Degree Programmes

It has been a rewarding journey for INSEAD’s master-level degrees over the past ten years – and the pace of change and innovation looks set to continue. As in previous decades, we were able to attract top talent to our classrooms and send our graduates back out into the world, equipped to be leaders. But during the past ten years, there has been growing external recognition of the school’s uniquely international formula for success and emphasis on responsibility. This was evidenced by our consistently high position in the Financial Times rankings, where our MBA programme has been #1 three times since 2016, and remained at #2 in 2023.

Indeed, during Dean Mihov’s term at the helm of the school, entrepreneurship has been a strong theme across our entire portfolio – and particularly at the Executive MBA level. Whereas ten years ago, around 15 final Global Executive MBA (GEMBA) or Tsinghua-INSEAD Executive MBA (TIEMBA) projects focused on start-up ideas, today there are around 40. Our Executive MBA participants are now actively and successfully participating in the biannual INSEAD Venture Competition, organised by the Rudolf and Valeria Maag INSEAD Centre for Entrepreneurship. The contest proved as popular as ever in 2022–2023, with finalists and prize winners from across our range of programmes, including the MIM’23, GEMBA’24 and MBA’23 classes.

In a world that faces great economic uncertainty, scholarships are particularly important, and we are proud that we have been able to maintain awards at historically high levels across the decade and across the portfolio. Thanks to the generosity of our donors, most of whom are alumni giving back to the school, we have been able to compete for the very best global talent, especially in the mature MBA market. It is thanks to scholarships that our doors remain open to outstanding students from all backgrounds and all geographies.

In 2022–2023, the faculty approved changes to the MBA curriculum to ensure that the programme remains relevant to the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s business leaders. The thorough curriculum review process concluded that students should gain exposure to sustainability in all core courses, which will each have a learning objective linked to environmental and/or social topics. The programme will also conclude with a compulsory capstone course based on a simulation of sustainability-related challenges and opportunities in a global company. At the same time, we are continuing to develop sustainability-specific electives, which will allow students to deepen their knowledge in the areas most closely related to their future careers – an important insight gained from recruiter feedback.

Following the same logic, we have also introduced a new sustainability course in the MIM, as part of the P3 Practical. This covers business model innovation and circularity to highlight the importance of integrating sustainability into the design of business models.

While AI has long been on the elective curriculum at INSEAD, the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022 enabled our faculty to experiment with teaching innovations and new applications of AI across a range of business disciplines. The MBA core marketing course, for example, offered students the chance to build an ad using AI tools in their submission of a strategic marketing plan. The experiment resulted in some fascinating video, sound and speech creations for hypothetical products. Just as important, having resident faculty who are experts not just in AI but also in ethics has opened our students’ minds to the human implications of technological advances. This is a key ingredient of INSEAD’s distinctive mission to develop responsible leaders who create value for both business and society.

Last but far from least, our specialist part-time executive degrees continued to support the school’s mission of creating leaders with a positive impact on business and the world. Nowhere is this more evident than in our unique Executive Master in Change (EMC). Following last year’s accreditation by the Conférence des Grandes Écoles, we have created an external Advisory Board, updated our continuous learning assessments and recruited additional programme directors. Meanwhile, the small but highly regarded Executive Master in Finance (EMFin) and its company-specific spin-off with Aramco continue to develop financial leaders who make a difference.

In 2022–2023, we received French accreditation for a new online master programme: the Master in Business Data Analytics (MBDA) to be delivered predominantly online. However, as a result of reduced demand for distance learning in the master programme segment since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have put the launch on hold while we review our portfolio.

In the summer of 2023, the first run of the INSEAD Summer School, now for undergraduates rather than high-school students, was held on the Europe Campus. This summer, we welcomed some 80 participants for two weeks to experience the joys (and challenges) of learning about business in an internationally diverse group. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and has resulted in many enquiries about our Master in Management.

With these factors in mind, we completely reviewed our marketing and recruitment strategy during 2022–2023. The resulting decisions and significant investment in our new schoolwide Marketing and Recruitment Department, created at the end of the previous Academic Year, are already leveraging synergies, and sharing expertise to retain our competitive advantage. One example is our 'Ambition Has No Gender' campaign, which showcases a new Executive Education offering for female leaders, at the same time boosting the percentage of women across our degree portfolio. We are also beginning to see growth in applications from high-quality MBA applicants, which should allow our class sizes to return closer to pre-Covid-19 levels in the foreseeable future.

The quality and diversity of our students remain the cornerstone of our success, and we greatly appreciate the support of alumni in helping us to attract the right talent, conduct selection interviews and donate to scholarships, in addition to acting as inspirational ambassadors for INSEAD.

Designed for early to mid-career professionals, and featuring an accelerated 10-month curriculum, our MBA programme develops successful leaders and entrepreneurs.

Our Global Executive MBA programme is tailored for experienced professionals who wish to develop their leadership skills while they continue to advance their current careers.

This dual degree combines INSEAD’s global perspective and Tsinghua University’s in-depth expertise of business in China to produce highly successful business leaders and entrepreneurs.

The INSEAD Executive Master in Change takes participants deep into the basic drivers of human behaviour and the hidden dynamics of organisations.

Blending cutting-edge theory and best practice, the programme is for professionals with work experience in finance-related roles.

Aimed at young leaders with a clear sense of direction when they finish their undergraduate studies. Students want a deep dive into business theory and a complete set of management skills. The MIM programme also focuses on leadership in global business with international experience integrated into the course of study.

The school’s large team of career and employment experts is a key component of our mission to create a new generation of responsible business leaders for the world. On an individual level, our in-house specialists are helping our students to navigate a steady path through today’s turbulent employment landscape, ensuring that an INSEAD degree remains a strong career investment, whatever the economic weather.

During 2022–2023, the Middle East proved to be more of a magnet than usual for INSEAD graduates. Ambitious government masterplans in the region fuelled demand for talent and offered generous compensation, while traditional target locations for our students, such as the United Kingdom, experienced slower economic growth.

Meanwhile, continental Europe remains an attractive destination, as does Singapore, where policy makers are still keen to recruit international highfliers to the most skilled roles and sectors, despite its recent emphasis on career development for the resident population. During the year, to cater for our diverse master programme community, the Career Development Centre began to invest in developing strong relationships with employers in Asia, particularly Greater China. In the future, we are looking to adopt similar measures for India.

The global tech layoffs of late 2022 were not great news for the MBA’22D class. However, with continued healthy demand from consulting firms, the overall employment picture was relatively positive. Sadly, during the first half of 2023, demand from top consulting firms also receded, which meant that the MBA’23J class faced an even more challenging job market. The better news is that, as our traditional recruiters reduce their hiring targets in response to macroeconomic realities, our talented students are finding roles at a greater variety of companies than ever before, including those in the energy and resources sector, where we have observed a marked increase in demand. Employers’ enthusiasm for INSEAD’s newest degree programme continues, with 97% of the MIM’22 class receiving job offers within three months of graduation. Salaries were also higher than the previous year, the median level increasing by 19% and the mean by 24%.

Compensation for our GEMBA and TIEMBA graduates is also increasing significantly. For this group, we track outcomes 18 months after graduation. Those who completed their studies in 2021 have already experienced even better career progression in terms of function, industry, geography and remuneration than their predecessors.

Career events continue to evolve as corporate recruiters become more conscious of their carbon footprint and generational shifts in students’ expectations. This year, we innovated and added a series of quick-fire evening events to our calendar: 'Pitch and Network'. This involves inviting five to six companies to each give a five-minute pitch about themselves and their work on campus, followed by a shared networking event.

The benefit to the recruiters is that they meet a larger pool of talent than through the traditional presentation-and-networking format, while the students get to interact with several companies per evening, rather than just one. At the same time, we continued to run our traditional career fairs in a virtual format in order to meet the needs of our diverse students, multiple locations and worldwide corporate partners.

Physical career treks, however, remain eternally popular, as they immerse our students in a truly global business experience. In 2022–2023, INSEAD students visited London, Dubai, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin and Hong Kong, among other cities. The milestone events of the year was our inaugural treks to Riyadh and Madrid, introduced at the request of both students and employers.

Finally, true to our mission of empowering leaders for their lifelong career journey, we launched the Young Alumni Programme and expanded the Accelerated Job Search Programme to support our alumni community during their transitions in today’s challenging career world.

Our PhD newsletter, re-introduced in 2022, continues to maintain a strong connection with and between our alumni. Each annual edition showcases the year’s innovations, thus inspiring our alumni-turned-professors to encourage their best students to apply. And in 2022–2023, there were many new and continuing developments to announce. 

Among them, the Academic Writing Preparation Programme continues to help students to master the excellent writing skills required for their future as professors and, in the meantime, provides concrete tools for coursework requirements and journal submissions.

Other innovations this year include additional workshops to supplement students’ development as researchers – from practical tips on navigating academic careers and research pipelines to specialist statistical techniques.

As we have come to expect, our 2023 graduates secured positions at an impressive selection of institutions on three continents, including (in alphabetical order): Católica Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Florida, HEC, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, University of Hong Kong, IESE, Indiana University Bloomington, Norwegian School of Economics and Tilburg University.

Before entering the job market, INSEAD PhD students are already professionally active researchers who contribute to academic conferences and publications, often as co-authors with our faculty. In 2022–2023, leading journals published 14 articles co-authored by INSEAD students, who also won (or were finalists in) seven prestigious research awards.

Over the past few years, the PhD programme has consistently achieved male-female parity. This represents a long-term investment by INSEAD in a more gender-balanced future for business academia. We continue to receive applications from outstanding female applicants and are happy to announce that half of our applicants for the past five years, including the recently concluded applications for September 2024, are women.

Prize winners in 2022-2023 included the following: