In-House B-Schools Give Firms MBAs With the Skills They Want

Each year, EY hires about 200 to 300 MBA graduates well-versed in the foundations of finance, marketing, and economics who inject a dose of enthusiasm—and youth—into the accounting firm’s global workforce of 312,000. But the new hires are not always equipped to respond to rapid changes in the business landscape, so EY last year introduced an in-house MBA to teach tech-centric skills that traditional programs sometimes gloss over. “Technologies are changing so quickly that it had to be future-focused,” says Trent Henry, EY’s global vice chair of talent.

EY is among a growing number of companies developing bespoke MBAs after concluding that university programs aren’t keeping pace with their needs. Employers want B-school graduates to be equipped to tackle broad-scale digital transformation, according to executive education consultant CarringtonCrisp, which recently published a survey of international employers finding that 77% believe the traditional MBA needs to change.