Developing the next generation of supply chain leaders: Is higher education serving the needs of the marketplace?

Higher education faces mounting pressure from declining enrollment, the demographic cliff, and increased scrutiny of learning outcomes. At the same time, demand for supply chain professionals is growing globally at double-digit rates, creating an opportunity for universities to align curricula with workforce needs. Since its emergence in the 1980s, supply chain management has evolved from a siloed operational discipline to a strategic value chain perspective. While academic programs have expanded rapidly, future curricula must further adapt by shifting to a value chain management framework, emphasizing risk, sustainability, and geopolitics, and including the development of leadership capabilities. Institutions that successfully evolve their programs will better prepare graduates for leadership in an increasingly complex global value chain environment.

The evolution

Many higher education institutions are at a crossroads. Declining student enrollment, increased scrutiny on student learning outcomes, post-graduation ability to repay debt coupled with the advent of mega companies claiming that college degrees are not a prerequisite for employment all add up to an environment that is under a lot of pressure. These facts are in addition to the often discussed “demographic cliff” which relates to the sharp decline in U.S. high school graduates beginning this year and continuing well into the next decade.

In the general high-pressure environment, the growth in supply chain-oriented jobs over the next decade according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report shows growth rates in the double digits (17%+). EU and APAC show robust growth rates as well in the double digits. This bodes well for higher education to provide training and formal curriculum to support job market growth. We will acknowledge that the growth in the jobs does cover both the vocational and non-vocational aspects of supply chain management so trade schools/trade-related programs will also benefit from this job market trend.

To understand what the current state of higher education (degree granting only and does not include trade schools) is and where it should head, it is imperative to understand the evolution of the field of study.

The year was 1982 the first time the term supply chain management was mentioned in the press—Financial Times, June 4 to be specific. Keith Oliver, a partner with Booz Allen Hamilton, was the originator of the term, although that has been debated by Dr. Wolfgang Partsch, who was also a member of the same team as Keith. I have had the pleasure of being associated many years later with both during my respective tenure at Ernst and Young LLP and Booz Allen Hamilton (now Strategy &). Both individuals were and are true pioneers in driving the integration of the once siloed fields of planning, procurement, operations, transportation, and customer service.

I began my own practitioner journey into the siloed field via work in lean manufacturing and then strategic sourcing and operations management starting in the year 1993. Prior to that, my formal training in the field was comprised of heavy analytics (mathematics, statistics, data structures /algorithm design and programming), operations research and management, inventory optimization and other tangential areas within the business school. However, I had to take courses in 3 different schools and colleges within the same university to create an educational journey that matched my professional goals.

During the past 33 years of my professional journey (private sector and academia), I have had the pleasure of working in many parts of the world including NA, MENA, EU and APAC. I have recruited colleagues from universities in the regions mentioned above and have enjoyed watching the shift in the capabilities that displayed evolution and not revolution. The analytical skills changed gears from training in fundamental concepts to more applications and presentations. More emphasis was placed on project and program management and team dynamics. Integrative constructs that showed the evolution of supply chains to being value chains was emphasized and the adoption of technology in the various segments of the silo was given very high importance.I have wondered whether we emphasize the basics as much as we used to. I still remember working inventory calculations using the core formulae, doing simplex calculations on a piece of paper and looking at lane by lane LTL and TL rates as well as the fundamentals of ABC analysis during my studies or shortly thereafter. I personally benefited from that type of fundamentals training—also known as first principals; but do understand that we were starting the journey when computing power became cheaper and more ubiquitous.

The field of study also broadened from within the factory, DCs and retail walls to become omnichannel (the internet revolution). It soon included all aspects of customer service (SCOR model) as well as product design and development and led to an expansion that now includes the various tiers of suppliers and customers (I coined the term Extended Value Community in my book The New Rules (2001).

Executives such as Apple’s Tim Cook, GM’s Mary Bara, Land O’Lakes’ Beth Ford, Walmart’s Doug McMillan, Flex’s Revathi Advaithi and Coca-Cola’s Henrique Braun are among those that have risen to the CEO via the supply chain ranks. These career progressions have continued to place SCM in the very heart of boardrooms. There are many VC and PE funds that focus on supply chain startups and rollups to deliver significant returns of value to their investors.

In the 1990s, fewer than 20 universities in the U.S. offered formal training or courses in the field of supply chain management across all degree levels (associate’s, bachelor’s and master’s). That number today is closer to 500, representing a staggering 25 times growth in formal training. This does not include the various certificates that exist in the broader non-education marketplace. The worldwide trend in formal curriculum growth shows similar trends of growth and expansion over the past three decades.

In the next section we will do a deeper dive into the formal educational journey across select parts of the globe that exists today.

Journey until now

The suite of educational programs in the U.S. are oriented toward successful attainment of the various levels of advanced CSCP, CPSM, SCP pro certification(s) and the current needs of the professional industry, including management consulting.

Most of the leading programs have a strong foundational curriculum in topics that cover the fundamentals in the following areas.

1. Operational excellence which includes operations planning, and international management
2. Logistics and procurement strategies and processes
3. Analytics and usage of technology to enable and optimize supply chains
4. An introduction to some elements of risk and sustainability
5. A Capstone course/project that showcases experiential learning

European programs tend to follow a similar path; however, there is a much deeper dive in the areas of sustainability and digitization that reflect the EU’s somewhat strong commitment to sustainability (until the November 2025 session of EU parliament that significantly wound back the ESG policies).

Additionally, there are some program options tailored by sector (e.g., automotive, energy, healthcare), reflecting broad SCM roles and practical applications.

Many APAC master’s programs combine business, engineering, analytics, and operations with a key emphasis such as logistics, operations, procurement, sustainability, and digital tools, all grounded in current business practices.

Given the logistics and manufacturing-heavy regional economies, the programs tend to emphasize stronger industry exposure and skills training with the programs often aligned with cross border and global trade/compliance

To qualitatively enhance the content and test some of my hypothesis, I discussed the evolution of the supply chain/value chain higher education with several industry executives and practitioners. The executives were based in North America, the EU and APAC. One of the executives had significant prior work experience in the MENA region as well. The executives each held advanced degrees from R1 universities in the U.S. and India, with one holding a Ph.D. in business from a leading Swiss university. One of them had secured the CSCP certification and the five of them have combined work experience of 120 years across the globe and have been active in hiring in their fields.

The discussions centered on a few main themes: adequacy of the current state of formal training provided by degree-granting institutions; gaps that they perceived and what they would expect from the next generation of leaders.

The question on adequacy centered around a choice of ranking from 1–5 with a score of 1 being “did not meet,” 2 being “met many,” 3 being “met and exceeded some,” 4 and 5 being “ready to go for the next decade.” The average score based on the simple survey was 2.8 with an interesting caveat. Most of the executives surveyed felt that the score would have been higher if they had been asked the same question about two to three ago. They would have scored the current state slightly higher and noted that the rapid changes in the global landscape over the past two to three years have shown that the programs need more overhaul to remain relevant. The ranking was not directed toward any specific programs or types of universities, but largely based on the graduates that these executives either worked with, interviewed or consulted for. Given their experience span and breadth of the executives (see end note), there is no bias that would be built into the scores. An additional point (mainly EU centric) was based on the rank being for degreed candidates and not vocational schools. The consensus was that the field was shifting very rapidly and that the needs of the market/industry was outpacing the innovation and change that was exhibited by being taught at many universities.

The executives pointed to four areas they felt was impacting the ability of new graduates to have a greater impact in today’s hyper-connected and competitive world. The areas were as follows (given the business implications of the perspectives, we will not delve into the details but provide resolutions and suggestions in curriculum and structure sense in the next section).

1. Some erosion in teaching the fundamentals to accommodate new topics that were “in vogue” without truly embedding them into existing coursework.
2. Lack of preparedness to rapidly gain executive presence that is necessary even for entry-level analyst/project management personnel.
3. Lack of a high degree of hands-on experience with solving difficult and cross departmental / cross divisional problems that are par for the course in today’s supply / value chains.
4. Missing knowledge and insight into linkages that have enabled the evolution of SCM to VCM, as well as the evolution from being viewed as a cost center to a source of competitive advantage.

Where should we go next?

Higher education will need to continue to pivot, transform and adapt to serve the future needs (some of the broad indications that led to hypotheses were enumerated above). Degree-granting universities/institutions are faced with a U.S. market acceptance of 30-credit-hour master’s degree plans and UG concentrations that range from four to five deep-dive courses in the field. The degree plans and requirements may vary a bit outside the U.S. but are within a 10% variation upward. So, pivoting implies shifting the degree plans, creating new courses, and in the end, also finding faculty members to teach the content effectively.

Pivots anywhere are difficult and especially so in higher education. This is largely driven by traditional aspects inherent in the operating model—namely, the lack of urgency to innovate, established faculty roles and performance measurements that support volumetric outcomes and a lack of incentives to motivate disruptive curriculum development and adoption. The adage of “why change if I don’t have to or need to” is largely applicable and hence it takes a high degree of organizational resilience and self-motivated desire to be on the leading edge to drive transformations. However, in my past decade serving the higher education sector, I have found that innovation is much easier to implement and faculty embrace change more openly.

As we look to the future evolution of curriculum to support the growing needs as outlined above, here are the main areas that will need to be addressed to meet the needs for the next decade.

The major themes for pivots/augmentations fall under the following seven categories.

1. Continue the move from a supply chain-only focus to include value chains.
2. Augment and deepen focus on the extended community fundamentals.
3. Provide greater focus on risk and resilience, coupled with analyzing the impacts of geopolitics and policy making.
4. Demonstrate closer alignment with finance and the financial implications of supply chain decision making.
5. Promote and educate students on the adoption of the usage of intelligent technology for AI, automation and optimization by modifying the core curriculum.
6. Incorporate deeper learning on topics in organizational behavior and leadership across the extended ecosystem.
7. Reimagine delivery pedagogy to be closer to allow for hands on lab-like learning via experienced faculty.

Let’s elaborate on the themes to provide some additional clarity.

1. The main difference between supply chain management and value chain management is that even today the primary focus of SCM in a higher education setting is primarily operational and VCM is fundamentally strategic. As an example, the field of SCM asks: “How do we deliver the right product, at the right time, at the lowest cost?” VCM asks: “How do we design the enterprise and its ecosystem to create durable value?”
   
   This shift includes the introduction of broader topics of innovation, product imagining, product development and registrations, quality control, product registrations and trade policies as well as the proactive design of the span and scope of the end-to-end delivery chain, i.e. potential JVs and M&A options, into the core curriculum.
2. Augment and deepen the curriculum on extended community fundamentals is par for the course. The fundamentals include a curriculum that covers all aspects of the SCOR model, the SCOR DS model (ASCM ownership) as well as the Extended Value Chain (EVC) construct (written by author in 2001). Adding curriculum on negotiations, large-scale program capture and management, and pivot the teaching to case-basis and more experiential learning-based as opposed to textbook teaching. Additionally, compromising on content from the core to include buzzword-centric courses will not bode well for student learning outcomes.
3. Quoting/paraphrasing the words of several individuals (see end of article note), the field of supply chain management has moved from being deterministic to being much more stochastic. This is driven by the need to focus on risk and resilience in all aspects of the supply chain (see articles by the author in SCMR December 2024 and November 2025), including curriculum that deals with managing geopolitics and influencing policies. Geopolitics and influencing policies have typically been taught in political science or public administration curriculum (if at all) and the cross-pollination between the disciplines.
4. Value chain management/supply chain management is steeped in finance and financial implications that arise from the inherent cost structures. However, curriculum in corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and tax efficiencies are not generally part of the standard coursework in many degree-granting programs that focus exclusively on the topic (exclude the MBA in SCM since the MBA portion will cover some of the financial aspects). This gap between financial management of VCMs/SCMs should be bridged.
5. Technology, automation, optimization, and digitization efforts are at all-time highs and will continue to dominate discussions. The rapid advent of AI (all variations generative and agentic) will accelerate the process (probably in similar vein to the dot-com era of 1999–2001 that added omnichannel management forever into the Design to Delivery processes). This is coupled with the advanced usage of analytics and big data management. Curriculum that provides pragmatic applications of all topics must be woven into each course and not be taught just as a standalone topic.
6. The age-old construct of people, process, and technology remains in the field and when we factor in the EVC (ecosystem) management that is needed in today’s hyper-connected world—the people aspect becomes even more crucial. However, with managing people comes the importance of managing and designing organizations for steady state as well as crisis times. Having managed global multi-national companies in my past, the need for effective organizational behavior, design, leadership and knowing how to tap into the EQ (emotional quotient) becomes key for the next generation of leaders. Can all this be taught? The answer is “no”—however, introducing the need to maintain focus on all the topics should be included in the curriculum so that we don’t become a footnote in the famous book by Mark McCormack, What they DON’T not teach you at Harvard Business School?
7. I pivoted to higher education almost a decade back. During my time, we had to manage the COVID pandemic and the acceleration of all aspects of online teaching pedagogy (it can be a bit of an alphabet soup—online asynch, online anytime, only synch, online hybrid, online competency-based, and on and on) and now the rapid advancements in AI. The fact that higher education has embraced online is yesterday’s news. The fact that online pedagogy is required to serve the non-traditional workforce is also in the rearview mirror. However, several STEM fields have maintained the usage of laboratory work (hands-on training) or practicum hours as part of their programs. Our opinion is that the effective usage of lab work in the curriculum would behoove for a better prepared student. Lab work can be in the form of practicums, live cases, actual simulations and even field work. This work must be coupled by faculty who blend scholarly output with deep expertise as practitioners. Many universities will advertise the fact that “live cases” are part of curriculum, but when you really dig deeper, you will find that maybe one course had a live case as part of the students’ learning outcomes. We position that every course should embrace elements of a lab so that the traditional (full time) and non-traditional students benefit from more exposure to scenarios. This can be augmented also by incorporating current work that non-traditional students are doing in their profession / companies as competencies that can be credited toward their learning journey (especially for competency-based learning).

The above listed facets are meant to serve as some guidelines and not the panacea for higher education efforts to serve the workforce development needs. I am sure that many of the leading programs across the globe have taken steps to incorporate variations of these topics into their programs. However, I am also just as confident that there are many institutions that have not embraced the need to evolve and change the curriculum to match the needs for the next decade (and beyond). The field does not have a standard (unlike CPA) curriculum that can be used as a baseline measure, and neither do we have continuing education requirements. The best part of this field is that it is a) in high demand, b) evolving and c) had increased in position and prominence in the various industry sectors globally.

Sincere thanks go to the following executives and long-time colleagues: Nishad Gadgil, Shaun Harris, Toly Novik, Deep Parekh, Ph.D., and Budaja Thamrin for their points of view on the current situation and futuristic thinking on the gaps.

About the author

Sumantra Sengupta, Ph.D., CTP, is a veteran practitioner in the field of global supply chain/operations management as well as managing risk and resilience. He currently serves as the founding dean of Rio Grande College of Business, at Sul Ross State University in Texas (a member of the Texas State University System).
He pivoted to academic management after a 26-year professional career including serving as partner/SVP with several general management consulting firms and consumer products companies as well as group president of a multinational food and feed security company with global operations. He has been a contributor to Supply Chain Management Review since 1998 and the opinions in this article are based on his own experiences.

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