DEANS & DIRECTORS CONFERENCE
Also on the panel was Alfredo Govela, director of the Faculty of Economics & Business at Anáhuac University in Mexico. He noted that the “bonds between Latin America and China are strong” and that is why his school signed a MOU with Wang in 2019. Since his students are working professionals they cannot spend prolonged time elsewhere, so the idea was to bring Chinese students to Mexico so they could connect with the local MBA cohort. Meanwhile, Veneta Andonova declared herself “very much encouraged” to have received an email from China’s ambassador to Colombia. She described the “open mindedness, generosity and respect of mutual dialogue” that she found within Chang’s delegation, who she said had “made a real effort to appreciate what they can bring in terms of understanding entrepreneurship”. She added that this has not always been the case with international partnerships, as sometimes Colombia has been seen “as a channel to market rather than a legitimate academic and research partner”. Picking up on the theme, Govela referenced the considerable recent Chinese investment in Latin America, such as at the Tesla factory being built in the northern Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, where the car manufacturer is reported to be spending close to $1 billion. Andonova added her own example by pointing to the train network contract in Bogotá that has been won by Chinese companies, something that, in her opinion, is “creating a lot of optimism about what they can bring to the region”. Looking to the future of management education AMBA & BGA CEO Andrew Main Wilson kicked off the final session of the conference with a list of the 10 key strategic issues currently affecting management education globally; these included curriculum innovation, societal impact and lifelong learning. “All students have access to our courses for life – we offer them in bite-size chunks for alumni free of charge,” explained Gustavo Genoni, professor and strategy director at San Andrés University’s business school (UDESA). “We offer it for free
because we are here to build communities – our graduates are also entitled to a discount for their children.” Gaston Labadie explained that his school charges alumni half price to attend lifelong learning courses. “Are ‘alternative’ education providers such as LinkedIn or Coursera competitors or allies?” asked Wilson. “It makes no sense to compete with them,” responded Labadie, while Genoni noted that his school does not have a full-time MBA as it “takes up too much time and that is the most expensive factor, so we only offer part-time and executive programmes”. He elaborated on this by saying that UDESA has embraced digital pedagogy: “We use AI and replace lectures with videos – we are harnessing technology to make our part-time offering much more powerful.” On the subject of curricula innovation, Labadie said that his school would like to add additional courses to the MBA programme, but this is proving difficult as students generally “want to learn in less time”. He noted that the ORT school is right in the middle of a major discussion about increasing content related to soft/human skills such as creativity, collaboration, curiosity, empathy, compassion and critical thinking. However, he made the point that “our differential is in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship, so we will not be abandoning that”. Genoni stressed how important it is for MBA providers to evolve by giving the example of a maths department that teaches calculus which students will never use, but it is not open to changing as the professors claim it is good for enriching the human brain. In the end, maintained Genoni, they will be replaced by ChatGPT, meaning that “lecturers must teach something else, as they are becoming obsolete; they can’t afford to dismiss the new reality, they must learn to innovate and adapt”. Labadie related how ORT recently made an announcement informing all its students that AI is freely available and “provided support to learn how to use it – we told them they must implement it to some extent in their course”. He added that in this hybrid, hi-flex world, some students like remote teaching, whereas others prefer the in-person approach, but “all of them feel entitled to have the right to remote classrooms”. UDESA’s experience of the hybrid approach was not a positive one, according to Genoni: “We tried that pre-pandemic and almost doubled our student numbers, thanks to our staff’s strong technical skills. Nowadays, however, some classes are taught online and others are in-person, but there is no in-between – if you’re absent, you relinquish the right to a quality education.” Expanding on the topic of AI, Genoni noted that the accelerated rate at which ChatGPT is advancing means that in the future it will be able “to solve more complex problems”, hence those working with the generative algorithm will need the ability to devise cleverer questions: “You’ll have to understand what coding is required and be able to explain that to the developer.” In terms of the human response to the rapid rise in machine learning, Labadie concluded his remarks by saying he believed that critical thinking “will become even more critical” in years to come and that “interpersonal skills, such as negotiation, will be absolutely vital”.
Gaston Labadie, Gustavo Genoni and Andrew Main Wilson explored the big issues affecting management education around the world
Ambition | DECEMBER 2023/JANUARY 2024 | 29
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