“I am delighted – but actually not at all surprised – to see your results,” U.K.-based author and entrepreneur John Elkington says. “The U.K. has been a globally significant incubator of thinking on sustainable development, CSR [corporate social responsibility], ESG and climate solutions for decades, with things coming to a head around the time of COP26 [the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, in Glasgow].”

Exeter in particular has been instrumental in international policy discussions. For the past several years, a team led by professor Pierre Friedlingstein has spearheaded the global carbon budget, one of the COP’s central metrics. Other Exeter initiatives, such as the Global Tipping Points Report led by professor Tim Lenton, also figured centrally in this year’s summit discussions. In fact, several of the United Kingdom’s most influential climate scientists are on faculty at Exeter, and they are part of a team of 1,500 research and education specialists.

These top global MBAs for sustainability are maximizing impact

Likewise, sustainability is deeply embedded in Exeter’s curricula, but that doesn’t make it an exception among the ranking schools. Beth Patmore, MBA course leader at Nottingham Business School (ranked 16th), points out that this is part of a broader “systemic shift” in the United Kingdom, where sustainability has also been embedded in national policy frameworks, corporate governance codes and educational standards. “[It] is increasingly seen not as a niche concern but as a foundational lens through which strategy, finance, operations and leadership are taught,” she says.

Take, for example, the business school ranking by the Financial Times in London, a popular resource for MBA applicants. It now gives roughly 20% collective weighting to ESG-related curriculum content, the school’s carbon footprint, and faculty and student diversity among the key criteria in its methodology.

Sustaining a virtuous circle

“To me, this is also a question of supply and demand,” says Frederik Dahlmann, an associate professor of strategy and sustainability in Warwick’s MBA programs. “We know that sustainability matters to our students, for their roles, organizations and future career development, because they tell us it is an important factor when deciding where to study for their MBAs.”

Almost all the programs we contacted for this piece said the same. There is what Dahlmann calls a virtuous circle that is created within this system, where faculty are making meaningful policy and research contributions, attracting students who will go on to do the same, which in turn incentivizes universities to continue to make such contributions.

But what explains this dynamic in the United Kingdom in particular? ESG has waned in popularity in the United States and Canada, with major companies and institutions reneging on sustainability commitments following the election of Donald Trump amid fears of an unfriendly business environment. There were similar fears with businesses pulling back from commitments, fearing penalties from anti-greenwashing legislation (which has since been scaled back).

According to Donald Lancaster, program director of Exeter’s MBA, the likelihood of a similar state of affairs coming to pass in the United Kingdom is low. This is not only because the U.K. government’s pioneering sustainability initiatives have broad cross-party support, but also because strong markets and talent pools have developed around them. Even prior to the election of Trump, Lancaster points out, shareholder value has long been the overriding consideration in the U.S. context. Despite many exemplary sustainability-oriented MBA programs in the United Kingdom, they operate within a different cultural milieu than in the United Kingdom and Europe.

Hugh Wilson, a professor of marketing in Warwick’s MBA programs, suggests that the reason for this cultural discrepancy may be rooted in history. “As the epicentre of two world wars in the 20th century, Europe swung towards greater social and economic equality after each,” he says. European countries have sharp memories of the problems that can accrue in a society where these social and economic factors fall out of balance. Though that postwar ethos has been diluted over time, he proposes that it continues to influence the United Kingdom’s business and educational climate.

“We depend on a socially and environmentally sustainable world; environmental and social crises tend to hit us early and hard,” Wilson says. “[The U.K.] business community is acutely aware of the risks and opportunities that these create.”

Tristan Bronca is an award-winning magazine writer and editor based in Toronto.

The post A ‘virtuous circle’ has made the U.K. the world leader in sustainable business education appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The “impact” metric was introduced to the Corporate Knights MBA ranking several years ago as a bonus, but this year is the first that it has become part of the official ranking. Corporate Knights evaluated 179 programs and ranked the top 40 for their focus on sustainability. Ninety percent of the score these rankings are based on is awarded for the content of the curriculum, and now 10% has been awarded for impact – what schools’ alumni are doing post-graduation.

The school with the highest score on this measure this year was Bard College in New York, with an impact rating of 56%. Out of 62 graduates, Corporate Knights identified 35 who are either in sustainability roles or working at companies recognized for their sustainability efforts. By comparison, the average alumni rating was 16% among other schools that made the ranking. Only the University of Vermont’s MBA program had a comparable impact rating of 52%. 

For the last three years, Bard has consistently ranked in the top five MBA programs for sustainability. Bard stands out as one of the few business schools specifically designating its MBA as an MBA in Sustainability, another being the University of Vermont. “They are not shy about putting the program’s sustainability focus front and centre,” says Corporate Knights research analyst Muhammad Talha. 

We need our students out changing the world at scale in a hurry.

– Eban Goodstein, founder of the MBA in sustainability, Bard College

Bard’s graduates have compelling stories: a schoolteacher who went on to become a vice president of ESG (environmental, social and governance) for the Americas at Deutsche Bank within just one year of graduating; the emergency medical technician who became a managing consultant at the global firm Guidehouse. Perhaps the most famous example is Chelsea Mozen, who developed the idea for Etsy to offset its carbon emissions from shipping during her capstone project at Bard. Just four years after graduating, she was the chief sustainability officer for Etsy, making it one of the first major global companies to commit to a climate pledge.

“Our students’ interests range from food to fashion to energy. There’s a lot of variability,” says Eban Goodstein, an economist and the founder of Bard’s program. He explains that the program is highly experiential. “I think of it as 20 four-day retreats spread out over two years,” he says. “It’s almost more like a fine arts degree where you are learning directly from artists.”

In Bard’s MBA, students begin working on real-world projects in their first year, often with major industry players. The goal, according to Goodstein, is not just to respond to, but entirely shift how we address – and prevent – mounting environmental and social challenges. “We need our students out changing the world at scale in a hurry,” he adds.

All of the MBA programs on the list open up a multitude of options to get that done. For many of these students, it means taking on a key corporate sustainability role at a global leading company, or launching their own enterprise with values of social responsibility and environmental sustainability embedded in the organization’s DNA. But in a different economy, the approach post-graduation might look very different.

2025 Better World MBA top 40

Take, for example, the top-ranked “large” school, defined as a program with more than 80 graduates annually. This year, the spot belongs to Centrum’s PUCP in Peru. Centrum was one of just two South American schools on the top 40 list (the other, Colombia’s Universidad Externado, jumped from 112 in last year’s ranking to 40 in this year’s).

Centrum operates in a different context than the majority of schools in the ranking, which are overwhelmingly from the Americas or Europe. The Peruvian economy is largely “informal,” associate dean Sandro Sánchez explains. While many Centrum graduates are vying for corporate jobs (about 20 graduates of the last two years landed at companies like Vestas and Schneider Electric), the majority of these students go on to work in – or start – smaller companies, including those outside the urban centres in sectors like mining and agriculture, which remain the engines of the Peruvian economy. 

This is not the same business environment where you tend to see corporate sustainability officers or climate pledges. But this is precisely what makes this training so important. It’s here that graduates’ vision for social and environmentally positive change – a vision they develop in their MBA program – will have the greatest impact.

Tristan Bronca is an award-winning magazine writer and editor based in Toronto.

2025 Better World MBA top 10 large schools

METHODOLOGY

The 2025 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Top 40 ranking examines the performances of 179 business schools, drawn from the most recent FT100 MBA Ranking, the Princeton Review Best Green MBA, the Top 40 from the 2024 Better World MBA ranking, and all current PRME Champions; and business schools accredited by the Association of MBAs, the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) or the EFMD (European Foundation for Management Development) QualityImprovement System (EQUIS) and also signatories to the UN Principles for Responsible Management Education that opt in for evaluation. Based on publicly disclosed information on their websites, schools are evaluated on the sustainability content of their core courses and can review and request revisions to the analysis. Additionally, schools may voluntarily provide the number of recent graduates employed with impact organizations, which is worth 10% of the overall score.

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