Harvard Business School Ends An Iconic First-Year MBA Requirement

Harvard Business School is ending its long-running first-year global capstone requirement, telling incoming MBA students on September 9 that the travel-based course will no longer be part of the MBA program’s Required Curriculum starting with the Class of 2028 – the one that just began classes two weeks ago.

In an email to the class’s listserv obtained by Poets&Quants, Charlie Wang, MBA curriculum chair and the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration, announced that global immersive field learning will instead move to January 2028 of students’ Elective Curriculum (EC) year, folded into an expanded slate of experiential offerings that includes Immersive Field Courses (IFCs). “Beginning with the Class of 2028, CAP will not be offered in its recent form or in the Required Curriculum,” Wang wrote. See the full text of his email at the bottom of this story.

The course, known internally as CAP, is the direct descendant of FIELD Global Immersion, the first-year travel requirement HBS launched in 2011-2012 under then-dean Nitin Nohria. It has sent hundreds of students a year to work with companies in cities across the globe as the capstone of the school’s FIELD curriculum.

WHY HBS SAYS IT’S MAKING THE MOVE

Wang’s email portrays the shift around two forces: an internal academic review that concluded CAP fit better in the second year, and mounting travel disruption that has made a mandatory first-year trip harder to guarantee for every student. He cited a figure of up to 12% of RC students in recent years unable to complete CAP as originally designed, with that share expected to be significantly higher this year.

That travel disruption is a big factor. International students make up roughly a third of HBS’s MBA class, and the school spent much of the past year under real political pressure: the Trump administration froze billions in federal research funding and moved to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students altogether, prompting a legal battle that’s still ongoing – one nearly 900 HBS alumni joined this July by signing onto an amicus brief backing the university, P&Q reported.

Applicant anxiety followed the earlier visa fight; one admissions consultant told Bloomberg this year that prospective students were now asking whether they’d even be able to get to campus, as P&Q reported in October.

HBS RESPONDS: ‘WE CONTINUE TO BE VERY COMMITTED TO EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING’

Reached for comment, Wang gave P&Q a fuller account of how the decision came together.

“We’ve been looking at the FIELD Global Capstone course for a few years now,” he says. “Based on feedback we’ve heard from students, we also have been working to increase flexibility and optionality in the MBA Program more broadly – enabling them to better curate their experience here at the School in line with their academic and career interests. These two paths converged this summer, and after Capstone finished last May, we reviewed the latest data; talked to students, faculty, and alumni; and developed a proposed approach that shifts from a one-size-fits-all requirement to a broader Elective Curriculum portfolio of field learning experiences. We began sharing it with the faculty earlier this month and then presented and discussed it at the first full faculty meeting of the year, where the faculty expressed overwhelming support. We communicated the shift to students soon thereafter. We believe it is an enhancement and expansion of the School’s field offerings.”

He also reiterates HBS’s commitment to experiential learning going forward.

“We continue to be very committed to experiential learning, and every student who wishes to take a global immersion can still do so,” he says. “The Elective Curriculum will include an expanded portfolio of courses and course designs that connect learning – in the U.S. and internationally – to the topics and regions that best match our students’ interests.”

He also offered a fuller accounting of the 12% figure cited in his original email – and it’s broader than the visa fight alone.

“The percentage of students who were unable to complete CAP as designed comprises students who moved to the Boston or Puerto Rico cohorts or completed a paper option because they were unable to travel internationally – for a host of reasons, including medical, death in the family, childcare, travel constraints, and other personal circumstances,” Wang says.

On the FIELD Global Capstone webpage that RC students noticed had gone dark, he confirmed the timing was deliberate, tied to the announcement rather than separate from it: “With the change communicated, we want to be sure our messaging reflects our plans, and are working to update our web sites.”

WHAT THE PROGRAM LOOKED LIKE

A snapshot of the FIELD Global Capstone’s own HBS webpage, preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine on September 6 – three days before Wang’s email went out, and no longer live on hbs.edu – fills in many details about the program left out by his email and response to P&Q. HBS described the course as designed to help first-year students “understand and manage differences and operate effectively across cultures and business contexts.” The school’s stats callout put the program at 170 Global Partner companies across 15 cities annually. Each partner was matched with a team of six students chosen for diversity of professional background, national origin, and ethnicity.

The mechanics ran on a set calendar: companies proposed a project the prior fall, working with HBS’s Global Experience Office to scope it between October and February and naming a Project Manager as the team’s single point of contact through the following May. Student teams then engaged remotely from Boston in March and April, holding at least two 90-minute calls with their Global Partner, before traveling to the partner’s city for the immersion week itself – May 11 through May 18 for the cohort that just completed it – culminating in a two-hour final presentation to the partner’s senior leadership. HBS drew a clear line around what the course was for: “student learning is the primary objective,” the page states, not a consulting deliverable.

The projects themselves stayed close to the ground. HBS’s own materials describe assignments like redesigning a quick-serve chicken chain’s take-out pickup process, building a loyalty program for a street-food quick-serve brand chasing repeat customers, and creating a new bank branch concept for a location surrounded by university students – consumer-facing problems meant to be tackled with fresh outside thinking rather than fully tested solutions.

The operation was entirely HBS-funded on the partner side: “There is no cost to Global Partners for participating,” the now-deleted page states, with the school covering student travel, in-country transportation, and lodging. Partners signed two standard agreements, establishing the academic nature of the project and transferring rights in the students’ proposal to the partner. The archived page also put HBS’s own number on the international makeup Wang’s email gestures at: 35% of the MBA class, per the school’s figure, closely matching the “roughly a third” cited in Bloomberg’s survey.

WHY HBS SAYS IT’S MAKING THE MOVE

FIELD wasn’t the first global immersion program in MBA education when it launched 15 years ago, but what made it notable was scale: HBS became the first to make it mandatory for its entire first-year class, sending more than 900 students to a dozen-plus cities in 10 countries in a single week in that first year – a logistical undertaking P&Q called “the boldest experiment ever carried out in graduate business education” at the time.

Wang, in his email to the HBS community, portrayed the change as opening up options rather than closing them down. “This change, informed by extensive analysis that has been underway for some time, gives you more flexibility and choice to shape your MBA coursework to match your interests and career aspirations,” he wrote. “For this year, it also helps address recent travel restrictions affecting many international students.”

The money, he wrote, isn’t going anywhere: “Our commitment to global immersions remains unchanged: every student who wants a global experience will have access to one, and we will provide generous financial support to subsidize it for the Class of 2028 so that no student experiences cost as a barrier to participation.”

On the rationale, Wang pointed to two forces. The first is academic: “A multiyear review of the field method, reinforced by a recent in-depth assessment, concluded that CAP would be better situated in the second year of the MBA Program.” He argued the case has been building for years, noting that “many students arrive at HBS with a wider range of international experiences, whether educational or professional, and participate in student-led treks around the globe during their time in the program,” which he says has made “the level of engagement in CAP course content … more varied as a result.”

The second force is logistical, he wrote, and more urgent. “We also face a period when international travel will not be possible for a significant portion of the class – whether because of the new and changing visa guidelines already noted, or because of health considerations, family responsibilities, and other personal situations,” Wang writes. “A required course must be accessible to every student. In recent years, though, as many as 12% of RC students were unable to participate in CAP as designed; this year, we know the percentage would be much larger.”

Changing visa guidelines, noted in passing by Wang, are obviously a big factor here. While HBS has not yet released its MBA Class of 2028 profile, international students consistently make up roughly a third of every class, and the school has spent much of the past year under real political pressure that threatens that group: the Trump administration froze billions in federal research funding and moved to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students altogether, prompting a legal battle that’s still ongoing – one that hundreds of HBS alumni joined this summer by signing onto an amicus brief backing the university. Applicant anxiety followed the earlier visa fight; one admissions consultant told Bloomberg this year that prospective students were now asking whether they’d even be able to get to campus.

A PROGRAM THAT HAS EVOLVED BEFORE

Wang, in his email to HBS students, leaned on the program’s history to make the change feel routine rather than radical. “The MBA Program and the world have changed considerably since FIELD Global Immersion, CAP’s predecessor, launched in 2011-2012,” he wrote. “We see the transition as yet another phase of the evolution that has been a constant since the course’s launch – evolution that is a hallmark of the MBA Program curriculum more generally.”

He pointed to what’s already built out on the elective side: “Today, the EC includes a broad portfolio of predominantly global IFCs that draw on deep faculty expertise in areas such as innovation, climate change, supply chains, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence.” That bench is real: As of October 2024, the IFC lineup included Silicon Valley, Ghana, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, and India. That month’s report detailed who runs the machinery behind all of HBS’s field courses: the MBA Program’s Global Experience Office, a 17-person team handling travel logistics, program delivery, and communications for CAP, the IFCs, and the school’s non-travel Extended Field Courses alike – whose communications team was described as managing feedback data and updates “to various websites,” which may bear on why the CAP page came down when it did.

In his email, Wang promised more engagement before the details are locked in, saying HBS will hold a series of sessions in the coming weeks – building on section visits already underway – for students to ask questions and weigh in, alongside section chairs and members of the MBA program team including Faculty Chair, MBA Academic and Student Affairs Trevor Fetter and Tsedal Neeley, senior associate dean and chair of the MBA program. Further details on course options, he says, will come as they’re finalized.

“In the weeks to come, there will be a range of opportunities to learn more, ask questions, and share your ideas and suggestions,” he wrote. He closed on reassurance: “This evolution lets us respond to changing needs and a changing world with innovation and creativity. We will share more with you in the months ahead about this, new investments we’re making, and other initiatives we’re developing to enhance your learning and your MBA Program experience.”

READ: HBS’S EMAIL TO THE CLASS OF 2028 ON THE FIELD CAPSTONE CHANGE

Subject: Transitioning Global Immersive Field Learning
From: MBA and Doctoral Programs
Wed 9/9/2026, 8:06 PM

Dear MBA Class of 2028,

Following a meeting of the faculty today, we are writing to share a transition in the MBA Program. Beginning with the Class of 2028, CAP will not be offered in its recent form or in the Required Curriculum (RC). Instead, global immersive field learning will move to January 2028 of your Elective Curriculum (EC) year, as an expanded portfolio of experiential learning offerings — e.g., Immersive Field Courses (IFCs). This change, informed by extensive analysis that has been underway for some time, gives you more flexibility and choice to shape your MBA coursework to match your interests and career aspirations. For this year, it also helps address recent travel restrictions affecting many international students.

Our commitment to global immersions remains unchanged: every student who wants a global experience will have access to one, and we will provide generous financial support to subsidize it for the Class of 2028 so that no student experiences cost as a barrier to participation.

Why are we making this shift? The MBA Program and the world have changed considerably since FIELD Global Immersion, CAP’s predecessor, launched in 2011-2012. Many students arrive at HBS with a wider range of international experiences, whether educational or professional, and participate in student-led treks around the globe during their time in the program. The level of engagement in CAP course content has become more varied as a result. Additionally, the MBA curriculum now provides many more ways to develop the skills and perspectives that CAP was designed to cultivate. Today, the EC includes a broad portfolio of predominantly global IFCs that draw on deep faculty expertise in areas such as innovation, climate change, supply chains, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence. These courses provide opportunities to connect learning — in the U.S. and internationally — more directly to the topics, regions, and industries that matter most to you. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, a multiyear review of the field method, reinforced by a recent in-depth assessment, concluded that CAP would be better situated in the second year of the MBA Program.

We also face a period when international travel will not be possible for a significant portion of the class — whether because of the new and changing visa guidelines already noted, or because of health considerations, family responsibilities, and other personal situations. A required course must be accessible to every student. In recent years, though, as many as 12% of RC students were unable to participate in CAP as designed; this year, we know the percentage would be much larger. Moving the global immersion to the EC will create more options to accommodate a greater range of individual circumstances. We see the transition as yet another phase of the evolution that has been a constant since the course’s launch — evolution that is a hallmark of the MBA Program curriculum more generally.

In the weeks to come, there will be a range of opportunities to learn more, ask questions, and share your ideas and suggestions. These opportunities will build on our recent and ongoing section visits and will include meetings with section chairs and conversations with members of the MBA Program team. My colleagues Trevor Fetter, Tsedal Neeley, and I look forward to discussing this and other aspects of the program with you and partnering with you to ensure we are preparing you well for your careers and future aspirations. We will stay in close touch, providing additional details about course options as they come together.

This evolution lets us respond to changing needs and a changing world with innovation and creativity. We will share more with you in the months ahead about this, new investments we’re making, and other initiatives we’re developing to enhance your learning and your MBA Program experience.

Best,
Charlie Wang
Curriculum Chair, MBA Program

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