Forward-thinking education tactics turn students into leading job candidates
March 17, 2024
Job markets and employer expectations are constantly changing. In order to better prepare students for career success, higher-education institutions are refining their academic programs in ways that differentiate students from the competition.
Innovating courses and curriculums happens intentionally, collaboratively and strategically. David M. Townsend, an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business, says when the university considers adding or revising courses, leadership pays close attention to both business trends and employer needs.
“There’s always a discussion of what issues we’re facing,” Townsend said. “We have an advisory board that works directly with our dean to talk about student needs. So we bring that senior leadership perspective into the discussion and considerations to evolve our courses and the future of the program.”
Townsend, whose academic subject matters include entrepreneurship, strategic management and technology management, says that Virginia Tech’s emphasis on the intersection of technology and business prepares graduate students to use emerging technologies to meet a future employer’s goals.
“We work closely with the school of engineering and other technology-oriented colleges to have a good mix of emerging technologies within our curriculums,” said Townsend. “But emerging technologies are oriented for business leaders who will either lead these programs or buy from and integrate new technologies into existing operations, so we focus on ensuring that our students are not only comfortable with new technologies, but prepared to drive technology-enabled transformation within organizations.”
“We’re focusing much of what we teach on what businesses really want,” added David Simpson, a professor of leadership and cybersecurity at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business. “And what businesses want is a better, faster and cheaper outcome. We give our students the confidence to not only spot the right technologies, but more importantly, how to identify and attain business outcomes that are meaningful and explainable to the stakeholders, along with the business and governance best practices to take the greatest advantage of those technologies.”
Associate Professor at NYU Stern School of Business and author of “Higher Ground,” Alison Taylor, said “The bar is very high for practical, usable insights when you are teaching executives. They tend to be less impressed by abstract academic credentials and more impressed with credible, real-life experience and exposure to tools, frameworks and ideas that they can use in their organizations in real time.”
As culture shifts, so do expectations at work. In today’s workplace, soft skills like teamwork, communication and problem-solving, are just as important as technical expertise. Taylor says that students at NYU Stern School of Business learn to be comfortable with new leadership models that emphasize influence, persuasion, leveraging networks, coalition building, inclusion and negotiation with diverse stakeholders.
“That’s how you prepare a new generation of leaders for the profound shifts underway in organizational culture.”
Hands-on, experiential learning
In addition to updating the content of their courses, universities are also examining how courses are taught and which experiences will most benefit students. Many business schools emphasize real-world experience in the curriculum so students can put their skills to the test.
“The graduate programs at the Costello College of Business at George Mason University focus on integrating the development of practical application knowledge and skills,” said Victoria Grady, an Associate Professor of organizational behavior as well as the academic director of the masters of science in management graduate program at Mason. “Students gain critical thinking, data analysis and an entrepreneurial spirit through our commitment to experiential learning.”
Costello College of Business offers Internship for Academic Credit elective courses that pair academic development with professional experience. During the pandemic, when internships were not readily available, the university shifted gears.
“We realized that lots of companies have really big questions they don’t necessarily have the bandwidth or interest in going through the research process to answer. So, we formed ‘research-ships,’” said Grady. “It’s like a mini consulting project where our students get to work with leadership within organizations to answer these questions.”
Business management students at the Costello College of Business can also personalize their curriculum with a graduate certificate and enjoy courses that are specific to their passion.
“We created a visionary 33-credit masters of science in management that is agile, innovative and competitive,” said Grady. “The foundation for the curriculum is 18 credit hours of core graduate business coursework. The remaining 15 credit hours consist of a graduate certificate in a specific area chosen by each individual student and driven by their unique career interests.”
At Pamplin College of Business, students learn through project-based courses and experiential learning activities.
“We have lots of opportunities for students to work on something real, including projects that create and validate a start-up idea,” shared Townsend. “We’re weaving these throughout our courses and approach to higher education from the get-go. I want students to get past the ‘this is what it could look like’ point, moving from hypotheticals to action — to actually creating a prototype that’s a viable product they test with real customers.”
Following job market trends
In 2016, NYU Stern School of Business opened the Center for Sustainable Business, with a mission to unleash the transformative potential of business to solve societal challenges at speed and scale.
“Education is at the core of the mission to prepare students with the conceptual frameworks and tactical skills to apply sustainable solutions — skills that future leaders will be able to apply across industries,” said Taylor. “In addition to education, research is a core tenet of the center with outcomes that demonstrate how sustainability strategies can improve business management and performance while addressing societal challenges.”
One of Taylor’s courses, Sustainability for Competitive Advantage, is a required course for all Executive MBA program students in Washington, D.C., which enables students to develop a credible, focused sustainability strategy for any organization. Learning these skills benefits students when they enter the job market, and in turn, the world benefits from having business leaders who can implement solutions to societal challenges.
“As sustainability matures, it makes less sense to treat it as a standalone function, and more sense to consider how to integrate it into existing roles in finance, strategy, governance, procurement, innovation and so on,” said Taylor. “I tend to argue that every student should ‘minor’ in sustainability and at minimum bring an understanding of the core underlying drivers and concepts to their role.”
David Marchick, dean of the Kogod School of Business at American University, said, “Business schools that provide sustainability curriculum will single handedly reshape industries across the globe. And Kogod is at the forefront of that initiative.”
AI use is more than a hot-button issue on social media — it’s already affecting the way businesses operate.
“Generative AI hit about two years ago and suddenly became broadly accessible,” said Simpson from Pamplin College of Business. “Lots of academic institutions were fearful of it. We’ve taken the opposite approach and realized our students need to be able to be the human input to an AI system. So, we’ve pulled AI into our existing classes and have created AI-specific assignments that require students to use generative AI to produce a final product for the assignments.”
“It’s critical, in the era of environmental, social and governance backlash, not to teach these topics in a simplistic, cheerleading way,” added Taylor. “It’s important to equip students with a balanced understanding of the debate, the background to challenges and the counter arguments. It’s a bad idea to suggest this is always easy, or a win-win in every instance.”
Intentionally innovating curriculum to meet trending needs ultimately benefits students. When choosing a higher education program, prospective students should consider institutions that are committed to providing cutting-edge education and transforming students into competitive job candidates.
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