HEC Paris launches its New Responsibilities strategy and aims to raise €300 million in funding for its Foundation by 2031

In a world where debate is drying up, social mobility has stalled and immense challenges lie ahead, HEC Paris seeks to take on a much more prominent role in societal engagement – significantly expanding its contribution to the free dissemination of knowledge – while strengthening its position as a leading Higher Education platform for co-developing sustainable and inclusive solutions to society’s major challenges. The New Responsibilities strategy embodies this ambition. Built around three main priorities – reshaping destinies, informing and inspiring, and serving as an innovation platform for shared and sustainable prosperity – it reaffirms the school’s public-interest vocation and ushers it into new era of responsibility in which research, education and action come together to serve the general interest. 

To nourish this philosophy, the HEC Foundation is launching a vast fundraising campaign aiming to raise €300 million by 2031 – a date which will mark the 150th anniversary of the school’s Foundation. €100 million will be earmarked for the reinvention of the HEC campus at Jouy-en-Josas, with the rebuild due to be completed in 2031. The other €200 million will be dedicated to the development of the New Responsibilities strategy. Jean-François Palus, former Group Managing Director of Kering, President & CEO of Gucci, will take over from Olivier Sevillia at the helm of the HEC Foundation to oversee the success of this campaign. 

Responsibility 1: Reshaping destinies and unleashing talents

In the face of an unprecedented stagnation in social ascension in France, be the school which changes destinies on a large scale (of students who may never be HEC Paris graduates) and reveal game-changing talents.

To achieve this, HEC Paris will broaden its engagement and greatly widen the circle of those benefiting from its support, beyond its own students. 

Two firm beliefs will drive this task: 

Given that education must evidently play a key role in social ascension, the school will strengthen its engagement to reveal talents from high-school level. It will reach out to thousands of pupils every year, extending to a nationwide level its various public-speaking programs (Eloquentia@HEC) for 11th grade and final-year high school students) and entrepreneurial spirit programs (HEC Young Innovators for 10th graders). 

Likewise, it will continue to diversify its admission paths to include a greater number of excellent students and will massively support (financially and via mentorship) outstanding French and international students to reach a minimum of 25% social scholarship students on its Master in Management program. HEC Paris will draw on its experience in this field to strengthen its ability to change the destiny of thousands of vulnerable but talented individuals across France, so that they may live from their activity, create jobs, and regain or inspire confidence.

Beyond social opportunity, HEC Paris also aims to change the future of its students by triggering personal and collective changes. The campus must serve not just as a place of learning, but must increasingly become a venue for change. From on-campus living to academic commitment, from mentorship to community service (Master in Management students notably), each element is designed to develop self-awareness, responsibility, and resilience. Our aim is to endow students with the ability to navigate uncertainty, work together beyond differences, and provide meaningful and empathic leadership in a fragmented world.

Responsibility 2: Informing public debate and inspiring decision-makers

HEC Paris intends to provide decision-makers, companies and citizens with the keys to understanding major economic, technological and social transformations.

Moving forward, the institution will bring together all its centers of excellence (entrepreneurship, Tech, leadership, sustainability, AI, family businesses, etc.) under the HEC Institute, an integrated structure that will boost the visibility and influence of the school’s research work. Its ambition is to create an ecosystem of expertise and actions capable of addressing the major challenges of our time – the climate transition, AI, the future of work, social cohesion, the future of democracy, geopolitical tensions, etc.

Starting in 2026, several practical initiatives created via HEC research, and designed to tackle major social challenges, will be brought into play:

• Barometers to measure major economic and social transformations

• Clear and concise position papers aimed at decision-makers;

• Inter-disciplinary studies examining the most pressing issues of our time (productivity, younger generations, ecological transition, etc.);

• Research summaries from HEC faculty members 

• Strategic forums and discussions, bringing together researchers, business leaders, citizens and public officials.

In order to share this knowledge production with the widest possible audience, HEC Paris will also establish itself as a media outlet of its own: in 2026, the business school will create the HEC Media Hub, an open platform that will provide free access to research work and ideas from within its ecosystem, in a variety of formats (videos, podcasts, data stories and articles). The goal: to give HEC Paris a voice that is clear, thorough, humanist and geared toward action.

Responsibility 3: Co-developing solutions to major social and economic challenges and embodying European ambition.

To remain one of the world’s leading management institutions, HEC must become a business school driven by greater multidisciplinarity. It will do so first by integrating more economics, geopolitics, an understanding of planetary boundaries, and deeper insights into how our societies function. It will also do so by giving a stronger place to hands-on learning (work with NGOs, field internships, incubation, etc.) and by strengthening the development of leadership and managerial competencies — such as negotiation, resilience, and change management —required to steer major organizational transformations. Finally, it will pursue this ambition through enhanced collaboration with the schools of the Polytechnique Institute of Paris on science and technology-related topics. As an example, HEC and the Polytechnique Institute of Paris have decided to bring together, within a single structure — “Hi Pace” (integrated into Hi! PARIS, the AI and data excellence center co-founded by HEC and and the Polytechnique Institute of Paris) — most of their joint initiatives in AI and Data courses and programs. This alliance deeply shapes the school’s new pedagogical vision: from the pre-experience programs to the MBAs, all programs will now include learning the “language of science and technology,” within a responsible and ethical framework.

Co-developing solutions to major global challenges also requires fostering an even stronger entrepreneurial mindset — so central to the school’s DNA — and placing it at the service of a more prosperous and sustainable society. The business school will continue to establish itself as one of the leading entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe, thereby helping to position Paris among the world’s most innovative cities. But beyond new venture creation, the school also aims to support the growth of existing businesses. It will do so along two key axes: on the one hand, by facilitating business takeovers, whose number is expected to rise sharply across Europe over the next fifteen years; on the other hand, by launching an acceleration platform to help the most promising start-ups grow into national or European champions, and to support Europe’s existing champions in becoming global players.

“The New Responsibilities strategy marks a turning point for HEC Paris, making it a school that puts its research, its faculty and its ecosystem to work for all those who may never become HEC graduates, but whose energy and talent will play a role in the solutions of the future”, explains Eloïc Peyrache, Dean of HEC Paris. 

The keys to a new economic model

Today, the school is launching the final phase of its economic independence process, initiated in 2016. The first step revolved around administrative independence, while during the second phase HEC Paris sought to balance its accounts without relying on a subsidy from its majority shareholder. The institution must now achieve success in the final stage: independence in investment. 

While remaining a non-profit institution serving the general interest, HEC Paris will need to ensure the longevity of its economic model without relying on public subsidies, acquiring diversified sources of revenue offering long-term resilience. This will involve: 

• Maintaining the school’s leading position in the pre-experience Masters segment, which implies constantly revising the intellectual content offered in this ultra-competitive marketplace (role of AI, importance of geo-economics, leadership capacity, planetary boundaries, etc.) and the structure of the program portfolio

• Strengthening HEC Paris’ global position in the MBA segment through greater differentiation with the world’s biggest brands – leaning into its European identity, its tech and entrepreneurial foundations, and its variety of career pathways

• Continuing to upgrade the school’s reputation for bespoke continuing education programs and boosting HEC’s global appeal via its catalog of continuing education programs (making these more international, more modular and enabling lifelong capitalization of credits). 

• Carving out a place gradually in the Bachelor in Arts and Science segment, with the ambition of achieving global excellence in recruitment (either alone or via a partnership), which should enable HEC to prepare for potential far-reaching transformation in the higher education sector. 

• Stepping up fundraising among individuals and companies, as both a condition and a consequence of the school’s impact

• Reinventing its campus not merely as a building project, but to create the essential conditions for the implementation of the school’s responsibility strategy. More than an upgrade to its infrastructures, this will be a decisive step in building the future of the institution. 

Jean François Palus, incoming President of the HEC Foundation, adds: “Over the past 20 years, the HEC Foundation has laid solid groundwork and accelerated the school’s transformations. Our new fund-raising campaign, #HEC, Campus of the Future, will enable us to give HEC Paris the means to fully achieve its mission: informing the great debates of our era and inspiring decision-makers, reshaping the destinies not only of our students, but of many other talented individuals with incredible potential, encouraging entrepreneurial spirit and co-creating solutions to the major challenges we face – all within a campus that has been completely revamped for the next 50 years.”