The administrators generally agreed that people skills were important, yet those skills remain underrepresented in required courses. One likely explanation: Students don’t like the courses, and they are pressuring administrators to drop them.

When curricula emphasize soft skills, administrators “are significantly more likely to report increased pressure from students to change the curriculum,” the researchers said.

“Given that students are indeed the direct consumer and key revenue stream of most M.B.A. programs,” they write, “this finding supports recent assertions that students’ general disdain for people-focused course work drives considerable policy decisions regarding curricula. … This finding may suggest that with respect to designing a relevant M.B.A., the customer is not always right.” –Katherine Mangan —Companies and Business Students Differ on What Skills M.B.A. Programs Should Teach (Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription))