Inclusivity offerings at business schools have been improving in recent times, but research indicates there is still a need for sustained progress in cultivating an inclusive learning environment for all kinds of students. A new report by the MBA Roundtable, a global association of business schools whose mission is to advance graduate management education through curricular and co-curricular innovation, provides valuable insight into the effort to increase inclusivity in school curriculum.
The March-April 2022 report includes the responses of 105 deans, directors, and faculty at 93 graduate business schools. The report aimed to gauge their impression, effort, and activity to increase inclusivity in the business school curriculum.
The key findings of the report were:
- Most report improvement in the business school’s offering of an inclusive learning environment
- While efforts toward increasing inclusivity have been made, most say that too little effort has been exerted
- Two-thirds of faculty, deans, and directors report that efforts to increase inclusivity in the learning environment has impacted learning assets (68%) and co-curricular activities (67%).
- A majority agree their business school encourages open communications, offers opportunities for all, and values diverse perspectives.
- The university, current students, and staff are driving the demand for increasing inclusivity at business schools, while the need to be responsive and relevant are considered the prime impetus for increasing inclusivity according to the respondents.
Overall, 68 percent of the respondents rate their business school positively in terms of their current offering of an inclusive learning environment. In fact, most indicate not only positive sentiments, but also report improvement, as this percentage has increased from 37 percent, retrospective to the time they first began working with the school.
Most respondents agree that the business school provides faculty and staff some form of training and dictates informative policies about inclusivity, though fewer than half (48%) report that sufficient measures are used to assess inclusivity in the schools. For instance, approximately half of the respondents (53%) report that their business school implemented implicit bias training; two in five (40%) report initiatives about collective work assignments to increase inclusivity in the learning environment.; and over a third report implementation of tools and technology (38%), interpersonal communication training (37%), and inclusive pedagogy training (35%). Though these data indicate some effort to cultivate inclusive environments, 62 percent exclaim that not enough effort has been put forth to increase inclusivity in the learning environment.
About half report that instructional models (53%) and learning objectives (50%) within course curriculum have been impacted by inclusivity initiatives. However, course offerings generally indicate less positive change, with 29 and 15 percent reporting the creation of new elective and core courses, respectively.
Most of the faculty, deans, and directors agree that the staff largely respects diverse perspectives. They also agree that all contribute positively to creating a participative environment for each other.
In addition, many believe that increasing inclusivity is “the right thing to do.” One respondent articulated, “We wanted to offer a relevant and responsive curriculum. We wanted our students, faculty, and staff to feel a sense of belonging in our program. It was the right thing to do.”
"Business schools are making considerable effort to make their program curriculum much more inclusive but [the report] also tells us that we are still early on this journey. We are just beginning to have the metrics to track our progress and to help us make GME curriculum as inclusive and representative of our students today and in the future. There are tremendous opportunities to take this to the next level, and we hope this survey helps schools start to meet those goals,“ according to Dan Turner, Chairman, MBA Roundtable and Associate Dean of Masters Programs, Foster School of Business, University of Washington.
Findings from the MBA Roundtable report indicates the need for continued improvement in creating an inclusive learning environment for students. Though faculty and staff mostly agree that progress has been made, work still must be done in order to create an inclusive and equitable learning experience.