Trump’s Likely Impact On Business Education
Maria |
November 15, 2024

In this episode of Business Casual, John Byrne, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards delve into the ramifications of Donald Trump’s re-election for U.S. and international business schools. They discuss the expected challenges and policy changes that might affect student demographics, particularly international applications, highlighting the potential shifts towards business schools in other countries due to perceived unfriendly policies towards immigrants and international students. 

The conversation also touches on the broader economic and social implications of these changes, providing a well-rounded perspective on the future of business education in a politically shifting landscape.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.440] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’re listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards. Big news, of course, in the US, which means it’s worldwide news. Donald Trump has won re-election to become President of the United States in January, so just a couple of months away. And we think that this is going to have a big impact on almost everything in the United States. And if it has an impact in the US, the biggest economy in the world, it will have a big impact everywhere because the ripple effect will just go through the world economy. And we think that one of the areas that is, frankly, in the crosshairs of the Trump administration higher education. When you look at why Donald Trump won re-election and won it decisively, it really comes down to one demographic. It’s uneducated voters. By and large, those without college degrees who have become in the United States disillusioned and aggrieved over the country’s direction, the loss of union jobs that paid them a good wage, the loss of a lot of jobs that went overseas over the last quarter of a century or more and has changed the standard of living for those folks, they’re angry, they’re upset, and they want to disrupt things.

[00:01:43.500] – John

They voted for Donald Trump in huge numbers, and that’s really what got him elected. And on one level, then you could argue that his election is a function of a war of sorts between the US US-educated people and those who are uneducated and who have not benefited from the prosperity in the US economy in the way that those who have gone to college and gotten an undergraduate degree, or even more importantly, an advanced degree, are almost living on a different planet than folks who have only graduated from high school. It is within that framework that you have to think that Trump will to operate as President, meaning that, to put it in the starkest terms, he would be an enemy of higher education. The Republican Party in the United States has not been all that supportive of higher education for quite some time. To give evidence to all this, even Biden has publicly said that the vast majority of jobs that were created under the infrastructure bill were going to people without college degrees. And even vice President Kamala Harris, who is campaigning to win this election, had said publicly that she will go through all the federal jobs and redefine them to make sure that as many as possible do not require a college degree.

[00:03:21.280] – John

So this has become a big and major issue. So the question then is, what will happen to higher education under a Trump administration? Now, this is definitely speculative, but it’s largely based on what he has said and what he has done in the past. And let’s go right to Caroline, because you’re our international maven. I think the number one immediate concern is the international applicant pool to business schools. In the US, it’s generally one-third of all master students are international. In some schools, it’s much higher. They are a source, an important source revenue for the schools. They’re an important part of the business model that sustains these business schools. What do you think is going to happen?

[00:04:08.210] – Caroline

Well, as you said, it’s speculation, although we do have the evidence of what happened with the previous administration. So I think we can speculate fairly confidently the applications from international applicants will go down. We saw that very clearly under the previous Trump administration, as there were concerns, difficulties with visas and then just generally about concerns about a less welcoming climate and less welcoming environment for international candidates, and particularly candidates from certain backgrounds. Of course, there was the Muslim ban to the previous administration. So I’m sure we will see a drop. So from an international perspective, that will benefit international schools, right? So I’m sure that schools like INSEEP, where I worked, and London Business School, and some of the other top international schools will see applications from candidates who might otherwise have looked to come to the US, including candidates from the US who might otherwise have stayed domestically, but who are now thinking, Well, this may be a great opportunity to get out of here for a year or so and get an international experience. Who can’t stomach the idea of living for four years under Trump. So I’m sure there will be some young Americans who will be looking to get an international experience as well.

[00:05:34.040] – Caroline

I think it will be a bonus for some of the international schools. Having said that, I don’t think any of them would have voted for Trump. No. Knowing the communities at these schools, I’m sure that they’ve all been as horrified as we are by what has happened. But of course, the UK schools have suffered post-Brexit, so at least there may be a silver lining for those schools that this may help to turn things around a little bit with the post-Brexit impact and also the change in visa regulations in the UK, which has resulted in a drop of international applications to UK schools. Perhaps there’s some hope there that things may turn around. Also, of course, with the new labor government, perhaps visa regulations will in any case change in the UK. But I think from the US perspective, it is rather bleak for business schools. International traditional candidates bring a great deal to the classroom experience. They add a lot of different perspectives, a lot of different experience. They really enrich the programs, the learning experience, they enrich the community, and that adds to the experience for everybody. It enhances the learning experience and the social experience for all students.

[00:06:53.160] – Caroline

And so that is going to diminish the value of the learning experience that you will get at at the US schools, unfortunately, for everybody. I think it diminishes the programs as well as it will diminish their financing because international applicants are a great source of revenue for US schools. That’s going to have an impact on budgets. I think, as we’ve seen in the past, the top schools will remain very strong because they have a loyal pipeline of candidates always coming through. Thick and through thin, they will have a strong pipeline. So I’m not worried about the Harvard’s and the Stanford’s and the Whartons of this world. But for schools that are a little bit further down the pecking order, where they have a bit more of a volatile situation, they could begin to struggle.

[00:07:58.090] – John

And this works on two levels. I mean, The first level is the one you pointed out, which is, oh, boy, Trump is elected. He doesn’t like immigrants. Therefore, the US is going to be increasingly unwelcome place to be. So therefore, I don’t want to put up with that. So that’s on the candidate side. But then you have what the government will do. Will they actually place restrictions on international students to study in the US? Or will they slow down the visa process so that it takes an awfully long time to get a student visa, and a year in which you were intending to start ends up being the following year, which decreases the pool and slows down whatever flow of international students remained. So you got this work in on two different levels here, and that’s really problematic. And we do have, as Caroline pointed out, the evidence from the previous administration, when literally there were There are international students in the US in MBA programs who are reluctant, reluctant to go on a global emersion tour for fear that they would not be allowed back into the country because some of their classmates had difficulty coming back because of Trump’s draconian immigration policies.

[00:09:24.350] – John

I think that that is the one obvious thing that will happen. I don’t think it’s speculative at all. Something that could be speculative, although it has been promised, is the elimination of OPT. Now, that’s optional practical training. It’s the reason why so many business schools, and the vast majority of them in the past five years, have had their graduate program, STEM certified, because a graduate from a STEM program program gets to spend not only 12 months in the US in a job, but an additional two years. So you get three years of working experience. Trump has said, and his special advisor for immigration has said that they intend to end this program. Whether they will, who knows? But this has come up a number of times on the campaign trail, and They feel pretty certain they want to get rid of it. That would also be a real major dent because those who still would apply to a US school thinking that, okay, it may not be the situation that I ideally want, but I’ll go there and I’ll get a great education. I’ll ultimately get a job. If I’m in a STEM program, I’ll be able to work in the US for at least three years, which gives me three shots in a H-1B visa, you may have suddenly find that that’s no longer available.

[00:11:06.380] – John

Just don’t know. We’ll have to see how that plays out. And I think in the first three to six months of the Trump administration, we’ll see how much he does. And how chaotic and disruptive it becomes. Caroline, what do you think?

[00:11:22.240] – Caroline

Well, I do wonder if he will implement everything he’s talked about, right? Because as you said in our pre-podcast discussion, he talks about a lot of things in the first administration which never got done. I think the reality will kick in of the implications of some of these policies. I think that there is hope that he won’t implement all of these very counterproductive policies. You have to wonder about policies that change immigration for young, talented professionals, because that brings so much value to the American economy. And so that’s really shooting the US in the foot if they do change that. So perhaps there was a lot of bluster on the campaign trail that may not translate into actual policies. We can but hope at this stage.

[00:12:27.300] – John

Right. Maria, your thoughts?

[00:12:30.170] – Maria

As much as I wish that hope is something that comes to pass, unfortunately, we’ve already seen in his previous administration that he did, in fact, take steps. Now, I don’t think that they were as draconian or as sweeping as he would have wished. But we’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends. And so we know that a lot of that bluster, he does, in fact, try to implement it, and he often succeeds. And I believe he will be even more successful in doing these things because I think he learned his lesson, so to speak, from the last time when he had these advisors who were perhaps more experienced in certain things, but then they would put guardrails around him, and he clearly did not like those guardrails. And so there aren’t going to be some of these generals and these quote unquote grownups in the room to curtail his impulses, his worst impulses, because he’s just simply not going to hire them this time, I suspect. So I do think that it’s going to be bad for international students who are trying to study in the US, both in terms of getting into the country and then staying in the country.

[00:13:45.100] – Maria

But I also think some of his policies, if they come to pass, are going to be really bad for domestic MBA candidates as well. If these tariffs come into play, the resulting price increases are going to drive demand down. So if you’re aspiring to work in, say, any company that has a hardware component to it. Let’s say a large percentage of Apple’s revenues still come from the phone and the hardware and the desktops and computers that they make, all of those Prices are going to go up, and so demand will probably go down. Health care is another industry that relies really heavily on international supply chains. So the cost of health care, which is already pretty astronomical, is going to go up. Should Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Become the head of our country’s health policy? Any company that makes vaccines is going to suddenly see a dramatic drop, perhaps in their revenues. If people stop getting vaccinated as much, we’re going to start seeing the next pandemic that might come or even the old pandemics from 100 years ago that we thought we were done with. They may make a return. So I think that there’s a lot of…

[00:14:58.790] – Maria

The immediate losers in this are the international students. But I also, I don’t think that this is necessarily a slam dunk for domestic students as well. And as you have both pointed out, in the longer term, the American economy suffers because so many of our most talented executives were, in fact, international students themselves, right? The heads of Google and Microsoft and NVIDIA, and even Elon Musk himself was an international student who benefited from US policies that allowed him to come and study here and start businesses here. So it’s a real shame, and I don’t think there are any winners in this.

[00:15:42.420] – John

Yeah. I mean, there’s A firm that’s tracking some search traffic in the aftermath of Trump’s win on studying on campus for bachelor and master’s programs. And in The last 48 hours, there’s been a huge spike in the US from domestic students, researching programs in other countries. Traffic on the Canadian business schools is up 825% in the last two days. On United Kingdom’s goals, it’s up 530%. Interestingly enough, in Ireland, it’s up 1,300%. In Sweden, for some reason, it’s up 600%. But in any case, there’s been a major surge among US students looking to study abroad since Trump won the election only two days ago. We’re recording this two days after his win. The other thing he has promised to do is to dismantle the Department of Education. Now, the Department of Education in Washington supports, obviously, education throughout the country. It is also the administrator of all the federal loan programs that help people study in college. Trump and his advisors have said that they would like to transfer that function to the Treasury Department because they handle money. But any dismantling I think the handling of the Department of Education would be very disruptive to higher education in general and also cause more chaos.

[00:17:24.860] – John

If in fact, in this handoff of the federal loan programs to Treasury Department, if that comes off, there’s bound to be a heck of a lot of things that fall through the cracks, could delay the approval of federal grants study in college that could prevent more people from enrolling. Then you have DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Republican Party has been at war against DEI programs at universities for quite some time now. With Trump in office, you can expect probably things like federal funding to any universities could be used as a leverage point to eliminate a DEI program on the basis that it’s essentially mandated affirmative action, and it discriminates against certain types of students. That could also be another source of trouble. Don’t think we’re all here being pessimists because we’re making these judgments and speculations on the basis of having lived through four years of a Trump era before, when in fact, as we pointed out, he had more guardrails around him and he was new to government. He really didn’t know what leverage to push or how to get things to happen. In this case, it looks like he will have a Republican-controlled Senate and a Republican-controlled House so that he’d be able to do things more quickly more sweepingly, and he will, in fact, recruit around him in terms of advisors and cabinet members and department heads, people who are far more loyal to him than they have expertise in the given fields in which they’re assigned.

[00:19:17.620] – John

That’s why we think that more of his promises on the campaign trail are likely to happen, even in diminished form. Yeah, is he going to increase? Is he going to a tariff on every product and they’re going to be 30 plus %? Highly unlikely. But will he put tariffs on most products and it could be 5 or 10 %? Probably. And that could cause a recession in and of itself. Ondly enough, though, You look at Wall Street and the stock market hit a new record in the aftermath of his election. How do you figure that out, Maria?

[00:19:55.190] – Maria

Well, I think that there’s a couple of things going on here. I think there’s this narrative that Biden has been bad for business. I think one could make the fair argument that Lena Khan has, in fact, stifled certain M&A deals. I don’t think that that critique is entirely unfounded. I think that there’s this idea that with less regulation, fewer things standing in the way of, say, large mergers and acquisitions going through less government scrutiny. Now, whether or not that lack of government scrutiny ends up being good for the American consumer, the American citizen, who knows? I mean, a lot of these guardrails were put into place in the first place to protect people from monopolies forming or other negative externalities that happen when business does not have any guardrails placed on it. But to the extent that less regulation, less scrutiny of deals, et cetera, et cetera, is good for business, I do think that that is why the stock market is behaving the way it is.

[00:20:58.690] – John

Yeah. I think, I think they’re very eager to get another big tax cut, too. That’s what’s going on as well. Caroline, you are very well connected globally, and I wonder, what’s the reaction you’re getting? I mean, even in your own firm, you have people planted all over the world who are advising candidates all over the world. What are you hearing out there already?

[00:21:26.440] – Caroline

Yeah, I’ve had a lot of messages over the last 24 hours, and it’s astonishment, right? People are shocked and horrified, generally, about what has happened and trying to comprehend. I think it’s sad. It really diminishes the US on the international stage. I think people are surprised at someone who seems so ill qualified, indicted criminal, and so on. You could make a very long list of the reasons why he should be President. On an international level, people find it quite hard to believe that the US has frankly sunk this low. It diminishes the US as well because the US is therefore seen as less of a reliable partner internationally and a more volatile country. So on many different levels, I think it damages the US internationally, both in perception and then in relations and in so many different dimensions.

[00:22:35.340] – John

In fact, your colleague and co founder of Fortuna, Matt Simons, sent me a little note because he had a conversation with one international MBA applicant who applied in around one. And here’s what that person said, It’s challenging to grasp how such a significant portion of Americans resonate with the vision that Trump and the Republican Party represent. What’s even more concerning is how this might affect international students and professionals who contribute so much to the US. The climate feels less welcoming, and I’m sure many others feel so uncertain about their place and future here. And I think that’s really true.

[00:23:15.240] – Caroline

Yeah, that sums it up very well.

[00:23:18.790] – John

That’s what I thought. Now, at the same time, there’s no way you can imagine any upside to higher education with Trump’s election. No, impossible. Possible. But on the other hand, the dean of the Cogod School of Business, who has been a guest on this podcast over at American University, David Morchick, he immediately sent out a note to the community and struck, even though he was personally disappointed in the outcome of the election, he struck a more positive note. He mentioned that our work in academia is more important today than it was yesterday. If you believe we need to address the climate crisis, we should work to create more sustainable world through business as progress in the next few years will come through business, not government. If you believe that better business practices can help people of color and those who are impoverished, participate more fully in the economy, our scholarship and teaching in that area has never been more critical. Each of you changes lives every day with teaching, research, and engagement with students, helping young people reach their full potential enabling them to launch meaningful and successful careers. At the bottom of this, look, it’s four years, conceivably.

[00:24:40.870] – John

These things go up and they go down. I can almost tell you with certainty that within two years when there’s a midterm election, there’ll be some backlash because you can expect Trump to do some crazy things, and then his powers will be greatly It is an up and down thing. With an MBA degree in particular, we’re looking, again, we always say, look at the long term. Even when you evaluate the ROI on an MBA, we have told you in the past, do not merely look at starting salaries. The value of this degree is over a lifetime of work, personal too, not only professional. I also think that many decisions that can at this time, rather than to be disenchanted and disillusioned, you keep your head down and you think about the long term and how this is really, in the grand scheme of things, an ephemeral victory that has yet to play out. Now, Maria, I know you have inspirational words to impart as well to all our listeners, right?

[00:25:52.360] – Maria

I mean, people with these leanings have come to power in different countries in different periods of history, and it might take a while for the damage they do to be rectified. But ultimately, I do think that progress is eventually made. We saw it in Latin America, for example, when Pinochet came into power, Chile did eventually recover from that. They’re like, look at Germany today, look at where it was 90 years ago, 80 to 90 years ago, and look at where it is today. There’s definitely hope in the longer term. So I would just not lose hope overall, even though it means that the next four years might require some buckling up because I think it might be a bumpy ride ahead.

[00:26:42.340] – John

Buckling up and hunkering down. Yes, indeed. Well, if you want to read what we think, too, there’s a commentary on the site on Poets and Quants that I wrote yesterday, What Trump’s victory means for business education. Check it out. Meantime, thanks for listening. Sorry, this one’s a little more pessimistic than we’d like to be, but we all think there’s reason for it. Hey, this is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Trump’s Likely Impact On Business Education
Maria |
November 15, 2024

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

New around here? I’m an HBS graduate and a proud member (and former Board Member) of AIGAC. I considered opening a high-end boutique admissions consulting firm, but I wanted to make high-quality admissions advice accessible to all, so I “scaled myself” by creating ApplicantLab. ApplicantLab provides the SAME advice as high-end consultants at a much more affordable price. Read our rave reviews on GMATClub, and check out our free trial (no credit card required) today!