By Joyce Mayfield
Strayer University

The ongoing debate about the current challenges facing the U.S. economy has focused mainly on corporations, businesses and entrepreneurs.

Are business leaders of tomorrow getting the right education to transition from the classroom into the corner office? In a world where deals are more likely to be closed on a laptop screen than a putting green, old-style business education does no favor to its students.

Business schools clearly must prepare their graduates to compete in a constantly shifting landscape.

Fortunately, the curriculum in many programs is evolving to keep pace. Now, courses are expected in areas such as international business, information technology and other topics that hardly used to be a part of the academic canon. They recognize that American businesses can never again ignore competition from sectors like South Korea or Ireland.

In a “flat” world, U.S. companies are as much at risk of losing a customer to a rival in Dublin as to one across town. As business schools accept that reality, they are grappling with the best ways to equip students with the skills and perspective they will need.

It only seems fair that business schools should have to be as nimble as our students will be in their companies. The ivory tower is truly a thing of the past, at least in business education. Perhaps the worst thing we could do is to create any illusion that our students can ever be removed from the demands of instantaneous communication and immediate decision-making on a scale previously unimagined.

Just as students will be on the front lines throughout their careers—no one escapes to the rear of the action any longer—the schools that teach them also are on the line. Business schools themselves have become serious business. Within any sizable community, competition abounds among local, at-distance and online programs seeking to attract students to their courses.

Even so, it remains widely the case that administrators need to take a hard look at their programs to help mold their students into leaders who won’t fall behind. Such institutional soul searching can’t happen just once. It’s an ongoing challenge, and we owe it to the students who are paying our salaries to continually refine and reshape our courses according to their needs.

Within traditional academia, the wheels of change can grind slowly and departmental politics are famously fierce. But the school that doesn’t find its way out of that kind of quagmire should, and will, fade into the past like any other obsolete product.

The success of business education in the future will depend on a program’s ability to decisively adapt to market changes and the real-world requirements of its students. Of course, core subjects such as management and economics will remain essential. But from now on, the challenge will be constant to identify emerging areas and address them in the curriculum so as not to waste our students’ time, effort and money.

As in the business world, educators will not be able to rest on their laurels, much less their tenure status. Every business school dean and faculty member should feel as accountable for producing results as the managers-in-the-making in his or her program.

Some initiatives indicate that today’s educators truly understand the task at hand. More relevant courses are not only becoming available, but also are more accessible, as with online learning. Offering students new ways to complete their education with online classes is tantamount to opening the schoolhouse door to those who otherwise would be shut out. It means a working parent can sign up for a class without having to fret about finding a babysitter. It means a professional with an impossible commute can still get to class.

Many of today’s students are adults in their 30s and beyond who are already in the work force and face priorities like children and a mortgage. They are just as eager and worthy to participate in educational opportunities as the traditional student. Already, such graduates from online programs are proving their value in the marketplace. They are the proof in the pudding that online learning can produce stellar results. Consequently, online alternatives are taking their place alongside traditional programs as credible options for the most qualified students.

Online learning now represents a large slice of the curriculum at universities nationwide. As a result, there can be no doubt it is a crucial way business education will continue to evolve. The point, however, is not to tout new technology; it is to appreciate the basic idea that to help our students, and our nation, be competitive, we must continue to break new ground in business education with every tool at our disposal.

Joyce Mayfield is the regional academic dean for Strayer University in South Carolina.

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