Business School Students Are Putting the Planet Before Profits
MBA programs are grappling with how to teach students about climate change.
Bard College’s Goodstein and Shaikh, a vice-president at ING Financial Services and an alumnus of Bard’s MBA in Sustainability program.
Photographer: Justin J. Wee for Bloomberg Businessweek
The vibe is buoyant one October morning in a co-working space in New York’s Financial District. About 60 students enrolled in Bard College’s MBA in Sustainability program are gathered for a long weekend of classes covering such topics as making supply chains cleaner and investment portfolios more socially responsible. They’ll also hear from Bob Litterman, Goldman Sachs’s former head of risk management, who will talk about the nonprofit Climate Leadership Council’s plan to decarbonize the U.S. economy.
Eban Goodstein, an economist who helped launch the Bard program in 2012, says putting the planet and its inhabitants before profits “is an incredible paradigm shift” for business schools that have long trained their students to maximize shareholder value. Goodstein, who oversees Bard’s sustainability graduate programs, sees the MBA as a timely alternative to conventional graduate business degrees. A growing number of students, he and other educators say, want to lead businesses committed to social or environmental missions. The point isn’t to turn out sustainability specialists but leaders who’ve mastered business fundamentals and understand the need for sustainable practices across organizations.