ROUNDTABLE REVIEW
I n 2023, more unknown scenarios than ever demand the attention of business leaders, adding to the challenges of a changing world of work. Technological advances, coupled with a fragile geopolitical climate, mean that nobody can be sure of the precise nature of jobs five or ten years from now. However, reports of employers’ dissatisfaction with the quality of skills shown by university graduates continue. Students, meanwhile, are becoming more and more preoccupied with how their subjects of choice will impact on their starting salary and career prospects, post-graduation. In this context, how can business schools best prepare their students and continue to support their graduates to be ready for a future evolving at a relentless pace? AMBA & BGA facilitated a roundtable session on this topic in association with critical thinking solutions provider Macat ahead of the AMBA & BGA Business School Professionals Conference 2023 in Edinburgh. Panellists explored the various ways in which business schools are trying to adapt and offered their views on how schools can simultaneously address skills gaps identified by the recruiters they work with and meet the needs of wider society. What initiatives or changes are you implementing to adapt your school to the evolving needs of the business world? Rodrigo Cintra “We realised that we’re no longer able to make a programme that can anticipate all the paths a student might want to take. If we tried, it would be out of date by the time it was implemented. So, we’re trying to have a more open system where students choose where they want to go from start to finish. One way we do this is through nanodegrees. At our school, we call it ‘Dynamic ESPM’ and it’s a bunch of small courses from which students can choose whatever they want. They can then put these nanodegrees together with some traditional courses. “Our challenge now is how we keep it updated, in terms of business. We are inviting more industry representatives to let us know what they are using right now. This impacts on our faculty structure because practitioner teachers will, by nature, be less research-oriented than academic ones. We also need to make sure we don’t lose the value of research. One solution we are working on is to encourage more applied and less theoretical research.” Rebecca Casey “We’ve established a digital education strategy and this has given us a mandate to invest in digital infrastructure, including simulations and databases, for example. We also have a continued licence with LinkedIn learning, which is extremely popular with our MBA students and we embed some of that into the curriculum. “In addition, we’re one of the first universities to develop a set of principles around using AI in teaching and learning. Plus, we have an innovation fund that is designed to help upskill and train staff, so that they can take advantage of using new digital technologies in their teaching.”
Ambition | OCTOBER 2023 | 21
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