The Darden School of Business is the second school to leave The Consortium this month. Courtesy photo
Imagine this: by spring term you’re standing atop a glacier in Iceland, walking through a bustling innovation district in Rwanda, or meeting founders inside Tel Aviv’s startup scene—all as part of your MBA curriculum. At Darden, global immersion isn’t an add-on or an optional “study abroad.” It’s built into the promise of the degree. Students don’t just study international business; they live it for a week, fully funded, in destinations that challenge assumptions and expand perspective.
That promise is powered by one of the most generous programs in business education—the Batten Foundation Darden Worldwide Scholarship. Funded through a $15 million gift from the Batten Foundation and matched by UVA’s Bicentennial Scholars Fund, it guarantees that every full-time MBA student can participate in a global immersion course at no additional cost. Before the scholarship, these experiences typically ran about $3,000 per student. Today, they’re simply part of the Darden experience.
The result is scale. When travel resumed after the pandemic, Darden sent more than 300 full-time MBAs to 11 countries during a single March term, led by 22 faculty and staff members. That was the largest global program in the school’s history, and participation was nearly universal. In an era when many MBA students still weigh the cost of international learning, Darden found a way to remove that barrier entirely.
These aren’t sightseeing trips—they’re tightly focused, faculty-led global courses that mix company visits, executive briefings, and cultural learning. Over the past year, students have explored luxury and exports in Italy, renewable energy in Iceland, design and creativity in Spain, technology and AI in Germany, and sustainable entrepreneurship in Sweden and Finland. The school has also added newer destinations such as Costa Rica, Estonia, Rwanda, and Israel, each tied to a theme like ecotourism, digital innovation, or ESG strategy.
Every program is built around an academic question: how do businesses actually operate—and succeed—within the context of local markets, regulation, and culture? Students prepare in Charlottesville through readings and classroom sessions, then spend a week abroad meeting executives and policymakers, touring operations, and reflecting on what leadership looks like in that specific environment. The experiences are compact but dense, and the learning curve is steep.
Poets & Quants has spotlighted Darden’s approach as one of the most comprehensive global offerings among U.S. MBA programs. Their coverage has praised how “every full-time Darden student has the opportunity to take a global course funded by the Batten Foundation,” and how the school uses those trips to integrate themes of sustainability, innovation, and entrepreneurship into its core mission. It’s not marketing copy—it’s built into the calendar, the budget, and the culture.
The Executive MBA program follows a similar playbook with even broader reach. EMBA students rotate through multi-country residencies that have recently included Chile, Morocco, Spain, Australia, Germany, South Korea, Argentina, Ghana, India, Israel, Vietnam, and Finland. Each residency is framed around three deceptively simple questions: what it’s like to do business in the country, with the country, and for the country. Those prompts keep discussion focused on practical realities, not just macro theory.
Faculty design the courses themselves, pairing academic preparation with immersive fieldwork. A professor teaching energy markets, for example, might take students to Reykjavik to examine Iceland’s geothermal grid, or to Stockholm to see how public policy accelerates green transition. A marketing faculty member might choose Barcelona for its blend of art, design, and commerce. Every destination serves a teaching purpose.
One of Darden’s quiet advantages is flexibility. Because immersions run multiple times a year and last about a week, students can choose destinations and topics that fit their recruiting cycles or personal interests. Someone recruiting for consulting might focus on emerging markets or ESG policy, while another student aiming for tech could explore AI ecosystems in Europe or Asia. That customization gives the experience real career relevance.
The global reach is matched by intentional reflection. After returning to Charlottesville, students debrief in small groups, write personal assessments, and present lessons learned. Faculty describe this step as the point where travel turns into insight—when experiences abroad get translated into leadership takeaways about culture, ethics, and global awareness.
It’s easy to overlook how transformative this model has been. Before the Batten gift, only a subset of students could afford to go abroad. Now it’s part of what defines the Darden MBA: a guaranteed, high-impact global learning experience, designed and taught by the same professors who lead the classroom. It’s inclusive, scalable, and woven into the program’s DNA.
For 2025, that makes Darden a clear standout in the realm of student immersions. No other top business school has made global learning this accessible, this academically structured, or this connected to leadership development. When you combine full funding, faculty-led depth, and a roster of destinations that stretch from Iceland to India, Darden’s model doesn’t just expand horizons—it redefines what a world-class business education looks like.
And at its heart, that’s what Darden’s global immersion program is really about: developing responsible, globally fluent leaders. The trips aren’t designed to impress—they’re designed to transform. Each student returns not just with stamps in a passport, but with a deeper understanding of how values, culture, and leadership intersect across borders. In an increasingly interconnected world, that’s more than an educational advantage—it’s the essence of what Darden means by purpose-driven leadership.
When you think about business schools that are genuinely leaning into the AI era, IE Business School comes forward in a big way. It isn’t just adding a module here or there—it’s making AI part of its very identity. IE recognized early that we had to embrace AI.
One of the more striking moves: a university-wide collaboration with OpenAI to roll out ChatGPT Edu for its full community—students, faculty and staff alike. That kind of scale in an AI rollout is rare, and it speaks to IE’s intent to embed AI across every level of learning and leadership.
On the curriculum side, IE has woven AI into core programs rather than isolating it. In their Master in Management program, students now take courses such as Big Data & Machine Learning, Chatbots & Intelligent Interfaces. For the Master in Finance, they’ve added Deep Learning in Python.
Beyond that, through their “AI for Functions” initiative, IE offers short-intensive executive programs aimed at how generative AI reshapes domains like finance, marketing, legal or HR. One example: a 3-day in-person program on AI-Powered Finance in Madrid, with hands-on tool demos, case studies, and personalized implementation roadmap.
It’s not just about tech and tools. IE’s approach emphasizes leadership, ethics and governance of AI. Their foundational modules in “AI for Functions” include strategic transformation frameworks, ethical governance and change-management for AI-driven workflows—not simply how to use the software.
At the faculty level, IE boasts a strong roster. For example, associate professor Konstantina Valogianni was named among Poets&Quants’ “Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors” for her work teaching AI and machine learning technologies at IE. That level of recognition reflects the institution’s depth in this area.
What sets IE apart too is the combination of agility and scope. In the P&Q article, their dean Lee Newman is quoted saying IE’s governance structure lets them move faster than many traditional business schools. That kind of positioning gives IE an edge in the fast-shifting AI world.
IE is also thinking about how students engage with AI—not just using it, but understanding its societal impact. Their AI manifesto covers assessment reform, academic integrity in an AI-rich environment, and helping students adopt the right mindset for what the article calls a “mindset divide in AI.”
For students and executives alike, IE offers concrete programs that match the rhetoric. The “AI-Powered Finance” course, for instance, includes modules like generative AI tools, workflow design, and real-world case studies from institutions like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan. That bridges theory to action.
From a global reputation standpoint, IE’s leadership in AI helps bolster its brand. Entrepreneurship and innovation are in IE’s DNA—and adding a core focus on AI enhances that narrative.
When you pull it all together—AI embedded across degree programs, executive road-maps for function-specific AI, faculty active in machine learning, strategic collaborations with OpenAI—you see more than a school scratching at the surface. You see a business school embracing AI at multiple levels.
LAST YEAR’S WINNER: AMERICAN UNIVERSITY’S KOGOD SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
When you walk into Sage Hall at Cornell Johnson, you get more than the sense of an Ivy League campus; you see a teaching culture that students consistently rate among the best. From day one the school emphasizes faculty quality, classroom experience, and academic-design innovation—and these aren’t just slogans. They turn up in ranking metrics, student surveys, and peer comparisons.
The school frames its full-time MBA as “Led by a world-class faculty, supported by industry-leading practitioners, and packed with immersion opportunities.” That positioning shows that Johnson treats teaching quality not as a by-product of research or infrastructure, but as a core program component.
One part of teaching quality is course design, and Johnson has made recent curriculum changes to reflect market-driven immersion and experiential pathways. In interviews with Poets&Quants, Dean Vishal Gaur indicated a year-long curriculum review that sharpened first-year immersion courses and second-year experiential pathways—so students can apply what they learn in real settings. That kind of continuous iteration is a hallmark of strong teaching models.
Students at Johnson regularly cite smaller class sizes, engaged professors, and high-touch advising as differentiators. The close-knit Ithaca setting contributes to a “you-matter” teaching environment, where faculty know names and students feel supported. That kind of interpersonal teaching rapport is often rare at bigger schools.
Another dimension: the Princeton Review’s surveys reported Johnson as #2 for teaching excellence and #1 for campus environment in a given year. While surveys are subjective, they reflect student perception—and high perception of teaching often correlates with better engagement and outcomes.
Johnson’s teaching quality is also supported by faculty-practitioner integration—courses taught by professors and industry practitioners together, and applied modules that let students act, not just listen. The website emphasizes “immersive learning opportunities” and “industry-leading practitioners” supporting faculty. This blend strengthens classroom relevance.
There is also evidence that Johnson teaches with a forward-looking lens. According to Poets & Quants, the school has committed to aligning its programs with evolving business needs—technology, sustainability, leadership—and updating teaching accordingly. That means the teaching doesn’t just deliver fundamentals; it adapts to what’s next.
The setting in Ithaca gives another bonus: fewer distractions, an intense academic atmosphere, and abundant opportunities for student-faculty interaction outside class. As one survey piece noted, the atmosphere at Johnson makes deeper engagement possible because students choose to immerse themselves. That kind of culture supports stronger teaching outcomes.
In addition to core teaching, Johnson offers experiential paths and electives that let students specialize and practice. That means students don’t just get lectures—they get to test concepts in labs, competitions, and real business settings. The curriculum change referenced by Dean Gaur indicates that second-year pathways are now more hands-on, which boosts teaching impact.
Finally, teaching quality shows up in outcomes: happy students, strong alumni satisfaction, and upgrading of the program’s ranking performance in recent years. The combination of strong course design, engaged faculty, and student-centred community gives Johnson the foundation for “best in class.” Pulling it all together: the school doesn’t just talk about teaching quality—it builds systems, feedback loops, and structures around it.
LAST YEAR’S WINNER: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA’S DARDEN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS
When you walk across EDHEC’s campuses in Lille or Nice, you’re strolling through one of Europe’s business schools that has baked sustainability into its identity—not as a side project, but as a driving force. EDHEC’s own sustainability page lays out a clear horizon: net-zero by 2030, carbon neutrality by 2050, alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, and a formal DD&RS (sustainable development & social responsibility) label awarded at the end of 2023.
It’s one thing to set goals; it’s another to embed them in education. EDHEC has integrated sustainability across programs and research. Their website mentions that the school started measuring its carbon footprint (scopes 1, 2 and 3) in 2020/21, and then published the second footprint for 2022-23, committing to try tracking every two years.
This kind of transparency is rare among business schools.
On the program side, EDHEC’s Global MBA is a standout. According to a Poets & Quants article, the Global MBA has been ranked 4th worldwide for ESG and net-zero teaching by the Financial Times for four consecutive years.
The school is also recognized for embedding a “Sustainable Impact Challenge,” a five-month project where students work on real-life sustainability problems with companies and NGOs.
The deeper message is that sustainability isn’t confined to one course or elective—it’s woven into research, curriculum, and student life. EDHEC’s Masters in Sustainable Finance programme highlights this by equipping students with advanced finance skills plus social justice and climate change economics. That means students are not just learning theory, they are building tools for change.
EDHEC also rachets up sustainability engagement across the student cohort. For instance, the school restructured its “Sustainable Impact Projects” (SIP) for first-year BBA students in 2024-25, focusing on the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, from health and well-being to gender equality. This shows the school is extending sustainability beyond graduate programmes into its broader educational ecosystem.
Another noteworthy point: EDHEC hosts a “Sustainability Week” across campuses (Paris, Nice and Lille) in January 2025. That campus-wide event underscores the cultural dimension of sustainability—students, faculty and staff engage in seminars, workshops and discussions rather than it just being a line on a web page.
The school’s alignment with global standards gives it extra credibility. EDHEC has been part of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) since 2015 and aligns its sustainability initiative with the UN SDGs. That kind of alignment signals the institution is committed to international best practices, not just local ideas.
From a branding and reputation standpoint, the recognition matters. The school is consistently placing in the top four for ESG teaching with a sustainability‐driven blend of academic rigor with practical relevance. That external validation helps reinforce EDHEC’s leadership claim.
When you look at the wider value chain, EDHEC’s research and practitioner links around climate finance stand out. The school has for over 20 years built expertise in finance, and now it applies that to climate risk, clean technology transitions, and sustainable business models—working to equip decision-makers with real tools. That kind of research‐to‐practice bridge is a powerful differentiator.
One result of this focus: students at EDHEC know that when they sign up, they’re joining a programme where sustainability is embedded in identity, not just optional. They undertake student challenges, live experiments in eco-friendly campuses, and emerge with not just business acumen but a sustainability mindset. The shift in mindset—toward “business with purpose”—is one of the major strategic signals for 2025.
Of course, leadership also means continuous evolution. EDHEC’s sustainability page notes a “low-carbon transition plan” is being deployed now to meet its net-zero and neutrality goals. The fact that the school is tracking Scope 3 emissions and publishing footprints positions it among the most advanced peers in this domain.
LAST YEAR’S WINNER: IE BUSINESS SCHOOL
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