At Eduvantis, we spend a lot of time working with business schools and university leaders who are trying to make sense of how quickly AI is reshaping the workforce and what that means for the programs they offer and the students they serve.
Across these conversations, it’s clear that institutions are not lacking awareness. The challenge is translating that awareness into action at the scale this moment requires.
In this article, Eduvantis President Tim Westerbeck shares where the gap is emerging and what business schools need to consider next.
Awareness of AI in Higher Education Is High, But Schools Are Not Keeping Pace
Business schools are more engaged with AI than ever. The question is whether that engagement is anywhere near equal to the scale of what’s actually required.
When Anthropic released its latest Economic Index report, it landed with unusual force, because the Index is built from what people are actually doing with AI at work right now: millions of real conversations mapped against the Labor Department’s database of 20,000-plus specific work tasks.
Unlike most projections, the picture Anthropic paints is not theoretical. The disruption it quantifies is concentrated heavily in precisely the sectors business schools have always served: finance, law, consulting, technology, professional services. And it is hitting hardest at the entry point—the first jobs, the foundational tasks, the formative experiences that have always been how smart young professionals grow into executives.
Many have been raising alarms about what is coming.
- Dario Amodei has warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.
- LinkedIn documents a 30 percent rise in college graduate unemployment since 2022.
- In a recent op ed for The New York Times, Former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo argued for a radical reconfiguration of how business and education work together to define the jobs of the future and build pathways into them.
Because we’re having the conversation, we often convince ourselves that we’re solving the problem. Based on experience working with many business schools, I’ve seen that the gap between the level of awareness that now exists and the level of action actually required may be the most dangerous thing about this moment.
AI Is Already Reshaping Entry-Level Jobs Across Business Fields
The Anthropic Economic Index moves the discussion from what AI could theoretically do to what it is already doing.
- As of late 2025, nearly half of all occupations studied had AI being used for at least a quarter of their tasks.
- In enterprise settings, automation accounts for 77 percent of business AI interactions.
A parallel Stanford study found a 16% employment decline among workers aged 22 to 25 in highly AI-exposed jobs since ChatGPT’s launch. The disruption is targeting career entry, not mid-career.
What the Data Shows About AI’s Impact on Early-Career Jobs
Anthropic’s researchers call it deskilling: when AI absorbs the most complex tasks from a role, what remains for human workers is routine. The junior analyst who used to grow into a senior one by doing increasingly difficult work no longer has that ramp. Someone has to build a new one—but that’s not happening at the scale required of the moment.
Business Schools Are Responding to AI—but Not at the Right Scale
Of course, business schools are not just sitting on their hands. Leading programs at Wharton, Kellogg, Fuqua, Columbia, and many others have moved aggressively to incorporate AI tools and AI-augmented thinking across their curricula. New credentials and concentrations are proliferating, and employers are being brought into the conversation more deliberately. This is real progress.
But here is the question: Is the scale of what business schools are doing commensurate with the scale of what the data says is happening? For most institutions, the candid answer is no, not because the effort isn’t genuine, but because the frame is still too narrow.
AI Is Changing the Job Market Business Schools Are Preparing Students For
Most of what we call “AI integration” in business education is about adding AI fluency to an existing degree structure. The deeper challenge is that business schools are designing graduates for a job market that is itself being restructured.
“Do our graduates know how to use AI?” is one question.
“Are we preparing them for a professional world in which the first decade of their career looks way different from five years ago?” is another.
Why Business Schools and Employers Must Co-Develop AI-Era Talent Pathways
The traditional entry-level role used to serve two functions: it got certain work done, and it developed people. AI is now doing an increasing amount of the former, but what about the development?
Companies deploying AI to automate junior-level tasks have, in many cases, reduced headcount without redesigning what those roles contributed to development. Business schools can’t fix that on their own; they don’t control the work, and they don’t know in anything close to real time which tasks are being handed to AI agents and which still require human judgment.
Companies are no doubt working on this.
- KPMG now assigns new graduates to higher-complexity tax work because AI handles the “grunt work.”
- I’ve read about some law firms training early-career lawyers on complex contract interpretation rather than document review.
Gina Raimondo’s argument is that solving this requires genuine co-ownership between business and educational institutions. Not the transactional version—where companies recruit and schools supply—but shared accountability for defining what an AI-era professional development pathway looks like and building the infrastructure to deliver it.
What AI-Era Workforce Development Requires from Business Schools
The AI era of workforce development requires a fundamental institutional redesign. This can involve:
- Renegotiating accreditation relationships.
- Getting company partners to share real information about how they are restructuring work.
- Treating this as a genuine priority, not a positioning narrative.
Real-Time Employer Intelligence on AI and Job Roles
Business schools need live intelligence from employer partners about how AI is reshaping roles—not as an annual advisory conversation, but as ongoing input that shapes curriculum in something close to real time.
Redesigning Experiential Learning for Higher-Order, AI-Resistant Work
The experiential learning model needs to be redesigned around the higher-complexity, higher-judgment work that AI is clearing space for — not the foundational analytical work it’s taking over.
New Pathways for Mid-Career Reskilling in an AI-Driven Economy
And new credential pathways need to be built for mid-career professionals whose roles are being restructured beneath them, a population most institutions are not yet meaningfully serving.
The Risk of Getting AI and Workforce Transformation Wrong
The students enrolling in business programs today will be mid-career professionals in 2040. The career ladder they expect to climb is being rebuilt around them right now.
The risk is that awareness becomes a substitute for the depth of action required—that we update a syllabus, add an AI module, point to our employer advisory boards, and conclude we are doing what the moment demands. The Anthropic data suggests the moment demands considerably more.
How Business Schools Can Respond to AI Disruption
AI-driven disruption to entry-level roles requires a response from business schools. For most institutions, the question is how quickly they can move from understanding what’s happening in the labor market to operationalizing changes that match its scale.
That kind of response requires coordination across academic and administrative functions that most institutions were not designed to support in real time, impacting curriculum, employer engagement, program design, and long-term positioning.
Many business schools are getting stuck at that point—not because they lack awareness, but because translating insight about AI-driven workforce change into institutional action is difficult to execute.
At Eduvantis, we partner with institutions to move from insight to action—bringing together market intelligence, employer perspective, and program strategy to align what institutions offer with how the market is evolving.
If you’re thinking about how AI is reshaping the roles your graduates are preparing for, and what that means for your programs, reach out to our team to start a conversation.