Rethinking the Business Education Model

• The demand for business schools to deliver high-quality education in an online learning environment will require them to collaborate with faculty from other business schools.
• Today's students are looking at the reputation and added value that a business school provides, including student services and experiential learning opportunities.
• Business schools can partner with edtech firms to implement new technologies and enhance educational delivery.

Transcript

Jeffrey Brown: [0:14] I'm actually a believer that we need more collaboration among business schools. I think the economic logic of it is enormous, and that the pressures will build in order to do that.

[0:25] I think that online education has made geography less relevant. It used to be that we could all rely on a 100‑mile radius around us to deliver our students. I believe that now we have the ability to teach students all over the world.

[0:43] As result of that, finding ways to cost-effectively deliver high‑quality education is going to require partnerships. The barriers include everything from overcoming the culture of, "That's not the way we have done things in the past," to recognizing that there are reputational implications that one has to consider.

[1:07] If a student comes to my school and all of their content is being taught from faculty from another school, I would have to think extra hard about, What does that mean for what I'm creating of value; what am I delivering?

[1:21] That could be through student services or the mentoring and advising, but in the past some of that identity has come through the delivery of the content. That's something one will have to wrestle with.

Finding ways to cost-effectively deliver high‑quality education is going to require partnerships.

[1:36] There are differences across national boundaries, and in some cases, even state boundaries in terms of the nature of the content itself that need to be respected. Again, I think the logic of more collaboration is eventually going to win that argument.

[1:53] There are many ways that business schools can distinguish themselves and create a brand for themselves. Historically, many schools have relied too much on geography, of essentially being the only game in town, especially if you're in a large rural area, things of that nature. That's not going to cut it anymore because now they're competing with schools all around the world through online education.

[2:16] There are a number of ways one can do this. One can have their school identified as, essentially, a center of excellence in a particular field. Maybe they double down on accounting, or on asset pricing, or leadership skills and try to develop the best knowledge creation, but also the best form of delivering that education and become known for that.

[2:40] Another strategy is to recognize that content delivery is not where they're going to specialize or distinguish themselves, but rather the experience that they provide to students. Maybe there's a residential component to what they do that they really go all in and create a lot of experiential learning opportunities, and lots of mentoring, and very personalized advice.

Within business schools, there are opportunities for us to leverage one another's strengths.

[3:07] There's different strategies for doing this. I think everyone's going to need one in order to justify what value that they are uniquely creating for their students. That is very different from what we've all had to think about in the past.

[3:22] Within business schools, there are opportunities for us to leverage one another's strengths. Not every school has to be excellent at everything. They can concentrate on things they do very well, partner with other institutions on things that they do very well, and make both institutions better off.

[3:40] We also need to look outside of higher education. I think we need to look at business partnerships. We're seeing this emerge in lots of of really interesting areas.

[3:49] There was a time when the main form of business school/corporate interaction was in the form of executive education or things like that. Now, you see big companies with global workforces of tens of thousands of people that are identifying the need to upskill their entire workforce.

[4:06] There's incredible opportunities for business schools as trusted teachers, as trusted providers of education to partner with those schools in order to upskill their workforce while they're continuing to work and create value for that company.

[4:21] I think we're going to need partnerships like that. I think we will also continue to see a third form of partnership, which is around the technology that we are all using to deliver education. Almost none of that technology is home‑grown within the universities.

[4:39] There are going to be partnerships with educational technology firms to think about creative ways to use technology to be more impactful in the education that we provide.