Business-school leaders prioritize AI, but few feel prepared, AACSB survey finds

Business-school leaders have put AI near the top of their agendas, but their confidence in delivering lags far behind. In AACSB’s newly released 2026–27 Deans Survey, 87% rated AI readiness a high or very high strategic priority. Only about one in five gave their schools equally high marks for preparedness.

The survey gathered responses from 558 business-school leaders across 75 countries and territories, including 522 deans or equivalent heads and 36 interim deans. Released during AACSB’s Deans Conference in Orlando, it identifies a mismatch that extends from leaders’ own skills to their institutions’ capacity to adapt.

The skills gap reaches the dean’s office

Deans assessed 49 activities associated with their jobs, rating each activity’s priority, their own proficiency and their interest in further development on five-point scales. Strategic planning ranked first in priority, scoring 4.61, against a proficiency rating of 4.27. AI in education and research came second—but with a much wider separation.

AI scored 4.54 for priority and 3.41 for self-rated proficiency. That was the largest such gap among the activities assessed, and AI was also the area where deans most wanted to improve. Experience offered little apparent protection: newer and longer-serving deans reported nearly identical gaps of 1.14 and 1.10 points, respectively.

A separate institutional assessment showed an even larger mismatch. Respondents gave AI readiness an average strategic-priority score of 4.37, versus 2.91 for preparedness. AI was the only one of eight future-readiness dimensions with average preparedness below three. It also had the largest priority-preparedness gap in every region covered, rather than being a problem concentrated in one part of the sample.

The real challenge is not adopting technology but ensuring that it translates into meaningful learning outcomes and better career opportunities.

An unnamed survey respondent, quoted by Poets&Quants

Development competes with the day job

The same survey shows why responding may be difficult. In open-ended answers, 34% named budgets, finances and resources as their greatest current challenge, ahead of enrollment and student recruitment. About one in five cited the relevance and value of curricula and programs, with a similar share naming AI.

Looking five years ahead, 59% placed financial resilience among their schools’ three biggest challenges, and 28% ranked it first. AI readiness appeared in the top three for 74%. These questions capture different pressures: the immediate strain of running a school and the capabilities leaders believe it will need in the future.

Time for leaders to build those capabilities is scarce. Eighty-four percent reported limited, very limited or no time for professional development, while 54% reported funding constraints. Just 45% described their institutions as very or extremely supportive of their development. Those figures concern professional development generally, not a dedicated measure of AI-training budgets.

Readiness ratings are not student results

AI was not the highest-rated institutional priority on every measure. Learner value and outcomes—including graduate employment, salary progression and employer satisfaction—received the highest average strategic-priority rating, at 4.39. Yet only 48% rated their schools highly or very highly prepared in that area. None of the eight institutional dimensions reached 50% on that preparedness measure.

The findings describe leaders’ assessments, not an independent test of teaching quality or graduates’ AI skills. According to Poets&Quants, fieldwork ran from July 17 through August 24, 2026, reaching 1,881 leaders in AACSB’s network with a 30% response rate. Seventy percent of respondents represented AACSB-accredited schools. The survey offers a broad international view of that responding group, rather than a census of business education.