QS: I was reading up on Audencia’s mission, which is to train responsible leaders to address the challenges facing organizations, societies and the planet. That's an important mission, and I'm curious as to what that means within practice.

ST: We have different definitions of this mission, because it is very important for the school. For example, we offer a lot of courses from Gaïa for all students in the different programmes; some program,es are completely dedicated to sustainability. At Master's or Bachelor's level, we have some dedicated tracks to sustainability. All our students learn the basics.

But ecological and sustainability transition, it's very important for us, and we develop a lot of different activities for sustainability in the Student Association, for example. We have developed some MOOCs about sustainability issues and how we could manage it, from the business school.

We also have an important programme for our faculty members, because we are convinced that it's very important that all your permanent faculty member have also the basics for sustainability. So, we have a program called GIFT, or Gaïa Improvement for Future Teaching.

We have also developed some topics in research and we have a lot of researchers who are working on different sustainability topics for publication in different academic review. This is very important for the school because it concerns the faculty member, the student, but also a part and a great part of the staff, because the people who are working at Audencia are very sensitive to the ecological and sustainability issues.

QS: You were appointed Dean at the start of last year. At the time, you said you wanted to breathe new life in Audencia, or nuevo souffle. Part of that was moving away from siloed functioning towards cross-functional project based collaboration. You highlighted managing the after-effects of rapid expansion, which you've already spoken about in terms of the global footprint. Just over a year and a half in, how is your vision coming along in terms of breathing new breath into the institution?

ST: It's very important to write a new chapter in the story of the school. We launch a new strategic plan in next October, and it is very important for me and my team, not only the executive committee, but we involve a lot of people in the school to write this new strategic plan. It's important, because, we are facing a high competition in higher education, and we need to continue our development.

But we need to continue to diversify the activities of Audencia, because in France, we are facing a short decline of the student population in higher education. It’s important to continue to develop our activities abroad, especially with our collaborative campuses. We plan to open new collaborative campuses in Europe.

We also want to continue to recruit more international student, not only in France, but also abroad, for example in China, because it's a huge market. And it's important for us to launch some new programmes, not only in management or business, but we want to expand our portfolio programmes into other fields. We have a lot of partners in engineering and political sciences, for example, and we want to continue in to launch new programmes in this field, especially because in business and management, I think it will be complicated.

We want to increase our selectivity in our business school. So, you have to create new segments or new markets for the school.

QS: AACSB data indicates MBA enrolment numbers have declined about 13 percent over the past five years, but Business School enrolments have actually increased, particularly Specialised Master’s. You mentioned Audencia has a very diverse range of programmes, including Specialized Master’s. Are there any trends you're noticing in terms of the changing needs of business school students and students more generally, in the French education system?

ST: In France, we have the same trends like other countries, because MBA has become a tough market, but we changed the curriculum of the MBA programmes. We created a new process model based on artificial intelligence, and we tried to reduce a little bit the duration of the programmes.

We observed the trend of Specialised Master’s and Master of Sciences, that's correct. But MBA is not the same target. MBAs are for people who have a job and they want to have a new degree, but they want to continue to be involved in the company or in the corporate world. Specialised Master’s or Master’s of Science is more for students who want to obtain a very specific expertise in some field, such as luxury supply chain. But you’re right, and one of the other trends is to have more people who want to have a double degree, or a degree and a certification. It is a kind of signal on the job market. “I have a degree in management or business, but I have also specific expertise in artificial intelligence, luxury or business development’. We have more and more students who are interested in being specialised in a sector. It's a very, very big trend, in fact, in France.

QS: How do you see education continuing to evolve in the future?

ST: For me, higher education is becoming a kind of brand sector. The brand is very important, not only the ranking, but it's very important to have brand and to create a kind of image and a very high reputation.

And I think its possibility to have less business school in the future, because we have a lot of business school in France and in the world, and I think it's not possible to continue to have so many. Maybe we’ll see some concentrations or mergers between schools. The industry is so much more competitive and you have to engage a lot of investment and resources to stay at the top, or if you want to increase in the ranking, or if you want to create and develop your reputation. So it has become, for me, a brand industry,

The second point for me is we need to reimagine our business model. Artificial intelligence is a huge trend in for the younger student, and it's important to think about, okay, what is our added value in the pedagogy and how we could use artificial intelligence in the curriculum? That’s the first point on artificial intelligence, but we also have some studies in France that show that junior level employees have difficulty in finding a job in consulting, because consulting firms say, okay with artificial intelligence, we don't need your expertise. We need to be able to anticipate the impact on jobs, the skill and the knowledge needed in the next five years with artificial intelligence.

And finally, one of the most important parts of the business school is how we could develop a kind of soft power with our students and our faculty members. We are facing major issues in geopolitics. When you see the war between Russia and Ukraine, for example, and a lot of different conflicts in the world, we have some instability. It's very difficult for the student to understand how it's work, to see what is the right information between facing the fake news. We need to go further. As business school, go further.