Australian MBA programs face declining demand due to factors like high tuition fees and the irrelevance of course content. Key challenges include the need for sustainability integration, adaptation to digital learning methods, and incentivizing academics to update curricula. Griffith University is addressing these issues by revising MBA courses to incorporate sustainability themes, digitizing course materials, and shifting towards blended learning formats.

1. THREE HEADWINDS IMPACTING
THE FUTURE OF MBA PROGRAMS:
AN AUSTRALIAN PERSPECTIVE
Nick Barter & Evan Douglas
Griffith Business School
Griffith University
Queensland, Australia

2. Overview
 What is the problem for MBA providers?
◦ Declining demand due to declining value proposition
 Three strong headwinds we are sailing against
◦ The social imperative of Sustainability
◦ The increasing digital literacy of our clientele
◦ Unmet thirst for meeting client’s needs
 What should be done about these to ensure the survival of
MBA providers?
 What are we doing currently on these fronts at Griffith?

3. The problem facing MBA providers
 Declining student numbers
◦ Expensive tuition fees
◦ Ambiguous evidence that MBA is a good investment
◦ Rise of alternative sources of business information
- Coursera, Wikipedia, and googled information
- Business experience with more savvy co-workers
◦ The decline of relevancy of MBA course content for
- Sustainable development
- Practical application
- Self-employment
◦ Increasing time poverty of our customers
- Unwilling to absorb material on a ‘just-in-case’ basis

4. The ‘path-dependence’ problem
 We arrived here via an historical path
◦ MBA was invented to qualify ‘business administrators’
◦ Based on 19th century scientific management philosophy
- Profit maximization was the sole goal
◦ 1959 Gordon & Howell (and Pierson) reports were critical
- Need for softer side => business ethics, leadership
◦ 1988 Porter & McKibbin investigation of MBA curricula
◦ 2002 Mintzberg & Gosling, Pfeffer & Fong papers critical
◦ Global Financial Crisis – MBA graduates implicated
◦ Criticism continues to present day
- We are not teaching what managers want to know
- Nor delivering in their preferred format for learning

5. Headwind #1: Sustainability
 Sustainability is not just nice, it is necessary now
◦ Profit maximization is no longer appropriate
◦ Corporate Social Responsibility is now expected
 Sustainable development is about enabling economic
growth and human progress
◦ The environment does not exist as a sphere separate from
human actions, ambitions, and needs
◦ Rather than being a challenge to business, sustainable
development is a core requirement for business strategy.
 Consequently the challenge of sustainability is actually a
business growth challenge
◦ We must seek business growth within a context of ensuring
inclusiveness, reduced inequality and human progress.

6. Incorporating Sustainability
 Shifting social mores now require and expect CSR
◦ Investors now preferring ‘sustainable’ companies
◦ Employment in ‘sustainable’ firms and organisations
◦ Consumers increasingly preferring ‘sustainable’ firms.
◦ Suppliers preferring to be associated with ‘sustainable’ firms
 Candidates will choose programs that better equip them for
employment and career advancement in CSR companies
 Sustainability must become thematic in MBA programs
◦ No longer take short-horizon profit-maximizing focus
◦ Incorporate social and environmental issues into decisions
◦ Integrate longer-horizon CSR focus into all courses

7. Headwind #2: The Digital Revolution
 Universities are no longer the store of knowledge
 Digitally-stored knowledge can be accessed
◦ More quickly – waste less time
- We read faster than we speak
- Avoid travel time (and annoyances)
◦ More relevant to immediate needs
- Avoid required courses not considered relevant to needs
- Just-in-time rather than just-in-case
◦ More inexpensively
- Little or no monetary cost
 But there is an enormous volume of information available
◦ Where to start, which path to follow?

8. Our role is ‘Packaging’ knowledge
 Sifting
◦ Through the mountain of business information, opinion, data
and case studies, including recent research that may be
difficult reading for aspiring managers
 Selecting
◦ Choosing which elements are most important for our courses
and which elements can be taken as already understood
◦ Translating research findings into common parlance such that
they are appropriate to business practice
 Sequencing
◦ Putting these in an order of delivery that is most conducive to
learning and retention of the information by aspiring managers

9. MBA delivery modes
 Full-time face-to-face cohort
◦ Traditional format in classroom, weekly classes
◦ Student have minimal management experience
- Little or no prior business knowledge
 Part-time face-to-face cohort
◦ Week-night classes for students who work full-time
- Have greater knowledge of business practice
 Executive mode,
◦ Monthly distributed-block classes on weekends
- Candidates have the most knowledge of business practice

And a greater need to customize knowledge …

10. Delivering the Package
 The ‘Body of Knowledge’ (BOK) must be accessible on-line
◦ Supplied in ‘chunks’ not monoliths or monologues
◦ Use multi-media – Talking heads; YouTube; Websites, etc
 Treated as ‘prior reading’ before class sessions
 Reduce face-to-face time to ½ of previous time
◦ I.e. Adopt ‘blended learning’ format – both OL and F2F
 Use F2F sessions for application of BOK to specific
management decision problems
◦ Including those brought forward by class members
◦ Capture these on video for later viewing
 Supplement with on-line chats, collaborate workshops
◦ Synchronous and non-synchronous communication

11. Differing Needs of Cohorts
Cohort
Cohort needs
Knowledge
Credentials
Social networking
Business networks
Discretionary time
Not testing patience
Knowledge
specificity
Full-time face-toface MBA student
with 2+ years of
business
experience
Part-time face-toface MBA
student with
typically 5-10
years business
experience
EMBA student with
>10 years mid- to
senior-level
business
experience
Greatest
Greatest
Greatest
Least
Median
Median
Median
Median
Least
Least
Least
Greatest
Least
Least
Least
Median
Median
Median
Greatest
Greatest
Greatest

12. Headwind #3: Incentivizing Academics
 Academics are creatures of habit, and many are nearing
retirement age
◦ Reluctant to change teaching material or teaching methods
◦ Opportunity cost of time spent revising teaching materials
 Performance incentives in business schools are related to
research grants and publications in high-status journals
◦ Teaching quality must simply surpass minimal standards
 Also little incentive to spend time listening to business
people and their views on the curriculum
◦ Business views are often disparate, mutually conflicting
◦ Bureaucratic internal process to change curriculum
◦ Rewards for changing curriculum are distant, if at all

13. What is the solution to this?
 Increased incentives needed to make course material:
◦ More practical and applicable to business decision making
◦ More digitally accessible and more efficiently delivered
 A different performance metric for MBA teachers?
◦ AACSB Academically Qualified – Professional Teachers
◦ Exclude from ‘Research Active’ denominator
◦ Encourage and support consulting income for these
◦ Awards for currency and digitalisation of teaching materials
 A greater proportion of ‘Professionally Qualified’ teachers
◦ Business Practitioners who are highly respected in their
subject areas
- Guest presentations by CEOs, Entrepreneurs, etc.

14. The MBA as a stand-alone
award, outside the University?
Currently MBA programs are charged their ‘fair
share’ of University overheads
◦ Library
◦ Car parks
◦ Cafeterias
◦ Computer Laboratories
◦ Large lecture theatres
◦ Marketing efforts geared to attracting undergraduate and
international students
◦ 40% of salaries provided for research activity
 Most of these are of little benefit to MBA students…

15. What is Griffith University doing?
 Re-developed all MBA courses on theme of Sustainability,
Responsibility, and Asia-Pacific Focus.
 Digitised all MBA course material for on-line delivery,
concurrent with face-to-face delivery on campus in 2014
 ‘Chunked’ all course materials into 10-20 minute slide
presentations with voice-overs
 Provided links to relevant YouTube and TEDtalk videos
 Provided links to websites and digitised reading materials
 Set up asynchronous chat rooms for student-to-student
interaction with professor oversight
 Set up periodic synchronous ‘Collaborate’ sessions for virtual
face-to-face meetings and discussion of specific topics

16. Conclusion
 MBA providers within Business Schools within Australian
Universities are facing declining enrolments (generally)
◦ Griffith MBA enrolments are now rising, against the trend
 MBA programs need to revise course material to reflect the
sustainable development paradigm
 Hard copies of textbooks and course materials are obsolete
◦ All course materials need to be provided on-line (and free)
 Contact time for F2F classes needs to be reduced by half
◦ With prior reading & viewing of course materials
◦ Use F2f time to apply and synergise course materials
 Incentivise MBA instructors to update, digitise and apply
course materials to business decision problems.