Magistra veritas: Knowledge and the future of business schools

Higher education at the crossroads 

Earlier this year two Do Better articles touched a fine chord in the discussion of the future of higher education. In ‘Quo Vadis Higher Education?’ (Núñez & Mària), and later in ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Disruption of Higher Education’ (Almirall & Núñez), the authors made a compelling presentation of the challenges we confront. My goal in this article is to present some potential avenues, laid out around a set of specific questions, to push the debate forward. 

For those who missed the articles, my colleagues made a categorization of the main issues that are currently transforming higher education. Supply problems related to i) the transformation of the role of the professor in the educational process amidst the impact of GenAI; ii) the declining autonomy of tech-dependent universities to deal with such disruption; iii) the reliance of universities on higher education rankings that determine the ‘status’ of a university or a professor based on a set of externally-imposed dimensions; and iv) the individualization of the professional careers of faculty that damages the pursuit of more meaningful and collective organizational goals. 

Other demand problems identified relate to v) the changing demographics that push colleges to become global players; vi) the evolving social, and psychological, profile of our students with different habits, attention spans and relationship with technology or knowledge; vii) the ever-present market pressures that push universities to treat students as clients; and hence viii) the transformation of higher education — and, paradigmatically, business education — into a venue for transaction between clients and (educational) service providers, that is us. In summary, these trends push higher education towards becoming a commodity.  

All social actors — and top business schools in particular — do have agency beyond technological or economic determinism

Against all of it, Núñez and Mària suggest doubling down on our efforts in developing a transformative, holistic, empathic, relational learning model — for Esade imbricated in the four Cs pedagogical model — while simultaneously seeking educational allies committed to the same values. In a second article Almirall and Núñez, expand the portrait of the AI disruption; the increasing pressure towards performance and competitiveness and the need to choose an AI-adaptive strategy that allows us, as an institution, to develop a competitive edge. This would be achieved, according to the authors, through a tech-intensive, personalized educational process compatible with our social, pedagogical and aspirational goals. Where to start unbundling such a complex scenario? I suggest addressing three questions head-on: Should efficiency be our primary concern in management programs? Should business schools be gatekeepers in the realm of knowledge production? Finally: Who should we serve? How we respond to these questions will provide the pillars for a strategy adapted to the new scenario. 

Business schools and the problem with efficiency

The first question that will shape how to address the said tensions pivots around the role of efficiency/productivity in management education. Shaped as the number 1 problem in classical management studies since the 1930s, efficiency has the paradigmatic goal to be at the same time a means and an end in management education (MacIntyre 1981). As it is plain to see, structuring an educational program merely, or even mainly, on how to pursue organizational efficiency, not only diminishes the academic status of management education but also turns it into a sort of functional professional training. Certainly, a relevant topic for organizations but particularly limiting in scope and ambition, and far from the reality of what we already do and teach.  

The rise of GenAI these last years has intensified the mirage of the efficiency paradigm. Acknowledging that AI, as a cutting-edge technological revolution, invites us to transform management education makes full sense. However, the choice of pivoting educational programs around AI, and thus efficiency, comes at a cost. Not only will the tensions identified by my colleagues become more acute, but the risk of commodification of our educational ‘services’ will aggravate. If marketing scholarship can enlighten us on the risks of homogenization in terms of the value of the — educational — product we provide in a market, strategy experts could tell us about the risks of prioritizing a competitive dimension — technology — in which other players will always be structurally ahead. 

Efficiency must shape content and educational processes, but cannot and should not be the main goal of our pedagogical models

Furthermore, if we embrace an adaptive strategy: how should we confront in the future the twists and turns of markets, technologies or even business schools’ rankings? We know enough about the Schumpeterian cycle of inception-expansion-hype-bust-replacement of technological development, with its booms and busts. Then, how much of it do we want to embrace and adopt? How adaptive must our strategy be? In a socio-political context where mounting and appalling attacks are perpetrated upon academic freedom, to the point of impacting the teaching of ESG criteria and its relevance in global business schools’ rankings, should we be trend-followers and proceed to ‘disinvest’ in these topics? My argument here is simple: efficiency, productivity and similar market forces must certainly shape both content and educational processes. But efficiency cannot and should not be the main goal of our pedagogical models. On top, it is bad business. 

Business schools as gatekeepers (of what?)

Business schools, and higher education institutions more broadly, do many more things than teaching and research. They certainly provide markers for educational development, but many of them also provide job placement opportunities, networks of connections and, importantly, socially legitimate symbols of status. To iterate: how much efficiency we bring to organizations through our educational programs is not a main indicator for how business schools’ social legitimacy is constructed. 

Universities, colleges and business schools alike build their social status on their relationship with knowledge, truth and what we call science. We must be reliable partners in the knowledge production game. Accordingly, our status, our prestige as an academic institution cannot be sustained without keeping an intimate relation with this progressively contested, surprisingly weaponized, and politically used term that we know as knowledge. And while universities are not the only creators of knowledge, their legitimacy depends on this role. 

Business schools must aspire to be relevant discussants in socially relevant topics

In that regard, the increasing clientelization of higher education, contrary to other pedagogical approaches that treat students as partners — I owe this point to prof. Sauquet — allies, or even straightforward subjects, determine the type of academic authority we build for ourselves. Currently, academic authority is seriously contested. We are witnessing the puzzling progression of what we can call ‘epistemological flattening’: the conflation of different forms of knowledge around one and the same bundle of ‘information’ according to which the teachings of a professor equals the text produced by GenAI, equals the message produced by a tiktoker with thousands of followers, the well-intended opinion of a person-like-me, or that of a president who says things ‘as they are’. 

My point here is that unless we remain as reliable and legitimated partners in the discussion of what is knowledge and what is not, we will erode the basis of our social legitimacy. Business schools should be seen as an ally to advance not only companies’ interests or people’s careers but societies at large. To sustain and strengthen this asset we must promote reflective and contrarian views too that defy the client-provider logic. We must aspire to be relevant discussants in socially relevant topics beyond the instrumental use of the content we deliver.  

Accordingly, we must persevere in serving a different array of organizations — not only businesses — that are part of the social fabric. This critical eye must be turned specifically onto management studies. Abrahamson (1991), Ghoshal et al (2005) or Alvesson (2013) have convincingly shown the fads and fashions of management theorizing; the attempt to mask as neutral value-laden theories — efficiency being one of those; and have signaled the loads of bullshitting (an academic term, see Frank 2005) that still pass off as knowledge (see a summary of these debates in Murillo & Vallentin, 2016). Business schools should be part of this pertinent and timely discussion about knowledge production and the role that business education should have in it.  

Business schools and their relationship with the world

In broader terms, in an era of rapid economic and technological transformation, for us to keep being relevant we ought to embrace goals greater than those imposed by markets and the narrow-mindedness of instrumental thinking. In practical terms, within the walls of an academic institution, this requires pedagogical adjustments. I will mention a few: the promotion of mentorship; the increase in the time allocated to — and resources associated with — building interpersonal relations or the diffusion of dialogical frameworks in class that go beyond task accomplishment. GenAI can certainly boost productivity but the impact on the educational process in terms such as the actual skills, reasoning capacities and habits produced in our students are a matter of serious concern.  

Can business schools serve ‘Academia’ or ‘the world at large’ if they become increasingly detached from their immediate communities?

Once again in a constructive mood, business schools can innovate in developing new markings in educational programs that signal non-market preferences. Being fully aware of the well-known market-induced inflation of grades that collectively push students to the top of the grading sheets, a different set of markers could and should be used to embed our values and vision in academic grading. This can be a tool for differentiation too. I am thinking of the promotion of prizes, accolades, recognitions or scholarships that reflect other relevant achievements (e.g. the student’s communicative skills; the capacity to partner academically with NGOs, the completion of service-learning courses; volunteering tasks embraced, the generation of innovations for the bottom of the pyramid and so on). Could we turn these so far scattered initiatives into something like a coherent and distinctive socially recognizable marker of the values we stand for as an organization? I am convinced that this is a path worth exploring. 

And connected to the previous point, a puzzle that at some point will demand an answer: what is the community we want to serve? Where is this “greater good” going to be promoted? In the minds and souls of our participants? Mainly within organizations? Primarily alongside like-minded institutions? At this point we must signal the dark side of becoming global academic players: the declining relevance in the immediate communities where we operate. As senior practice-oriented faculty retire; as global ratings impose metrics, contents, research/teaching ratios and topics for research; as progressively we become more and more embedded in a ‘global discussion’ with a global audience… can business schools serve ‘Academia’ or ‘the world at large’ if they become increasingly detached from their immediate communities and the concerns of the organizations where they operate? 

In conclusion

The questions sketched out above are part of an important debate on the future of higher education and, particularly, the role of business schools in it. In this article I have tried to do three things. First, to acknowledge and briefly contrast some important discussions on the future of higher education. Second, to offer a pathway to navigate the tempest. This demands i) to situate efficiency within management education — and AI-driven efficiency — in its right place; ii) to understand that business schools cannot be only functional for markets but must remain epistemic gatekeepers; and iii) that for this to happen we need to understand that our legitimacy stems from our contribution to society at large and to our most immediate communities in the first place. 

Finally, I have tried to develop a vision that embraces hope without adopting a naïve optimism about the salvific capacities of technology or markets to lead discussions on higher education. All social actors and organizations — and top universities and business schools in particular — do have agency beyond technological or economic determinism. The main question for us remains that of how to make use of this agency.