To fill jobs in clean tech and help tomorrow's business leaders solve our environmental problems, schools are ramping up sustainability programs—inside the classroom and out

That time, however, has passed. Today, business schools are continuing to ramp up their efforts for green curricula, but for a much different reason. In a world beset by economic woes as well as environmental problems— from the scarcity of natural resources to climate change—sustainability represents one of the few potential bright spots in an otherwise dismal recruiting environment.

Job Opportunities Spur Green Coursework

"Jobs might be drying up on Wall Street," says Catherine Wolfram, associate professor of business administration at UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business, "but not in the clean technology sector."

The result: innovations such as the Sustainable Entrepreneurship by Nature course at Babson College where students turn to the natural world to solve vexing business problems, perhaps obtaining inspiration for a windmill design from the shape of a dolphin's fin. Such an assignment would not have appeared in typical MBA syllabi just a few years ago.

Many business school administrators and faculty say that these curriculum changes are a necessity if graduates are going to find jobs in a global economy where business is increasingly expected to solve the world's problems, or at least not make them worse. "You have to use entrepreneurial thinking to solve problems without taking away from the environment," says Candida Brush, professor of entrepreneurship at Babson College. "You have to do it. It's not a choice."

Surge in Enrollment

Administrators at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School, which will celebrate the tenth anniversary of its sustainable enterprise in the MBA program in fall 2009, have seen enrollment in sustainability electives double over the last four years even though the size of the MBA student body has remained the same, says Katie Kross, director of the school's Center for Sustainable Enterprise. In 2003, only about 20 students signed up for the MBA in sustainable management at the Presidio School of Management in San Francisco. Today Presidio boasts an enrollment of 240 students, says Diane Mailey, Presidio's senior vice-president for business development and planning.

Most business schools say that although interest in these courses and programs is probably going to peak and then drop off a bit, the need to study and understand how business impacts the environment will never go away. And business schools are the ones shouldering the responsibility to train a new generation of MBAs who are equipped to make sound decisions. "We don't want to be in the business of chasing fads," says Forest Reinhardt, a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School, where environmental considerations and case studies have been woven into the fabric of many courses. "We would not be making these efforts if we thought this was the flavor of the month."

Perhaps the closest parallel to B-schools' current interest in sustainability, the environment, and social issues is the push to add ethics to the MBA curriculum following the collapse of Enron in 2001 and the era of corporate scandals that followed. However, unlike that effort, which never resulted in full-blown business ethics programs, sustainability appears to be a trend that is carving out significant space for itself in the curriculum.