AI Interest Varies by Age of Prospective Business Students: Report
Credit: shapecharge / E+ / Getty Images- Interest in AI is higher in older candidates and lower in younger ones, according to the 2025 GMAC Prospective Students Survey.
- While 59% of survey respondents 40 and older said they want AI education, that figure was just 41% for those 22 and younger.
- Prospective students reported wanting hands-on experience with AI.
- Over the past year, many business schools have reshaped their curricula to focus on AI.
For prospective business students, interest in artificial intelligence (AI) scales with age.
Schools are infusing AI throughout their curricula, announcing major investments in the fast-growing tech and launching AI-focused institutes and partnerships with major providers.
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AI is also a common feature of online business degrees, which aim to teach that high-demand skill to working professionals.
That’s because AI is reshaping the workforce, with employers indicating that AI skills and literacy will continue to be important in the coming years.
But a new Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) report shows that younger business school candidates are generally less interested in learning about AI through their graduate management program than their older peers.
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According to GMAC’s 2025 Prospective Students Survey, 59% of prospective students 40 and older said they want AI education. But that figure was just 41% for candidates 22 and younger.
The GMAC report notes that the varied interest in AI by age is due to younger candidates’ experience with AI.
“This may be because older candidates have more work experience
without the presence of AI, and, therefore, are more concerned with formal education on how to integrate it into their skillset,” the report reads.
“Meanwhile, younger candidates — especially those 22 or younger who are still likely completing their undergraduate studies — have never worked professionally without AI, and, therefore, do not need to adjust to its presence in the workplace — it is all they have ever known.”
Younger adults have embraced AI in recent years.
A 2025 report from OpenAI found that a third of college-age adults in the U.S. use ChatGPT, and that’s just one of a host of AI tools available.
The GMAC report also notes that there is a geographic variation in students wanting to learn about AI. While 41% of prospective students from the U.S. said they are interested in AI, that figure was above 50% in China and India.
How Students Want to Learn About AI
For those prospective students who said they want to learn about AI, hands-on experience was key.
Roughly 65% of prospective students want AI integrated into the business curriculum through hands-on experiences like business simulations and practical applications.
That interest in hands-on experience is reflected in the moves business schools have made over the past year. Institutions like Rutgers Business School and the American University Kogod School of Business have partnered with AI providers to give students access to AI tools.
Those partnerships also touch on other key areas for AI learning that the GMAC found in its report: Offering courses on AI in business strategy and decision-making, training in how to use AI for daily tasks, and using AI to personalize learning were also cited uses of AI behind hands-on experience.
“Students can build custom tutors to master their coursework; faculty can create AI-powered knowledge hubs for research, and staff can integrate AI into their everyday workflows,” Kogod Dean David Marchick said in a press release earlier this year.
“It’s all about setting each person here up for success as business changes.”
Another key AI subject that students want to see addressed in business school curriculum is AI ethics.
Major business schools like the University of Virginia Darden School of Business have already tackled that subject, with Darden launching an AI ethics institute last year.