Rethinking Teaching Business Programs: What Industries and Students want

Wednesday 3 July: Conference day one, 3:00pm – 3:30pm parallel session

Venue

Room 7 – 301-G053 Med Chem

Presenter

Dr Bernard Gan
Griffith University, Australia
b.gan@griffith.edu.au

Associate Professor Gloria Ge
Griffith University, Australia
gloria.ge@griffith.edu.au

Josie Nan Solorzano
Griffith University, Australia
j.nansolorzano@griffith.edu.au

Background

Employability is a hot topic in Higher Education these days. However, there is often a mismatch between what employers and students want and what the universities offer in their business programs. Industries are frustrated that the content of the business programs are not up to date, while graduates feel that they are not job ready after getting their degrees.

In recent years, geopolitical power play between major global powers will need a re-examination of how cross-borders business is conducted in the future. We have conducted a scoping exercise of major IB programs in Australian universities in November 2018. A survey of 28 undergraduate and postgraduate IB programs across Australian universities shows largely similar course offerings with particular focus on neo-classical theories of international trade and foreign direct investment. While it is still important to provide students with a holistic view of how business theories evolve over time, how could Australasian business programs be restructured to better prepare our students for tomorrow’s job market? In today’s fast-pace changing world where artificial intelligence and cloud computing are transforming business models, how ready are business school students of today for tomorrow’s job market?

Intended outcome

We seek the opportunity at HERDSA to tap the collective experiences of fellow educators to discuss this crucial topic. Drawing insights from the scoping exercise and a student survey we did in 2018, we hope to facilitate discussions to gain insights on how to restructure business program structures and curriculum to better prepare our students for the job market of tomorrow. At the roundtable session, we seek to discuss the following questions: What are your ideas of an employment-ready graduate of tomorrow? How do we train employment-ready graduates for the jobs of tomorrow? What new ideas have your business programs introduced in recent years to cater to produce employment-ready graduates of tomorrow?

In addition, authors will be asked to provide an explanation of a maximum of 200 words showing how the debate addresses one of the conference sub-themes.

Presentation topic

Students – Future Graduates