Bachelors, business and beyond – what do students need to be fit-for future?

What will the future of business education look like? Which developments will challenge traditional teaching and learning and shape students‘ expectations?

One of the major points is the increasing importance of diversity both at universities and in the society as a whole. Universities must make an effort to attract the best talents from very different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. With increasingly diverse students and teachers formats that foster intercultural and inclusive learning will no longer be a “nice-to-have” add-on but an indispensable component of every program on all levels of tertiary education.

Furthermore, students need to be prepared for the rapidly changing digital world and its potentially disruptive forces that impact their future lives – personally and professionally. Being able to combine digital skills with more general “21st century skills” - critical thinking, innovativeness, creativity in problem solving and communication skills - will be important to succeed in the business world of tomorrow. Business schools will have to create environments in which students learn, prototype and test digital solutions for many tasks that yet are not even identified.

What is also important in the context of 21st century skills is a new approach to student mobility. Universities need to promote and foster enhanced international exchange activities and to increase the international orientation in teaching and learning. Most established business schools already offer an extensive network of partner universities all over the world which allows students to increase their horizon by spending a semester abroad. In the future, these activities will broaden in a way that allows students to have more flexible learning paths. The main goal should be to give students the opportunity to study courses and modules at different places – thus allowing them to enrich and complement their chosen field. In this context, student mobility will become a means to construct more individualised educational journeys for students. Universities that work together to ensure such programmes will be able to offer a wide array of specializations, some of them jointly taught via virtual classes to a student population that is very international by nature.

Last, but not least, business schools are well advised to embed research-led and research-oriented teaching instead of allowing for a further separation of teaching from research. Applying such an approach considerably enhances students’ learning experience and helps a university to ensure that is stays relevant to the modern world. The knowledge society of today needs graduates that are not only able to draw from existing knowledge but have the necessary skills to collect and process new information with the aim to generate new knowledge.

About Edith Littich

Edith Littich has been Vice-Rector for Academic Programs and Student Affairs at the Vienna University of Economics and Business since 2011.She is highly committed to collaborating with all relevant stakeholders in order to enhance the student experience at WU and to make sure that the social dimension of higher education is taken into account. Being a truly international university with a triple accreditation of EQUIS, AACSB and AMBA, WU is home to 23,000 students from more than 100 countries and is proud of a worldwide network of 240 partner universities around the globe. Having held the position of professor at the Institute for Banking, Finance and Insurance since 2010, Edith Littich has specialized in corporate finance, capital structure and corporate governance.