Business Schools Reshape Courses, Teaching Methods Amid Pandemic

Business schools are working quickly to change their curriculums and fashion their research to handle the call for new techniques and knowledge needed by the world after the pandemic, the Financial Times reported.

Professor Mauro Guillén rolled out a class for credit at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in the spring regarding the pandemic’s effect on commerce. The course was designed with interviews with almost 50 alumni in high-level jobs at its core.

Guillén plans to instruct a class in the academic year to come on how various firms are acclimating to the pandemic. “Students always want the most up-to-date material. They are expecting us to have material that’s relevant for what’s going on now,” Guillén said. “We cannot teach the same stuff or we would be obsolete.”

Themes in business schools include how to bolster supervision and direction at the time of the pandemic, with the inclusion of risk management advice. Another theme includes contending with the move to digital work along with the wider uses and effects of technology.

Geoff Garrett, who previously served as Wharton’s dean and recently took over the dean’s position at another business school, said per FT, “The best description of our age even before Covid was uncertainty. Now is a great time for business schools to demonstrate their relevance.”

The typical business school plan of action for this autumn involves a combination of digital and in-classroom teaching, according to a Poets & Quants look into a “100 of the leading U.S. B-schools.” Two B-schools, the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the USC Marshall School of Business will be completely digital per the report.

Tuition And University Payments

Some university students are seeking decreased tuition for the academic year to come due to the fact that a number of schools are shifting toward partial or full digital instruction in lieu of in-person classes because of the pandemic. Students at institutions across the country from The University of Chicago to the University of Houston are reportedly looking for tuition discounts.

And the cash flow effects on higher education institutions because of virtual learning will keep becoming more apparent as the education system starts to come up with a strategy for the semester to come. But the challenge lies in the unpredictable nature of what’s to come as entities get ready to take deposits from students.

Mike Massaro, CEO of payments firm Flywire, told PYMNTS in a recent conversation, “COVID-19 is causing issues both for the cost structure of running an educational system, and on the families who are looking to send their kids off to study.” He noted that schools have to get ready for a range of possibilities based on potential falls in student enrollments or an increase in students not able to make tuition payments.

For its part, Flywire has released a new framework called “Planning with Confidence in the COVID-19 Era” to maintain and power student enrollment for the upcoming academic year.

The report is based on input from a number of groups and contains information to assist with dealing with the economic hurdles that the coronavirus presents.

From payments firms to universities, a range of organizations are aiming to help the educational and business communities adjust to COVID-19 — and the uncertainty that it brings.