjamin Stevenin is Director of Business School Solutions and Partnerships at Times Higher Education.