Top 10 MBAs for Social or Environmental Impact

The University of Oxford may be one of the oldest in the world, but its business school is one of the more innovative. UK-based Saïd is known well for attracting a relatively large portion of students from the social impact sector, and sending plenty of them to work there on graduation. In a typical year, about 10 percent the school’s MBA cohort goes on to careers in social or environmental impact. The school’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, meanwhile, has produced many well-known social enterprises, such as Off Grid Electric. 

The Haas School in California has one of the largest student-run social impact investment funds, and MBA candidates can serve on the board of a nonprofit for several months while taking courses via Haas’s famed Centre for Social Sector Leadership. All MBA students are required to take a course on ethics and responsibility in business, while optional elective modules include social investing and social impact leadership strategy. 

At Michigan Ross, MBA candidates can choose an entire concentration in business and sustainability, while there are a range of elective courses that touch on impact, including how to lead nonprofit organizations and global CSR. Ross is also renowned for its “experiential” learning-by-doing courses: some projects, which students complete with real businesses, are focused on social or environmental issues. 

The Rotterdam School of Management, in the Netherlands, is a member of the Academy of Business in Society, a European group focused on sustainable development. RSM embeds sustainability into every single one of its core MBA courses. You can dive even further into social impact at the school through its social entrepreneurship and other electives, while there is also an “advanced sustainability” MBA concentration towards the end of the program. 

Duke Fuqua performs well across a bevy of social impact-related rankings, including those produced by the Financial Times, US News, and Net Impact. The US school runs MBA concentrations in energy and the environment, plus social entrepreneurship, while there are a wide array of electives, including on impact investing, and health policy and management. Fuqua also has the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship that hosts extracurricular activities for budding social innovators.   

Yale came up trumps in US News’s recent ranking of the best MBAs for nonprofit management. The Ivy League US school’s MBA has many relevant courses, including those focused on politics, human rights and ethical choices in public leadership. It has active social impact-focused clubs, societies and events on campus all year round. 

According to Corporate Knights, a “clean capitalism” magazine, Warwick Business School’s MBA is the best for sustainable social change. The UK-based program was praised by the publication for having meaningful integration of sustainable development into half of its core courses, 212 pieces of faculty research included in sustainability publications over the past three years, and for having strong gender diversity — 42 percent of faculty are female. 

The Schulich School of Business, in Canada, performed strongly in the Corporate Knights ranking. The school offers a Social Sector Management specialization that aims to accelerate the careers of students working in for-profit or non-profit organizations. Those who take the specialization graduate with a diploma in non-profit management. The MBA curriculum, meanwhile, touches upon human rights, international development, social entrepreneurship, social impact investing, and micro finance. 

The University of Exeter Business School is also highly regarded by clean capitalists, having come first place in Corporate Knight’s ranking in 2017 and placing second this year. The UK school is recognized for its centers dedicated to sustainable development, having several courses focused on impact in the MBA syllabus and strong faculty research into this field. 

The Copenhagen Business School, in Denmark, is big on social entrepreneurship. The school launched a research cluster dedicated to it that brings together scholars from different departments. This informs the school’s vast number of MBA courses on the subject, which help students understand the space, generate ideas, create companies and scale them up.