Business Schools Beware: Gen Y is at the Door

In a few years, Generation Y will storm the gates of MBA programs that are ill-equipped to teach them on their technology-focused terms. It's time for B-schools to embrace the future

By Matt Symonds

They say every army trains to fight the last war, not the next one. Could it be that business schools are in danger of falling into the same trap, gearing up to train the current generation of corporate leaders rather than the upcoming one?

The bright young things that schools hope will become their MBA students in three or four years' time might look a lot like the occupants of today's classrooms, but they differ in one crucial respect. They don't just use the new technology that has revolutionized business over the past decade—they eat, sleep and breathe it. That means the lessons they will want to learn and the way they will expect those lessons to be delivered could be radically different.

Practically all major schools are addressing this development in various ways: by increasing the use of technology in the classroom; by including its employment in case studies; and by embracing social media such as Facebook, blogs, and Twitter. But all this is fraught with danger. Unless schools really understand the mind-set of the potential Gen Y MBA, they risk looking at best like enthusiastic amateurs and at worst like the embarrassing "cool dad" attempting to engage with their teenage children about the latest release by Jay-Z or Lady Gaga.

So who, if anyone, in the international business school community has woken up and smelled the forthcoming coffee so far?

Virtual Classrooms and iPods

Warwick Business School (Warwick Full-Time MBA Profile) in England is one of the schools that seems to have grasped the fact that Gen Y really doesn't understand why its elders insist on working or learning on a face-to-face basis. As a result, it has constructed one of the most effective of the new breed of virtual classrooms. Going under the name of wbsLive, the system allows students to interact not only with their lecturer but also with fellow classmates, trading information and opinions and working together in project teams as if they were sitting side by side rather than on different continents. It's now being rolled out across the school's alumni community to encourage closer links between graduates and to bring a more personal element to the international mentoring scheme.

Also in Europe, HEC Paris (HEC Paris Full-Time MBA Profile) has shown much more than a flirtation with technology by working with Apple (AAPL), allowing the school to equip every MBA student with an iPod touch that will be used as a platform for learning materials, FAQs, filmed lectures, and connecting with classmates and academics. The initiative is part of an increasing involvement by schools including Yale (Yale Full-Time MBA Profile), Cambridge (Cambridge Full-Time MBA Profile), and Duke's Fuqua School of Business (Fuqua Full-Time MBA Profile) in iTunes U, the online learning content available from Apple' iTunes store. Other schools have joined similar projects such as YouTubeEDU, which hosts content from the University California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business (Haas Full-Time MBA Profile) , and Academic Earth, where business content is generated by Stanford (Stanford Full-Time MBA Profile).

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