Business education exists since 1819, when the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris established the first grande école of business. Since then, business schools have rapidly multiplied. Today, there are around 13,000 business schools worldwide, with around 3,000 being privately owned. In the UK, tuition for a local student ranges from £14,000 to £43,500 per year, excluding living expenses. For international students, the fees are much higher. An MBA from Wharton or Harvard Business School, even in Sydney, can cost anywhere from £25,000 to £100,000. However, in some cases, particularly in the US, an MBA doesn't guarantee a substantial salary increase. Today, these business schools surpass many large global companies in both revenue and influence.
Consider the large number of employees at these schools, the army of graduates they produce every year, and the significant sums of money that flow through them. It's no surprise that one of the key characteristics of these schools is the considerable amount they spend on marketing. Their websites use modern and attractive designs and techniques to promote their services. Ads with attention-grabbing headlines like "Realize your dream!", "Knowledge is success," and "Find yourself" seem more suited to promoting piano lessons, yoga classes, or mobile services rather than degree programs. The buildings are equally impressive—featuring smartly dressed receptionists behind glass sensor doors, modern cafés and dining halls, resort-style relaxation areas, and lecture rooms with thick carpets that sparkle with cleanliness.
On the other hand, these schools thrive because the demand for business education continues to grow. According to the Aspen Institute, students typically enroll in business schools with the belief that they will one day contribute to companies that create goods and services benefiting society. However, after completing their studies, this ideal often shifts, and students become convinced that their education’s main value lies in maximizing a company’s profits, with societal interests and other ideals taking a back seat. Many still believe that prestigious business schools provide unparalleled career opportunities, where connections and networks often matter more than the fees paid.
This is a ‘win-win’ situation for both parties: on one side, companies believe that employees educated at these institutions are more talented, creative, and professional, capable of making the right decisions to maximize profits; on the other, prestigious universities capitalize on the high demand for these professionals by increasing tuition fees every year. What business schools have created is a sort of utopia reserved for the wealthy and powerful—a privileged group you are encouraged to join, provided you can afford the hefty fees.
It is undeniable that we are now living in an era where giant multinational corporations often wield more power than governments and are fully capable of controlling the educational system, which in turn serves their interests. This system is designed to allow easy control over knowledge in line with the needs of an economic system that does not focus on the well-being of ordinary people or their harmonious coexistence with the environment, but rather on the needs of a global corporate system, where everything is for sale and has a market-determined price.
As a result, the global education system is heavily focused on business curricula, where young people, by the end of their studies, are imbued with Western culture in thought, vision, and philosophy. They are promised that they are being equipped with highly competitive skills for their careers. However, the true goal of this system is to serve the needs of multinational corporations, which rely on a steady influx of educated individuals to strengthen their position and power. Thus, the mission of universities remains primarily the creation of knowledge for a vast army of students, who will later sell their expertise to a handful of large companies. Those less fortunate may end up working as food delivery drivers, even after graduating from a business school.
In their seminar and lecture halls, business schools continue to adhere to outdated and out-of-touch teachings about business, the environment, and the socio-economic changes they themselves have triggered—what we now recognize as the crisis of globalization. Core subjects in these schools fail to address critical topics, such as identifying the winners and losers in the global economic system. There is little discussion about the rise of multinational corporations or who was responsible for the ecological destruction and social injustices that now define modern civilization and the global economy. Few lectures explore whose interests are served by allowing the mania for ownership to run unchecked—a phenomenon that has led to the consumption of nearly 60% of natural resources in just a few decades, not to mention the resulting climate crisis.
We also cannot overlook the hundreds of scandals involving major companies, such as child slave labor on plantations, environmental degradation, and the endless cycle of forced migration driven by natural resource conflicts. Business school curricula discourage students from confronting issues like overconsumption, where many people feel trapped, ensuring that sustainability, responsibility, and diversity remain little more than superficial topics. Of course, the central theme in these schools continues to be that capitalism is inevitable and that the financial and legal techniques supporting it are a pure science—an ideology that turns business schools into dangerous institutions.
What is needed now is action similar to that of the 1960s, when many sociology professors raised concerns about the hidden curriculum, which included lessons that were not part of the official university curriculum, such as topics related to women, people of color, the working class, and the local economy. These issues were raised to challenge the privilege and supremacy of the white man. Today, business schools have seemingly addressed this by introducing courses on ‘business ethics’ and ‘corporate social responsibility,’ but these topics often serve as little more than ways to ease institutional guilt rather than as genuine lessons on how to enact meaningful change, leaving the entire effort as just words without action.
Business schools have the privilege of shaping future leaders, and they must now reflect on what the world truly needs. There is ample data, statistics, and research from capable and idealistic economists that debunk the theories of Friedman and Hayek, who argued that the sole responsibility of corporations is to maximize profits, with no regard for the negative consequences on others. It is time for business schools to educate tomorrow’s leaders on finding sustainable solutions to the crisis caused by capitalism and globalization—the dead end humanity has been driven into by bad faith, for which business schools bear a significant portion of the blame.