A peer-to-peer discussion with the Special Advisor to Duke Kunshan University, and previously Dean of Duke's Fuqua School of Business.

🎙️Blair Sheppard, formerly the Global Leader for Strategy and Leadership at PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) and previously Dean of Duke's Fuqua School of Business brings both a 30,000-foot and ground-level view of the major trends and challenges facing global business and business education today. Sheppard explains how our previous assumptions about business and industry no longer apply in today’s age and why that poses a serious need for recalibration of business curriculum. He articulates four major trends that are so significant we all cannot deny their global impact on the world—and how they connect to business, education, and teaching business education specifically.

“What we have to do is go back and say, ‘Well, what’s the new set of base assumptions we should be working from?’ … And then draw conclusions about how that applies to every industry that’s involved in the world and what it means for our particular practice of teaching business.”

Sheppard confirms that curricula will need to be reimagined to better equip business students for work in an age of AI, especially as a lion’s share of professional services will be AI-driven within the next five years. That will require a shift not only in the ways people teach, what is taught and how we do so but also who teaches in the academy today.

One factor is university leaders integrating business education with other disciplines to better educate students for the challenges of tomorrow. Another is educators re-educating themselves for the future. While acknowledging the uncertainty of self-reinvention, Sheppard speaks from his own experience and offers the benefits for universities to support a broader population of individuals across all stages of life, rather than the typical age of college students. The opportunities translate well for business schools, as they tend to lead the charge in higher education via their connection to business and the global economy.

From the issues to opportunities higher education and universities leaders are facing, Episode 67 provides a fascinating roadmap for what’s next.

#businesseducation #highereducation #DeansCounsel

Photos courtesy of Blair Sheppard and Duke

Read more about Blaire Sheppard here.