'Students seek purpose, tech fluency, and global agility from Management Education'

Students entering business schools today expect far more than traditional management theory.

They seek purpose-driven learning, technological fluency and global exposure, said Nitish Jain, President, SP Jain School of Global Management, in a recent interaction on the changing landscape of management education.

On the growing demand for courses in social entrepreneurship, sustainability and ethics, Jain said responses from business schools remain mixed.

“There’s genuine interest from students who want to create impact alongside profit, but also some virtue signalling,” he remarked. “Most social enterprises fail not because of intent but because good intentions don’t pay salaries. The best graduates balance impact with viability.”

He added that the strongest programmes now teach sustainability as strategy rather than morality. “Climate risk isn’t an ethics issue—it’s a $23 trillion repricing of global assets. ESG is not compliance; it’s where capital is flowing,” Jain said.

On whether B-schools are adapting quickly enough to AI, digital strategy and behavioural science, he admitted progress is slow. “ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months; most curriculum revision cycles take three to five years. That’s the real gap,” he said. “Many schools add new courses with fashionable titles, but the question is whether AI is used across all courses, as professionals do.”

Jain stressed that true change means integration rather than addition. “The challenge is not what to teach, but how to teach,” he said.

Highlighting the importance of international exposure, Jain said global experience builds cultural agility only when it pushes students out of their comfort zones.

“A semester abroad doesn’t transform you. Real learning comes from discomfort—working in places where you don’t speak the language or misread cultural cues,” he said. SP Jain’s multi-city model moves students across Sydney, Dubai, Singapore and London to create that transformation.

On global case studies and partnerships, Jain said such tools are now standard but vary in depth. “Reading about a market is not the same as working in it,” he noted.

“We prefer campuses in key markets where students handle real projects and internships.”

Speaking on new pillars of management education—tech fluency, ethics, sustainability and adaptive thinking—Jain said recognition is universal but implementation uneven.

“We use AI tools across nearly every course. One student practised 60 mock interviews with an AI tutor before landing a job in the Middle East,” he said.

Ethical decision-making and sustainability, he added, must be woven into every discussion rather than taught separately. “These are lenses through which all decisions should be viewed,” he said.

Jain concluded that adaptive thinking comes from uncertainty, not lectures. “Students must solve problems with incomplete information. These ideas aren’t new add-ons—they’re redefining what management education means. The transformation is only beginning,” he said.