The Crisis in Management Education: A Call for Radical Transformation

Management education is broken. That’s the stark assessment from Professor Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Lauder Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who has spent more than five decades at the forefront of business education innovation. In a wide-ranging conversation, Wind outlined a comprehensive critique of current business school models and offered a blueprint for transformation.

“I view this as the failure of business education,” Wind notes. The evidence, he argues, is in the outcomes: too many graduates who “don’t believe in science or the truth,” and exhibit a troubling lack of values alongside excessive greed. The problem manifests in a broader societal dysfunction. “Too much in today’s environment is a zero-sum game. I want to win and defeat you guys, as opposed to realizing that progress is achieved through cooperation and understanding and creating a win-win relationship,” Wind says.

However, Wind acknowledges that for some students, particularly those needing fundamental business education, the current MBA model still provides value. “There is a segment out there for whom the current MBA education is good and probably relevant,” he notes. The greater challenge lies in addressing the needs of a rapidly changing workforce and business environment.

Wind identifies a crucial reality about contemporary MBA education: “The education is commoditized. MBA programs today are almost identical, regardless of where you go and get them.” The difference between top schools and others, he explains, “is predominantly from the point of view of the students. What makes a difference is the brand name and the network.”

This insight reveals that many students pay exorbitant tuition not primarily for educational content but for institutional prestige and professional connections. “The real value, increasingly, is not so much the content which has become commoditized across most schools. It’s the branding and the networking which people value.”

The distinction between elite schools and others lies in faculty quality. “In the top schools, the faculty are the ones who are doing the more advanced research,” Wind observes. Yet even this advantage is being eroded as industry research labs, particularly at major technology companies, increasingly lead innovation in management practices.

The Tyranny of Silos

Wind identifies the siloed structure of business schools as a fundamental obstacle to solving real-world problems. “Every problem, every challenge, whether individual, organization or society, can be solved only with multiple disciplines.” He uses marketing as an example. “Marketing is divided basically into two camps: either behavioral consumer behavior or the quantitative one, and then they just continue with incremental improvement…as opposed to seeing what is the management challenge that we face, and how do we use both consumer behavior and modeling to try to solve the problem.”

The consequences are profound for organizations trying to grow. “Growth requires the company to offer an integrated customer experience. No single discipline can offer integrated customer experience,” Wind explains. Companies need chief customer experience officers or chief growth officers who can coordinate across functions, but “business schools don’t do it. Business schools are still siloed.”

Another critical issue is how business schools handle foundational disciplines. “Business schools realize that many business disciplines rely heavily on other disciplines, whether it is economics or psychology and the like. And yet, because of monetary reasons every business school is developing all these functions internally. Students often get a diluted understanding and miss the opportunity to interact with students who focus on other disciplines.”

The gap between academia and practice represents another major challenge. “In most cases, business education is separated from the real world,” Wind argues. “Many of the faculty have no real-world experience. Some are only a chapter ahead of the students in a given area, if it’s not their area of research.”

Even case studies fall short. “Cases are all not real-time. The case that you’re providing from a year or two ago may not be applicable anymore.”

Perhaps most troubling is the widening gulf between academic research and industry innovation. “A lot of the real advances happening today in management are led by industry, especially the research labs of the large technology companies,” Wind observes. “There are huge advances in AI, especially with the move from generative AI to agentic AI to physical AI. University research is lagging behind.”

Wind challenges the fundamental structure of degree programs. “What is the life expectancy of a person in a position today? Two years, three years, four years. How many careers does a graduate expect to have? Ten, twenty, over their lifetime?”

Given these realities, he asks: “Why would you have the arrogance in academia to believe that if you take an undergraduate student for four years, you’re preparing them for lifelong education?” His radical proposal: “Perhaps I don’t need four years at the beginning. Perhaps I need only two years. And perhaps I have to structure education in a way that every few years I come back for a specified period…to graduate and have an undergraduate degree or a master’s degree. It would be good for students to get their education in phases.”

The MBA’s Declining Value

When asked about the traditional MBA’s relevance, Wind is pessimistic. “I think it’s getting less and less. It’s a good money maker for universities, and they’ll continue doing it. But in terms of the real value for the student, I think it’s becoming less and less.”

He points to hiring trends at sophisticated firms. “Look at companies such as McKinsey. How many MBAs are they hiring now versus what they used to hire? Very few. Where are they hiring? Computer science, AI, design, science and medicine. Why? Because the value of an MBA is declining.”

Even the mechanics of how education is delivered need rethinking. “The structure of the delivery of higher education is designed for the convenience of the administration and not the benefit of the learner,” Wind argues. He advocates for flexibility based on learning needs rather than administrative convenience. Wind is particularly critical of the retreat from pandemic-era innovations. “Much of business education is still looking at how we get back to the pre-pandemic paradigm. It’s absurd. Why don’t we look at what worked during the pandemic? Digital education did work. Why aren’t we moving toward hybrid models everywhere?”

The potential of personalized AI-driven education represents a particular opportunity. Wind points to innovations like Google’s Learn Your Way platform, which uses generative AI to transform textbooks into personalized, multimodal learning experiences. The platform demonstrated an 11 percentage point improvement in student retention compared to traditional digital readers. “If high school students are used to such personalized material, what will their reaction be when they get to college and we still use old textbooks?” Wind asks.

The flipped-classroom model offers particular promise by combining personalized AI-driven learning with experiential application. Students can learn at their own pace, 24/7, in any language, then come together to apply knowledge collaboratively. This dual benefit — personalization through technology and experiential learning through group work — addresses multiple pedagogical needs simultaneously.

Essential Competencies for the Future

Wind outlines competencies that employers expect but business schools often fail to provide:

Technology Mastery: “Everyone that employers hire needs to be up to date in the effective use of AI. There needs to be absolute mastery of AI and other technologies, used effectively and comfortably.”

The New Concept of Talent: Understanding that organizational capability comes from “a mix of people who work in the company, automation, and open talent.” With open innovation delivering solutions “four to five times cheaper and eight to ten times faster,” graduates need to know “how do you integrate this with automation?”

Cross-Functional Orchestration: “How do you orchestrate across silos? How do you understand the language of people in other silos of the organization?”

Stakeholder Orientation: Moving beyond shareholder value to understanding “how do I meet the needs of customers, the needs of employees? How do I deal with the needs of society?”

Matching Work to Passion: Wind recounts asking a Fortune 50 research lab director what percentage of employees are “really happy and passionate about what they’re doing.” The answer: “40%.” Wind’s response: “This is a crime, because 60% of the people who work there are unhappy with what they’re doing.”

Values and Courage: “We have to focus on values and courage.” This is particularly critical in today’s environment. “Companies don’t have the courage, leaders don’t have the courage to say what they believe in,” Wind observes, pointing to the lack of corporate courage in standing up for democratic values and ethical principles.

Hybrid Education and Flipped Classroom: Combining personalized technology-enabled learning with experiential application in collaborative settings represents a powerful pedagogical approach that business schools should embrace.

Collaboration with Potential Employers: Business schools must develop stronger ties with industry, government, and NGOs. “This is an applied field,” Wind emphasizes. “We have to have a much stronger link to reality, to the business, to the people who are practicing.” This includes joint projects, visiting faculty from industry, and understanding employer needs—whether in business, government, or non-profit sectors.

A Vision for 2035

Looking ahead, Wind envisions “a series of ongoing experiments by different business schools and other schools and organizations addressing these problems and moving more and more toward interdisciplinary education.”

The most radical change? “There is no business degree by itself. You go in to study business and, let’s say, computer science.” He points to Reichman University in Israel as an example: “No one can graduate from Reichman University with a single degree. You have to go through two schools or more.”

Wind points to one notable success story: Minerva University, founded by Ben Nelson. “He succeeded by focusing on the fact that if our objective on the educational side is to develop people’s critical thinking and creativity, this cannot be done within the structure where we bring each faculty member separately in their area.” Minerva designed integrated-skills courses across disciplines and built in experiential learning by having students spend every six months in a different global location, providing “a need to apply their knowledge in different contexts.”

Wind’s message is uncompromising: “Unless we do it, if we’re just trying to put a band-aid on something, I don’t think we’ll get there. I think the value of business education will become lower and lower and less and less relevant.”

His prescription: “Forget what we have. Given the environment we have, given the expected technological advances, given Generation Z, given the geopolitical situation, given the climate situation…what will be the ideal education? Define an idealized design, develop that idealized design, and then decide—the gap between the current offering and ideal design is huge. Start developing a transformation plan. How do I move from where I am to where I want to be, and what experiments can I start conducting along the way?”

A Call to Action

The transformation of management education requires coordinated action from multiple stakeholders:

Executives and industry leaders need to collaborate more actively with management education programs. By partnering with universities, they can ensure greater relevance to their needs while gaining access to cutting-edge research and talent. The value they provide through real-world projects, visiting faculty positions, and joint initiatives will benefit both their organization and the future workforce.

Business and management schools need to recognize that problems exist and begin experimenting with new approaches. They should move beyond incremental improvements to fundamental reimagining. Test interdisciplinary programs, embrace technology-enabled personalization, develop phased degree programs, and create stronger bridges to industry practice.

Students should take ownership of their education. Even within current MBA programs, they can seek electives across disciplines, demand experiential learning opportunities, and push for personalization. They need to recognize that no problem they’ll solve in their career will require just a single discipline. “Use your educational time to expand your understanding across multiple fields and develop the ability to work across different disciplines,” Wind suggests.

Policymakers and accreditation agencies must look beyond outdated formulas and bureaucratic compliance. They should focus on how innovative institutions are addressing changing needs and introducing new approaches. They must evaluate programs based on their willingness to experiment and innovate, not merely their adherence to century-old models.

Wind acknowledges the enormous obstacles to transformation. “The key to introducing changes is to have courageous leadership. Courage is the most critical thing.” Without fundamental reimagining, management education risks becoming increasingly irrelevant in a world that desperately needs better leaders.

Yet there is reason for optimism. Given the talent of faculty and the increased rigor of academic research in major management disciplines, the capability exists to address these challenges. The quality of scholarship in top-tier business schools continues to advance, and talented doctoral students are entering the field.

The problem is not a lack of intellectual capacity but rather the current structure and incentive systems that discourage faculty from challenging fundamental approaches to management education. Breaking free from the belief that existing models are optimal, and refocusing on real-world needs, could unlock the transformative potential that already exists within academia. With the right leadership and courage, the talent and commitment of faculty worldwide can drive the reimagination that management education urgently requires.