Our Students Have Changed. Have Business Schools?

• Over the years, student preferences have switched—from aspirations to undertake corporate careers in larger organizations to plans to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities.
• In response, entrepreneurship education should be integrated across the business curriculum, equipping all graduates to identify opportunities, navigate uncertainty, and turn ideas into value.
• Graduate success metrics should reflect more than job placement and starting salaries. They also should encompass venture creation, job generation, research commercialization, and other forms of entrepreneurial impact.

Every semester over 11 years, as a new cohort settled in, I asked my students the same question: “What are your plans when you graduate?”

In fall 2010, the answers were remarkably predictable. Nearly every student—95 percent—envisioned a career inside a large, established organization. Most spoke of working in fields such as investment banking or consulting, with Fortune 500 firms and multinational manufacturers. Some mentioned plans to enroll in graduate leadership programs. For them, a recognized corporate brand signaled success, stability, and opportunity. They aimed to climb well-defined ladders, deepen expertise within respected institutions, and eventually move into leadership roles.

Only a handful mentioned entrepreneurship. Even then, it was a distant aspiration—something to pursue after a decade or more of building experience, networks, and financial security.

By spring 2021, however, the number of students giving predictable answers had inverted. Only 5 percent envisioned careers inside large organizations. Instead of talking about joining large organizations, 95 percent described plans to launch startups, build digital businesses, freelance, create software, open e-commerce ventures, or join young high-growth firms. Some were already generating revenue from businesses they had started while completing their degrees. The corporate career option had become one option among many.

I never altered my question, but their answers completely changed.

These observations came from my own classroom, not a formal longitudinal study. But the pattern seemed too consistent to dismiss. Semester after semester, students were redefining what constituted a successful career. More importantly, their shifting aspirations mirrored broader trends reported by organizations tracking entrepreneurship, workforce expectations, and generational attitudes toward work.

For business schools, this transformation deserves careful attention. For decades, business schools have designed their curricula, recruiting relationships, internship pipelines, career services, and institutional rankings to prepare graduates for careers inside established organizations. They have customarily measured their success by graduate employment rates, starting salaries, and placements with prestigious employers. Those metrics remain important, but they no longer tell the whole story.

What happens when most of our students shift from asking “Which company should hire me?” to “What can I build?” When an entire generation begins asking different questions about what constitutes success, business schools must redefine how they prepare their graduates.

Different Generation, Different Aspirations

The shift I observed was gradual rather than abrupt. In the years immediately following the 2008 global financial crisis, students understandably sought certainty. Large organizations represented security amid economic turbulence. Entrepreneurship appeared risky and unpredictable.

But as the decade progressed, that calculus began to shift. Technology dramatically lowered the barriers to starting a business. At the same time, definitions of professional success evolved. Students increasingly valued autonomy, flexibility, creativity, and purpose alongside financial achievement. Rather than viewing entrepreneurship as a career reserved for a handful of risk-takers, they began to see it as a legitimate—and often desirable—first choice.

One moment crystallized this for me: During a discussion of corporate strategy, a student asked, “Why would anyone want to spend their life optimizing someone else’s business instead of building their own?” It was the first time I realized that the assumptions that had underpinned management education for decades were no longer universally shared.

Many students no longer believe that working for a large organization is the safest career path.

Then came the pandemic. Students watched respected organizations shed workforces almost overnight. Families experienced layoffs, hiring freezes, and economic instability. The long-standing expectation that large employers would automatically provide job security became harder to sustain.

Simultaneously, entrepreneurship started to appear less risky than dependence on a single employer. Whether that perception would be accurate over the long term remained to be seen. What mattered was that many more students were beginning to see opportunity where previous generations saw uncertainty.

By 2021, that mindset had become commonplace. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor has documented consistently rising entrepreneurial intentions among young adults in many economies. In 2021 and 2022, Deloitte’s annual Gen Z and Millennial Survey reported that Generation Z placed greater emphasis on autonomy, meaningful work, flexibility, and opportunities for continuous learning when evaluating career options. Junior Achievement’s 2021 Teens and Entrepreneurship Survey found that 60 percent of teenagers considered the prospect of starting their own businesses more attractive than pursuing traditional jobs—a record high.

In other words, what I witnessed in my classroom was not an isolated phenomenon. It was a reflection of a wider reorientation in how many young people think about careers.

I believe that three developments have driven this change:

The first is technology. In 2010, launching a business demanded significant capital, physical infrastructure, and investor backing. By 2021, students could build websites in hours, sell globally through digital marketplaces, process payments instantly, take advantage of cloud computing, and reach customers via social media—often using only a laptop and an internet connection. Entrepreneurship became more accessible than ever before.

The second is changing expectations about work. Previous generations often viewed employment as a long-term relationship. Graduates expected to join established organizations, develop expertise, advance through the ranks, and retire after decades of service. By contrast, many of today’s students anticipate working across multiple organizations, developing portfolio careers, launching ventures, working as independent consultants, or alternating between employment and entrepreneurship.

The careers for today’s graduates are increasingly dynamic rather than linear. That shift demands different capabilities. Soft skills such as adaptability, resilience, entrepreneurial thinking, comfort with uncertainty, an ability to recognize and create opportunities regardless of economic conditions, and a willingness to experiment have become just as critical as technical knowledge.

The third—and perhaps most significant—is the changing relationship between students and institutions. Economic shocks over the past two decades have demonstrated that no employer is immune to disruption. Financial crises, technological upheaval, mergers, restructurings, and the pandemic have challenged long-held assumptions about organizational stability. As a result, many students no longer believe that working for a large organization is the safest career path.

The Challenge for Business Schools

For decades, business schools have taught finance, accounting, marketing, operations, leadership, and strategy largely through the lens of managing existing enterprises. They have built relationships with major employers and emphasized employer partnerships, internship pipelines, and graduate employment statistics. And, of course, since large organizations will continue to employ millions of graduates, business schools should not abandon these strengths.

However, as more students aspire to create businesses, business schools must make entrepreneurial thinking part of the broader educational experience, rather than confining it to a single elective or a specialized center.

Not every student must launch a startup, but every graduate should understand how to identify opportunities, manage uncertainty, create value, and move innovation from idea to execution.

Not every student must launch a startup, but every graduate should understand how to identify opportunities, manage uncertainty, create value, and move innovation from idea to execution. A finance student should understand cash flow from a founder’s perspective. A marketing student should know how to acquire customers without a multinational advertising budget. An operations student should grasp how processes evolve inside young organizations that change weekly rather than annually.

These perspectives prepare graduates not merely to manage organizations but to create, transform, and renew them. Today’s entrepreneurial economy requires business schools to recognize entrepreneurship not as a niche discipline but as a foundational management capability. 

Unfortunately, entrepreneurship education is often limited to teaching students to write business plans or pitch to investors. In reality, it should develop a broader set of capabilities: recognizing opportunities, acting under uncertainty, mobilizing resources, solving ambiguous problems, learning from failure, and creating value where none previously existed.

These are not skills reserved for founders. They are capabilities increasingly demanded of managers, consultants, innovators, and public-sector leaders alike.

The future of management education is therefore not about making a choice between preparing students for corporate careers and preparing them to become entrepreneurs. It is about preparing graduates who can thrive in both environments.

Questions Every Business School Should Ask

Based on what I observed, I believe every business school should begin asking four crucial questions:

Are we teaching students to manage organizations or to create them? Most curricula excel at helping students become proficient at evaluating financial statements, assessing competitive strategy, and recommending improvements to established business models. Far fewer courses ask students to identify unmet customer needs, test uncertain ideas, acquire their first customers, or build organizations from nothing. Creation deserves as much attention as optimization.

Is entrepreneurship addressed across the curriculum? Every discipline can contribute to developing entrepreneurial capability. Accounting courses can explore financial decision-making in early-stage ventures. Marketing courses can examine customer acquisition with limited resources. Operations courses can address scaling rapidly growing businesses. Leadership courses can focus on building teams where formal structures do not yet exist.

Our conversations with each new cohort are signals about where business education may need to evolve next. When students begin redefining success, institutions should pay attention.

Are our career services aligned with student aspirations? While partnerships with corporate recruiters remain essential, schools also should provide students with access to founder networks, incubators, accelerators, venture mentors, legal expertise, funding opportunities, and alumni who have built businesses of their own. Supporting entrepreneurial careers requires expanding the definition of career development itself.

How do we define graduate success? In addition to tracking metrics related to graduate employment, salaries, and employer reputation, schools also should recognize startup launches, job creation, research commercialization, social enterprise development, and the building of successful family businesses as evidence of institutional impact. What we choose to measure inevitably shapes what we value.

Listening to Our Classrooms

Higher education has always evolved alongside the economy it serves. Business schools have adapted to industrialization, globalization, and digital transformation because each of these social upheavals fundamentally changed how organizations created value. The rise of entrepreneurial thinking represents another such moment.

But aspirations are not outcomes. Many students who dream of founding companies will ultimately pursue successful corporate careers, and many who begin in established organizations will eventually create businesses of their own. That is precisely the point. Graduates will move between traditional corporate careers, consulting, freelancing, and entrepreneurship throughout their working lives. The boundaries separating these worlds are becoming less distinct.

Looking back, I find that the most valuable part of asking the same question every semester was not collecting the answers. It was noticing when those answers began to change. As educators, we spend thousands of hours with students. We are often among the first to observe shifts in their ambitions, motivations, and expectations. Our conversations with each new cohort are more than classroom icebreakers; they are signals about where business education may need to evolve next. When students begin redefining success, institutions should pay attention.

After eleven years of asking one simple question, I am convinced of one thing: The students changed first. Now it is our turn.