Urban MBA Programs Are Booming — Here’s Why City Business Schools Have The Edge

For business schools across America, the news cycle brings fresh uncertainty every week. New policies are upending basic assumptions about how universities operate. Technologies like generative AI raise deep and thorny questions about the very substance of a business education. Public skepticism toward higher education prompts more would-be students to question the value of a college degree. And looming behind it all, a long-forecast demographic cliff threatens the financial future of higher education.

In this moment, complacency is not an option. Business schools must adapt to a new reality of turbulence. They must future-proof themselves for a world in which the only certainty is uncertainty.

For urban programs in particular, this moment presents not just unprecedented risks but also unprecedented opportunities to reimagine business education. And this starts with rethinking their flagship degree, the MBA.

UNDECIDED QUESTIONS 

For several decades now, the MBA has undergone something like an identity crisis. Surveying the field in Harvard Business Review in 2005, Warren Bennis and James O’Toole asserted that business schools “had lost their way,” leading to a “crisis in management education” brought on by an over-emphasis on abstract research at the expense of practical knowledge.  This tendency toward “scientism,” as the authors described it, undercut the relevance and perceived value of the degree.

For some time, MBA programs were able to defer the question of what exactly they were offering. World markets continued to expand through the 2010s; MBA programs continued to attract robust demand at home and abroad.

Key questions remained unresolved. Is the MBA oriented toward theory or practice? Is it mainly vocational, or is it meant to develop a more holistic sense of business judgement: an ethos of leadership for the modern professional? These questions lingered as the world plunged into the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

DRIVING RESILIENCY  

Five years later, and even within an increasingly turbulent landscape, forward-thinking programs are rising to meet the moment. Today’s business student wants more hands-on experience. They want more direct interactions with global companies, and more opportunities to grapple with the real-world problems and inflection points that companies face. In short: they want the company in the classroom.

This much is — as the saying goes — table stakes. Blending industry know-how with university know-what remains at the heart of business education. In our new era of instability, this approach remains necessary. But it is no longer sufficient.

Future-proofing the MBA means embracing what it means to live in uncertain times. This is doubly true for urban MBA programs.

Rooted in America’s cities, urban MBA programs have a front-row seat to some of today’s most pressing challenges.  Housing affordability remains a persistent issue, made worse by above-average price inflation that seems here to stay. Economic uncertainty is contributing to a slowdown in the job market; unemployment is rising in metro areas nationwide. Climate change imperils city infrastructure and the businesses that rely on it.

The country and indeed the world are rapidly changing. Confronted with changes of this magnitude, universities, companies, and the cities that host them will need to work hand-in-glove to get ahead of the curve.

Urban business schools have the unique opportunity to deepen existing ties with private and public partners — all in the name of offering dynamic experiences that build resiliency. This type of collaboration means partnerships that create social value. It means bold projects that take a long-term view toward supporting demand in local markets and delivering resources to rejuvenate and shore up communities. It also requires opening up new channels for investment or project development to empower aspiring local entrepreneurs, who have the clearest idea of where their community’s needs are most acute.

Consider a hypothetical case: a major insurer would like to expand into community banking for disinvested communities but lacks the data to back it up. A business program — with its wealth of faculty expertise, existing connections, and students eager to get hands-on experience — could rise to meet that need.  Students get experience, the business gets its actionable data, and communities expand their access to credit.

Now take a real-world example: public transit. In the face of society-wide headwinds, cities and municipalities are looking for creative solutions to strengthen urban government, including infrastructure. Business schools have a critical role to play here.

WHAT MAKES AN URBAN MBA DIFFERENT

Here in Chicago, DePaul MBA students are setting the pace by working with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to build urban revitalization into its Red Line Extension Project. Estimated by the CTA to generate a five-to-one economic return on investment, the project creates fertile possibilities for entrepreneurs: both as a direct result of the transit system’s historic investment and as an indirect result of increased ridership and access.

Informed by community stakeholders, DePaul MBA students helped carve out a role for entrepreneurs. From an incubator for future founders to a hub for urban agriculture, MBA students sketched out concrete plans showing precisely how the historic infrastructure investment, together with resources tailored to home-grown entrepreneurs, could catalyze urban renewal.

The possibilities are many, but the key idea is resilience. Transit agencies, aspiring founders, urban communities, and schools of business can come together to build a self-sustaining entrepreneurial ecosystem.

These insights apply across the curriculum. As another pertinent example, students in DePaul’s MS in Taxation and Analytics program learn from practitioners from industry-leading firms, such as Grant Thornton and EY. Students then apply those skills by partnering with a local organization that assists low-income Chicagoans in their tax preparation, ensuring the best possible outcome for these families.

Approaches like these are about more than simply giving back. In the face of significant challenges, these partnerships showcase the power of putting civil society at the heart of business education. Companies, campuses, and communities come together in a win for everyone.

It’s no surprise that, in efforts to re-imagine business education, entrepreneurship quickly comes to the fore. Our experiences at DePaul have taught us that entrepreneurship is more than a business activity: it’s a way of thinking about the world. Entrepreneurship is a mindset that brings ingenuity, technological know-how, and the resources of industry to bear on solving problems and meeting people’s needs.

Perhaps most importantly, the entrepreneurial mindset is about thinking big. It’s about bringing people together in new ways, with new tools, to tackle tomorrow’s greatest challenges. With their powerful local networks of potential partners, urban MBA programs are uniquely well-positioned to offer transformative experiences for students, communities, and cities alike.

Now is a time to think big. The colleges of our great cities should think boldly about how they can help build resilience for their communities and demand for their product at the same time — just as an entrepreneur would. The modern, urban MBA draws on deep roots in its local ecosystem to build the talent and partnerships that will shape tomorrow.  The demand is there; our charge is to meet it.

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