ROUNDTABLE ATTENDEES
Sofia Brito Ramos , Academic Director, Global MBA, ESSEC Business School “I have a slightly negative outlook in terms of this competition because it’s very related to the switch to skills-driven education (the skills that you perhaps don’t need the traditional university to teach you). For example, if a student wants to gain skills in Excel, they can go to LinkedIn or YouTube. In skills-driven education, we are seeing more and more competition because providers do not have the research background that is very expensive to provide. And we know that some students don’t care about research, they just want to learn practical things, and go to work in an investment bank. So, if the whole paradigm of education is about to change to skills-driven education, I see an additional level of (tough) competition for business schools.” Julio Villalobos , Director, EMEA CXO Strategic Industry Advisor for Education, Salesforce.org “One of the major challenges we all agree on is addressing the challenges and opportunities of the trend towards lifelong learning. This includes lifelong learning not only for individuals, but also for companies to re-skill their employees. Another important challenge we all observe is hybrid learning. This impacts where we teach, where the students learn (in class or online), plus how we, as institutions, have to change the way we teach, and how we deliver the learning experience in terms of content, format, platform, credential validation, and the necessary networking. We have mentioned the importance of keeping students’ and professors’ wellbeing front of mind, since we all agree that learning and teaching in a hybrid ecosystem (anytime, anywhere) is a lot more complex and stressful.” Dieter Vanwalleghem , Director, iMBA programme, Rennes School of Business “There’s a dangerous trend in business education that everyone is looking for the short-term application of learning,
and microcredentials are in line with that trend. We focus overly on what is important for the paradigms of the world we’re currently living in, but education should also give people the tools to move and change these paradigms, otherwise they will never be able to move forward along paths of sustainable transformation and digital transformation. In business schools, the customer sometimes wishes to gain immediately applicable skills, and things that can be valued in the jobs market. This is where business schools perhaps must try to educate customers and say “we might know something you don’t know”, taking a paternalistic approach in terms of saying that students should devote a quarter or a third of the curriculum to courses of a more fundamental nature. This will help students to change paradigms, not just to be employable in existing paradigms.’” Jane Usher , Head of Department: Postgraduate Studies, Milpark Business School “I think there needs to be a balance between the quick, stackable microcredentialing, and an underlying foundation of long-term critical thinking. There is a role for short courses, but what we do is make sure that these have assessment which allow the student to evaluate their degree of learning. I think we need to balance going completely to what the market thinks it wants with having people who can think systematically and critically – skills which come from longer-term degrees.” Donald Lancaster , MBA Director, University of Bath School of Management “The world in which we live must be coloured by context – and that context is changing fast. Can we imagine a scenario in which strongly research-based, highly regarded, highly accredited institutions will carry on pretty much offering learning the way they are now – because they are respected in the MBA world, and they educate rather than just accredit the students?
CHAIR Andrew Main Wilson , CEO, AMBA & BGA
DELEGATES Julio Villalobos , Director, EMEA CXO Strategic Industry Advisor for Education, Salesforce.org Donald Lancaster, MBA Director, University of Bath School of Management David Kalisz , Dean of Expert Programmes, Paris School of Business Jenny Britton, Head of Executive Development, University of Edinburgh Business School
Dan Pearson , Director of Academic Services, Warwick Business School
Jacqueline Bagnall , MBA Programme Director, University of Exeter Business School Jane Usher , Head of Department: Postgraduate Studies, Milpark Business School Dieter Vanwalleghem , Director, iMBA programme, Rennes School of Business Sofia Brito Ramos, Academic Director, Global MBA, ESSEC Business School
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