At most elite MBA programs, the pitch is familiar: future global leaders, entrepreneurs reshaping industries, changemakers tackling climate and inequality. For many students, those promises are galvanizing.
For others, they can be alienating.
That tension is at the heart of new research on institutional exclusion by Stanford sociologist Michelle Jackson and emlyon professor Christof Brandtner. Their study, published this year in Social Forces, shows how colleges’ cultural narratives — expressed through mission statements and websites — send powerful signals about who belongs.
While advantaged students are drawn to post-material ideals like purpose and discovery, disadvantaged students resonate with straightforward career rhetoric. The effect, the authors argue, is that talented students from modest backgrounds may self-select out of institutions with the highest long-term returns.
PURPOSE VERSUS PRAGMATISM
Emlyon’s Christof Brandtner: “There’s great value in having a diverse pipeline—not just for fairness, but because it makes organizations better at what they do”
“Our study shows that students from less advantaged backgrounds often feel that certain kinds of colleges ‘aren’t for people like them.’ The same logic applies to business schools,” Brandtner tells Poets&Quants. “Language about ‘global leadership’ and ‘world-changing entrepreneurship’ can sound inspiring to those already born or socialized into elite business culture, but alien to those for whom professional school is a huge financial gamble.
“The bigger point is that organizations shape their applicant pools long before anyone applies. People from working-class backgrounds are often willing to invest in education, but they can be diverted by institutions that speak to their reality — especially those that promise career returns in plain terms. Business schools that leave the straightforward talk about employability to low-status competitors risk losing talented applicants who lack full information about the value of their degree.”
The tension is particularly acute in MBA marketing. Programs advertise sky-high salary boosts and robust employment pipelines, while also framing the degree as a platform for impact.
“The opportunity is there for business schools to show that employability and purpose aren’t opposites,” Brandtner says. “You can make a pragmatic case for social impact — climate change, entrepreneurship, community leadership — without assuming everyone already sees themselves as a ‘global changemaker.’
“From what I can tell, many B-schools walk the line between purpose and pragmatism very well already. My school loves boasting about the great employability of our graduates! But I think that prestige discourse is not B-schools’ biggest crime when it comes to giving lower-class people a sense of being in the wrong place.
“Their cultural signals are often pretentious — lavish campus photos, networking trips to exotic destinations, expensive social events, and just the notion of being ‘elite.’ Those things communicate exclusivity much more loudly than post-material values and concerns about diversity, which are much more subtle markers of high class and already have a negative impact on whether students think they fit into college. Imagine how much more damage a reputation for being ridiculously expensive can do.”
WHEN GLOBAL LANGUAGE FEELS EXCLUSIVE
Institutional exclusion also travels across borders. While Jackson and Brandtner’s study focused on U.S. colleges, Brandtner believes the same dynamics play out globally.
“I can tell you that universities and professional schools elsewhere embrace prestige language, and how prospective applicants will react to that language is likely not universal.”
Noting that he is not an expert in MBA admissions, nor is the study about that, he adds:
“It probably also depends a lot on the program. MBAs attract people who already identify with the global business class, while earlier-stage programs, like a Master’s in Management, draw a more diverse mix of first-generation or regional students. In both cases, though, class differences travel. Business schools export the same cultural template of being confident, cosmopolitan, and globally mobile. Those expectations can make talented applicants from modest or non-Western backgrounds feel like outsiders, even in programs that actively recruit them.”
LESSONS FROM CORPORATE RECRUITING
Business schools often mirror the employers they feed into, and here too the research resonates. Prior work by Northwestern sociologist Lauren Rivera has shown that consulting, finance, and law firms rely heavily on “cultural matching” in recruitment, favoring candidates who already feel at home in elite spaces.
“We know a fair bit about how recruiting in professional settings reproduces class inequalities,” Brandtner says. “Northwestern sociologist Lauren Rivera’s excellent work on ‘cultural matching’ shows how recruiters in law, consulting, and finance look for people who feel comfortable in elite settings—who share hobbies, humor, and habitus.
“That matching process likely already starts with how employers describe themselves. The general lesson from our study is not to hide behind the idea of a ‘pipeline.’ If diverse candidates aren’t applying to your organization, ask why—and what your own messaging might have to do with that. Too many companies (and incubators, universities, etc.) treat a homogeneous applicant pool as a fact of nature when it’s really a product of how they present themselves.
“There’s great value in having a diverse pipeline—not just for fairness, but because it makes organizations better at what they do. Prestige rhetoric and top-ranking obsession can easily turn people away if it feels detached from real career outcomes or daily life. A more pragmatic tone, grounded in what people actually need and value in an education, will go some way toward widening the field.”
HOW PROJECTS ARE FRAMED MATTERS
Even inside the classroom, exclusionary signals can shape ambition. Brandtner points to consulting projects and experiential learning modules, now staples of MBA programs.
“There was a recent story about how many students never dreamt of becoming consultants until they entered business school — and then felt that was the only acceptable ambition because schools ‘funneled’ students into high-paying careers. The way projects are framed matters: if everything is about ‘elite leadership opportunities,’ it suggests a narrow definition of success.
“One challenge is how to make pragmatic cases for things like decarbonization strategies or social entrepreneurship. There’s a moral argument for those topics, but also a very practical one — about where the economy and the jobs are heading. Some students come in skeptical; once you engage them in open debate, they often see the logic.
“Schools also need to be careful about mimicry. Doing what your ‘strategic group’ does — whether it’s Harvard or INSEAD or emlyon — can make you sound alien to your actual constituency. There’s no reason a school in Tennessee needs to sound like a school in California.”
TALKING ABOUT DIVERSITY — AND MEANING IT
The study also highlights the risks of inauthentic diversity rhetoric.
“In our study, the schools that talked the most about racial diversity were often the least diverse. That kind of mismatch makes institutions look inauthentic. If diversity is in your DNA, you won’t just talk about it. You’ll also have tangible evidence to back up your commitments.
“What could that be? A few thoughts: Actively recruiting outside of elite channels and schools, telling the stories of first-gen students showing that people who cannot afford a GMAT tutor succeed, and showing stories of local success, like people who built regional businesses or ended up in nonprofit roles, and not only in global finance and consulting. Our colleagues Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev also show that mentorship programs and demonstrated accountability are what make diversity programs effective. Maybe also opening up networks to students who do not already have them and offering credible and transparent ways to apply for scholarships.
“The solution certainly isn’t to abandon the language of diversity, but to back it up with credible options: scholarships, mentoring, and visible role models. For some applicants, the word ‘diversity’ has become politically charged, but they still respond to fairness, opportunity, and belonging when those ideas are expressed concretely. I’m skeptical of schools retreating from equity commitments to appear ‘neutral.’ If you do that, you only confirm that the commitment was never real. Once you start unravelling those values, it’s very hard to rebuild trust.”
WHERE THE RESEARCH COULD GO NEXT
While his study was not designed around professional schools, Brandtner sees clear parallels.
“It would definitely be worth studying how these schools reproduce exclusionary narratives that later reappear in the industries the schools feed into — like the tech sector’s start-up culture or philanthropy’s ‘systems change’ talk,” he says. “Much of this language sounds visionary but actually narrows participation by equating success with grandeur and privilege.
“The first job out of college — or B-school for that matter — won’t make anyone a ‘global leader,’ and pretending otherwise just alienates the very people who could make those fields stronger.”
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