Debating the Value of Business Education

We could say that a bomb was detonated at business schools across the world on October 18, 2026, when Christopher Marquis, a business professor at the Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, called for the abolition of business schools in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times.

According to Professor Marquis business schools and in particular their MBA programs have failed to produce business leaders who can pay attention to anything else other than the pursuit of profit and shareholder wealth maximization.  This is so because students are taught to analyze and make decisions with little regard to broader consequences affecting communities, workers, and the environment.  In his sharpest charge against business schools, Professor Marquis writes that business schools not only reflect the present economic system but also serve as handmaidens of this system without the critical stance becoming educational institutions.

There was a swift pushback in the letters to the editor that followed Professor Marquis’s condemnation of business schools.  Most agreed that there is an urgent need for reforming the business education that is now imparted in the MBA programs.  But the letters also pointed out the positive contributions of business education in teaching skills that enable graduates to manage business operations and firms that have social value and the fact that business schools do not lack faculty who sincerely strive to sensitize their students to the wider responsibilities bestowed on them as future business leaders.

I would like to add to this debate by pointing out, first, the oversized impression we have about the singular responsibility of MBA programs in shaping today’s corporate landscape and the inextricable dependence of what business schools teach to the prevailing idea concerning the role of the firm. 

First, the impression that graduates of MBA programs are mostly responsible in shaping corporate culture and the economic priorities of the present economic system is grossly exaggerated.  Of the nine top Big Tech firms (Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI and Tesla) only three have CEOs with an MBA.  Of the Fortune top 500 firms only 45% have a CEO with an MBA and only 22% of the top global CEOs are graduates of MBA programs.  The majority of the most influential and powerful firms of our times are managed by CEOs whose primary education is not in business.  Many of them are led by engineers or lawyers.  This suggests that the prerequisite of a comprehensive education to lead a modern business should extend to these other disciplines that provide corporate leaders.

The fact remains though that only the MBA degree is dedicated to the mission of producing graduates to manage business operations and eventually assume leadership positions in firms.  So, the critical question to ask is: To lead to what end?  To answer this question, we need to ask another very relevant question: What is the mission and role of firms in society?

Despite entertaining various aspirations like considering the interests of other stakeholders outside the firm, like communities and the environment, the present reality distills the purpose of the firm down to the efficient utilization of resources to maximize profits and shareholder wealth.  A case in point is how the Business Roundtable revised the goal of the firm to include stakeholder interests in 2019, only for influential corporations to abandon these principles in the last two years.  Accordingly, MBA programs continue to teach students to analyze and make decisions under the criterion of wealth maximization.

If we wish to reform the MBA degree, we must start with an agreement on the mission and role of the firm in society.  To this effect, we first need to realize that by their mere size and enormous capacity to use resources, human and material, and create technologies with very impactful consequences, the modern firm is in a position to alter the course of human civilization.  Therefore, the notion that by just producing efficiencies and maximizing corporate value a firm fulfills its obligation to society is naïve and outdated. 

We have already amassed enough experience to see this.  Firm consolidations, takeovers, offshoring of operations, and automation have led to job losses, declining living standards, and the decay of communities and their social fabric.  Pursuing profits without regard to climate effects has brought us to the point where we face catastrophic results.  The development and introduction of AI applications can lead us to an unknown human future.  The challenge for firms and their leaders is what sort of knowledge and skills they need to have in order to balance the imperative of sound business with the imperative of sustaining healthy communities, protecting the environment, and harnessing the power of new technologies, including AI, for beneficial uses.

If we are ready to accept this more comprehensive role of the firm, then we can conclude that the education leading to the MBA degree cannot be simply reduced to teaching skills for profit and wealth maximization.  To produce business leaders to serve society MBA students must also acquire knowledge that lies at the intersection of society with economics, technology, and the environment.  This means that business schools not only have to revise their MBA curricula, but they must also bring in faculty with expertise in the above disciplines.  The benefit will be a more rigorous debate about the proper education of MBA students and a more balanced student worldview that does not only valorize profits and corporate value at the expense of legitimate societal interests. 

However, there is still a problem.  If investors continue to reward firms for their profitability no matter how, an MBA degree will not be enough to stop its holder from paying attention first and foremost to profits.  Therefore, reforming the MBA education is part of the larger project of reforming the economic system so that it resets its priorities toward serving the collective good than the narrow pursuit of private profits.

In this project, I think, business schools can have an influential role as incubators of future business leaders by staying around than by going out of business.