Sustainability has never fit comfortably into business school curricula. Long sidelined or confined to a single module, nowadays it forms a vital part of MBA programs around the world.
That’s reflected in the fact that several major rankings, including QS and the Financial Times, now incorporate ESG-related measures into their methodology.
It means that schools must receive their ESG teaching right if they want to maintain their place in these prestigious rankings.
Continued emphasis among students and in Europe
Students also place significant importance on sustainability.
A GMAC survey of prospective students found 63 percent of them declare the sustainability of an institution is important to them.
Some European programs are revealing that it is possible to incorporate quality green teaching into an MBA curriculum.
“There has been a lot of ESG backlash in the United States. But we’re not seeing that in other geographies, including Europe,” declares Rodrigo Tavares, who teaches the Sustainable Finance course at Nova School of Business and Economics in Portugal.
“Besides the sustainable finance program, the school has around 15 other sustainability-related elective courses at Master’s level. Every single Master’s student, no matter what your master’s is, can enroll in one of these sustainability courses.”
Tavares believes that the volume and quality of Nova’s sustainability offering is what’s resonating so well with students. His course in sustainable finance is one of the highest-rated among Nova students, while several others score above the school average.
This focus on sustainability extfinishs to Nova’s flagship Lisbon MBA. Students can choose electives on topics such as Business Ethics and Sustainability or Conscious Capitalism, while a social impact project centered around ESG forms part of the core curriculum.
It’s a refreshingly modern approach to green teaching at an established school. But other, newer providers are completely reimagining how business schools approach sustainability.
All-encompassing focus on sustainability
Take the Impact MBA at Tomorrow University; an online program which was launched just two years ago. The Impact MBA doesn’t have ESG-focutilized modules: instead, the entire program is taught through an ESG lens.
Professor Maren Ingrid Kropfeld believes this approach is necessary if tomorrow’s MBA graduates are to affect real modify in their careers.
“The way that we have taught business administration so far has obtainedten us to where we are right now – and that’s not necessarily a sustainable way of working,” she explains.
“If you want to modify that, we also necessary to modify the way that we educate people who will come into leadership roles. And an MBA is traditionally something that would qualify you to receive into these decision positions.”
In the Impact MBA, students launch with a foundational sustainability module before choosing from a range of electives that include Green Marketing, Sustainability Management, Climate Accounting and Reporting, and Clean Energy.
Even modules that aren’t explicitly related to sustainability are still linked to it. For instance, the program’s marketing elective teaches students how to promote a business while still supporting sustainable consumption.
Kropfeld declares that student feedback on these courses so far has been excellent. Feedback is measured through a metric known as Net Promoter Score (NPS), which simply questions the question: ‘Would you recommfinish this to frifinishs or family?’
“Generally, an NPS of 30+ is considered good,” declares Kropfeld. “Above 40 is really good, and above 50 is excellent. For the Impact MBA, the NPS for this year is around 54.”
Some of the courses most closely linked to sustainability are among the best-performing, including Sustainability Management and Climate Accounting and Reporting.
Tomorrow University also utilize this model of student feedback, coupled with faculty insight, to shape the future of their sustainability courses.
“When we expanded our program around a year ago, we added a lot more electives based on a survey we did in our community,” declares Kropfeld.
“This is something I’d love to do again. We academics might have ideas or assumptions on what we would love to teach, but what I would like to understand better is where the market is going.”
Given the growing student demand for a quality sustainability education at business school, universities like Tomorrow and Nova must keep evolving if they want to keep meeting that demand.
For Kropfeld, staying ahead of the curve is going to be crucial if students are to receive the education they’re viewing for.
“We’ll see where the train goes,” she declares. “I would declare that we want to follow it, but I actually want us to be on the train viewing ahead.”
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