Written by: Jaime Weinman
Published by: Macleans
MBA News Digest Comment: None.
Extracted Content: In the novel A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag by the Canadian author Gordon Korman, the protagonist writes a political science report on the governmental structure of an obscure monarchy whose ruler is overthrown and executed on the day the report is due. All the hero can do is add “UNTIL YESTERDAY” to the title.
That’s the kind of uncertainty Canada’s business schools may be facing when they reconvene in the fall. They’re coming back in the middle of a pandemic that is threatening to reset the economy back to an era before globalization, and MBA and EMBA students may find themselves reading information in their textbooks that has nothing to do with the world they now live in. Business students do a lot of learning through case studies, which illustrate principles by showing their application by a real-life business. David Dunne, director of MBA programs for the Gustavson School of Business at the University of Victoria, says that cases might need to be replaced or updated even more than usual now: “If you’re teaching a case that is about the pre-COVID world, the students are going to say, ‘Well, things have changed.’ ”