Raised in the groves of academe – his economist father was president of Yale University – Jonathan Levin has university life and administration running in his blood, you could say. 

Yet, nothing could have prepared the future dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, currently the top-ranked business school by Bloomberg, for the upheavals that followed the outbreak of Covid-19. 

At the institution, where easy access to the most brilliant minds was not uncommon – sharing a morning cuppa at the local cafe with a Nobel laureate on the faculty, and two hours later mixing with dozens of accomplished young classmates from all over the world – the pandemic saw everyone disappear indoors.

Students, who pay more than US$75,000 (S$99,900) a year for this opportunity to learn and mix, stayed inside dormitories, and the faculty in their homes. The university square that once buzzed with activity became empty. Professors scrambled to adjust lessons to the demands of the digital world.

Surprisingly, enrolments in Leadership Education in Advancing Diversity (Lead), Stanford’s online executive business programme, doubled during the pandemic. 

“That we could keep things going with digital – we learnt what technology could help us do. From a pedagogy perspective, this was the period of highest innovation in education,” says Professor Levin.

“At the same time, technology has not learnt to do the unplanned things – the serendipitous ways students interact with faculty. It really affirmed the value of in-person campus education.”

Six years after he succeeded Professor Garth Saloner as dean of the school, the institution continues to be the “epicentre of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking”, says Prof Levin, whose own field of expertise is macroeconomics. 

“The world has changed in the past six years. Business has become much more complicated. The issues are trickier. There is more scrutiny on organisations… exactly what a university should be (equipping you for) when there’s so much disruption.”

Twenty years ago, a typical MBA student would enrol with two or three years of work experience. These days, students come with a little more experience, often having worked at two jobs. Some have already led teams.

That lifts the bar for teachers. Prof Levin says students are less willing to suspend disbelief and get into the frameworks the faculty excel at teaching. And with work experience under their belts, they have plenty of their own opinions as well. All that makes for lively classrooms. 

Shifts in the labour market are also telling on the intake. Historically, students moved from economics or finance to, say, internships at investment banks, before going back to do an MBA. But these days, there is venture capital, private equity and a host of others chasing the talent resident at these institutions. Classes are richer with the presence of these “post, post-students”.

What does it take to be an effective business leader in this era? Many of the skills required have not changed. You need to have vision, be able to listen – an underrated skill – and also be an effective communicator. And of course, motivate people.

“What has changed is that the business environment that companies operate in has become more complicated. So, leaders have to be knowledgeable and thoughtful about the issues of the day and to understand you have to think beyond your business. That’s affected MBA education in a lot of ways,” Prof Levin says.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, students also tend to show less trust in institutions and markets – and sometimes, in the edifice of capitalism entirely. And this is all precious to the Stanford business school. Professors have to be ready as students question assumptions that used to be taken for granted.

“If you teach basic finance, a student might want to know what social value the financial system creates,” Prof Levin says. “We want them to ask hard questions, and that’s what makes (the class) exciting.”

Stanford, he says, was always good on “non-markets” – the political environment, the issues investors and employees care about, and increasingly geopolitics. All these have become more complicated.

What about the topic du jour, generative artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms such as ChatGPT?

A decade ago, researchers like Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Erik Brynjolfsson of Stanford University were trying to anticipate how AI and other inventions were going to displace workers doing largely physical tasks, or relatively routine ones. The new shift is that generative AI is automating creative work. How is business school education going to cope with generative AI?

“The jury is still out on whether it will shrink workforces or be productivity-enhancing,” Prof Levin says. “In prior technological revolutions, new jobs were always created. It is early days, but we are discussing this at Stanford. There is an ideas part to it and a practice part.”