2023-05-25 15:59:44
Do the new generations expect business schools to change their training towards taking more account of the ecological transition?
Business schools have been providing education and research related to CSR for almost 20 years. At the time, the dedicated programs had difficulty finding an echo among the students, because the climate emergency, in particular, was much less highlighted. For about five years, the demand from students has indeed become stronger, like the commitment of young people of the Greta Thunberg generation, or as evidenced by the mobilization through the student manifesto “For an ecological awakening”.
At Audencia, we have been among the pioneering schools in this field for nearly 20 years. We are now located among the two best French schools and in the top 35 worldwide in the Positive Impact Rating 2022 ranking carried out with the United Nations.
In September 2019, Audencia upgraded the compulsory common core economics course for all Grande Ecole students by directing its content towards the energy transition and launched its Specialized Master® Actor for the energy transition in partnership with the École Centrale de Nantes. .
In February 2021, as part of our ECOS 2025 strategic plan, we launched Gaïa, our school of ecological and social transition, which has met with great success. This year, it trained 300 students in the Grande Ecole Program who took a semester of 240 hours of lessons entirely dedicated to this subject.
What is concretely changing?
The notion of impact and societal mission has become crucial. It guides program and educational innovations, but also research activities and relationships forged with our entire ecosystem (companies, territories, etc.). A business school is part of the value chain of society. It must therefore allow students to develop skills related to the ecological and social transition that will allow them to face the challenges facing the world today.
You have launched a new program focused on this issue…
More than a program, Gaïa is a school in its own right, backed by Audencia. We are the only Business School to have an entity entirely dedicated to ecological and social transition in France. Because the climate emergency requires us to accelerate, Gaïa aims to train professionals and transition leaders: actors who will influence our collective future by reinventing our ways of producing, working, consuming and living together.
Gaïa is the embodiment of our more global objective, which consists of inventing a new Business School model, which is the ambition of our ECOS 2025 strategic plan. A more virtuous model, training and inspiring women and men who are citizens of the world , sharing humanist values, resolutely convinced of belonging to the same community of destiny, on a planetary scale.
Gaïa’s mission is to welcome students in initial training, participants in continuing education and also supports companies, citizens, project leaders, etc.
Gaïa makes it possible to acquire in-depth knowledge (hard skills) of climate issues (biodiversity, carbon, energy transition), social issues (inclusion) and associated management tools (impact measurement, financial investments, etc.) to integrate them into its management profession, whatever it may be. It also aims to develop the soft skills needed to move individually and collectively.
We mobilize an ecosystem of committed, varied actors, within the school and outside (55 speakers and professors from various disciplines, but also alumni, partner companies who participate in round tables and inspiring conferences, such as Cap Gemini, the Emmaüs Label, Fairphone, etc., public and private institutions and NGOs such as The Shift Project, fresco artists, Ademe, Le Collectif pour un Awakening Ecologique, etc.).
300 students have already chosen the Gaïa master’s degree within the PGE. Eventually, all Audencia programs will include a Gaia course.
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