Business School Deans Weigh AI Readiness Against Independent Thinking

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About 700 business school leaders and other participants gathered at AACSB's Deans Conference in Orlando last week, and AI ran through much of the agenda. The question that kept returning was how to teach students to work with the technology without letting it do their thinking.

AACSB released its 2026-27 Deans Survey alongside the event. The survey is conducted every three years. Of the deans who responded, 87% rate AI readiness a high or very high strategic priority. Only about one in five give their own schools similarly high marks for preparedness.

"Cognitive surrender"

One session, "The Cognitive Cost of AI," brought together Steven D. Shaw of the Wharton School and King's Business School at King's College London, Purdue's Brooke N. Macnamara and former Amway CEO Milind Pant.

Shaw separates cognitive offloading, such as using a calculator or writing down a number, from what he calls "cognitive surrender." Generative AI can frame a problem, supply the reasoning and deliver a conclusion, so users hand over oversight of the process itself. "Having the answer to everything all the time is not necessarily the best for learning or development," he told the deans.

Macnamara, an associate professor of psychological sciences at Purdue who studies how people acquire expertise and how AI use might contribute to skill decay among professionals, said not all offloading is harmful. The question is which abilities students need to build. If the task is a presentation, judging the finished slides may be enough. If the goal is to integrate information or form an original research question, instructors need evidence of the student's own capabilities. "What skills are they developing independent of AI?" she asked. The distinction matters most for beginners: experienced faculty and managers may use AI to support skills built over years, while students are still laying that foundation.

She pointed to "desirable difficulties," such as testing yourself instead of rereading. Her advice is to attempt the problem or write the essay first, then use AI for feedback and practice questions. Schools also need to examine what they reward, since grading polished output alone may encourage students to delegate reasoning. Shaw suggested assessments without AI.

The employer view

Pant was more optimistic. He sees the first AI-native generation entering work with the most powerful tools for tackling business and societal problems. Access to those tools, he said, will not distinguish exceptional leaders: "Exceptional business leaders always start with the customer."

He named three skills schools should teach: understanding customers through firsthand experience, connecting information across contexts, and bringing people together to lead change. He pointed to his own career as an example. After business school he joined Unilever expecting a conventional marketing role and ended up working on supply-chain and vendor problems in leather tanneries in small Indian towns. Working with colleagues there, he learned about manufacturing, maintenance, labor scheduling, quality, customers and cash flow. He also called for practical learning "not just one summer internship, but real world experience built and completely diffused throughout it."

AACSB President and CEO Lily Bi urged schools to strengthen mentoring and personal development. "Research is great, teaching is great, but mentoring and inspiring is important," she told the deans. In an interview afterward, she described a Korean approach that splits coursework into portions where students must use AI and portions where they cannot.

Source: Poets&Quants