The list of challenges for business schools seems relentless. It includes new technology, reduced funding, changing student profiles, social investment demands, government interference, unemployment, political expedience, societal pressures and international competition.
These issues are summed up in a report by the SA Business Schools Association. The result of a two-day scenario-building workshop, the report says schools need "preparedness and resilience" to survive an uncertain future.
The concerns listed above are just a sample of those identified by schools.
There are broader questions. For example, the report asks how SA schools will react to the global trend for business schools to be established by industries or corporations instead of universities. "[Some of this is] starting to take shape in SA," it says. Not only does this have implications for teaching at SA schools, "it also means that the role of executive education and research will change".
Then there’s the fourth industrial revolution and the way it changes education patterns. The growth of free online courses has already reduced revenues, as have declining state subsidies.
Those are the immediate challenges. What about the environment in which they occur? Three scenarios are outlined. The first, a continuation of the present situation, foresees an ever-weakening economy in which business becomes cash strapped, employee development loses out to cost cutting, and schools "enjoy diminishing returns from an ever-shrinking market".
In a worst-case scenario more ratings downgrades are expected, as are business divestment and diminished educational quality, as "schools drift towards a survivalist posture". Some of them won’t make it.
Then there’s a best-case scenario, in which a growing economy meets citizens’ expectations, and companies invest more in employees. Schools find better ways to provide management education and "enjoy handsome returns from an ever-expanding market".
Whatever the future holds, the report says, "schools are likely to face headwinds unless they adopt lean cost-management, tech-enabled, alternative models for delivery, and form strategic collaborations and partnerships".
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