Higher education is entering a new era in which educational technology will bring – as the president of Stanford University John Hennessy put it recently – a tsunami of change. The MBA will be no exception. But how should it change?
Rooted in Silicon Valley among some of the most innovative organisations in the world, people ask me: “Why not make the MBA an online degree?” My answer? While technology can greatly enhance the learning experience, it simply cannot replace the faculty-student interaction, experiential learning and self-discovery that occur in the MBA classroom.
The issue is an incremental experience versus a transformational one. The two-year, residential MBA is an immersive experience that delivers a life-changing process for those who embrace it.
In Stanford’s two-year programme, students learn about themselves and how they want to lead others through highly interactive eight-person leadership labs in which coaches and fellow students provide real-time, personal feedback. They engage in hands-on, multidisciplinary classes where new products or processes go through brainstorming exercises and rapid prototyping sessions with scores of ideas flying across work tables as one student builds on another’s idea. MBAs serendipitously bump into potential business partners in the dining pavilion, which draws engineering, law and other students.