Harvard Business School Ends Required Global Immersion for First-Year MBAs

Harvard Business School will no longer require first-year MBA students to travel abroad for a global capstone project, ending a signature element of its first-year curriculum that has sent hundreds of students overseas annually since 2011.

MBA curriculum chair Changyi “Charlie” Wang announced the change in a Sept. 9 email to the MBA Class of 2028, writing that global immersive field learning would instead move to January 2028, during students’ second-year Elective Curriculum.

The email went out hours after a faculty meeting on the change and more than three weeks into the semester for first-year students, who began their Required Curriculum courses on Aug. 31.

The capstone will be replaced by what Wang called “expanded portfolio of experiential learning offerings,” built around the school’s existing Immersive Field Courses. HBS will subsidize the second-year trips for the Class of 2028, he wrote, “so that no student experiences cost as a barrier to participation.”

Wang cited two reasons for the shift: a desire to give students more flexibility in shaping their coursework, and mounting restrictions on international travel.

He pointed to a “multiyear review of the field method, reinforced by a recent in-depth assessment,” which he wrote concluded that CAP “would be better situated in the second year of the MBA Program.”

HBS spokesperson Brian Kenny wrote in a statement that the school had “two streams of activity underway for some time now.”

”One involves designing more flexibility into the MBA Program, creating additional optionality so that students can choose pathways that best align with their academic and career interests,” Kenny wrote. “The other was the review of the field method and the FIELD Global Capstone (CAP) course, part of the ongoing work we are always doing to ensure the overall effectiveness of the curriculum.”

He declined to detail the review’s findings.

Wang said students now arrive at HBS with a “wider range of international experiences” and travel on student-led treks during the program, making engagement with the course’s content “more varied as a result.”

He also argued that international travel would not be possible for a significant portion of the class, citing “new and changing visa guidelines” and “health considerations, family responsibilities, and other personal situations.”

Harvard has been locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration since last year over billions in frozen federal research funding and the University’s authorization to enroll international students. Federal judges blocked both actions, and the case over international enrollment remains unresolved.

International students have made up more than a third of recent MBA classes, though HBS has not yet released the Class of 2028 profile.

Wang wrote that as many as 12 percent of first-year students in recent years were unable to complete the course as designed, adding that “this year, we know the percentage would be much larger.”

He framed the change as continuous with the program’s history, calling it a “transition” and “another phase of the evolution that has been a constant since the course’s launch.”

CAP worked with 170 global partners across 15 cities, according to the course’s HBS webpage, which was taken offline days before Wang’s email went out. The second-year Immersive Field Courses offered in Oct. 2024, by comparison, spanned nine locations.

Wang wrote that the second-year courses draw on “deep faculty expertise” in areas including innovation, climate change, supply chains, entrepreneurship, and artificial intelligence.

CAP descends from FIELD Global Immersion, launched under then-Dean Nitin Nohria in 2011 as part of a new first-year course, Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development. At the time, HBS sent more than 900 students to several cities across 10 countries in one week, working on 152 projects with 140 corporate partners.

Wang wrote that HBS would hold sessions in the coming weeks for students to ask questions and share details on “new investments” and other initiatives in the months ahead.

“In the weeks to come, there will be a range of opportunities to learn more, ask questions, and share your ideas and suggestions,” he wrote.

—Staff writer Siena G. Devine Guzmán can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @sienadevinee.