AI threatens management education's core, CEA urges B-schools to teach judgement

Artificial intelligence could emerge as the defining challenge for management education over the coming two to three decades, Chief Economic Adviser V. Anantha Nageswaran said, cautioning that business schools cannot meet the moment simply by bolting an AI course onto existing curricula.

Speaking at the 16th Indian Management Conclave in Noida, Nageswaran argued that the manager's essential instrument — a clear and patient mind — is already under strain before students even arrive on campus. Adding a single AI elective, he said, will not be enough.

His central concern is the disappearance of the entry-level work through which young professionals have historically learned their trade. AI, he noted, is increasingly capable of handling routine and codified tasks, and those are precisely the tasks that once served as an apprenticeship for newcomers. If that bottom rung is removed, he asked, where will the next generation acquire judgement?

He described the problem as potentially the whole problem for management education, rather than a minor one. The aspects of management that AI cannot perform, he added, are exactly those that have always been hardest to teach in a classroom.

Against this backdrop, Nageswaran called on institutions to place judgement ahead of technique. If analysis is increasingly automated, the scarce skill becomes knowing which question to ask and whether to trust the answer that comes back — a capacity he said is cultivated through case-based teaching.

He also flagged social media as a distinct challenge for India's youth, pointing to its effects on attention, mental health and physical well-being. The ability to sit with a difficult problem, to read something long and demanding, and to think patiently, he suggested, is being eroded.

Together, he framed these pressures as among India's real challenges over the next 20 to 30 years.