For the past 30 years, business schools have been bemoaning a lack of women on their MBAs. And progress has been made – from virtually none during the Eighties, there are now three women for every seven men on an MBA course worldwide. But numbers seem to have reached a plateau in the past few years, with MBAs lagging behind the likes of law and medical school, and especially undergraduate business degrees, which attract roughly the same numbers of men and women.

Optimism is the order of the day at Edhec Business School. The Grand École just outside Lille in northern France is the country's biggest provider of management education and is now trying to transform itself into an international education and research powerhouse. It has built a new campus, opened six research centres, and energetically recruited faculty and students from around the world. Edhec's rise is the latest sign of how French and European business education is reinventing itself for the 21st century.

Are students of business ready for lessons in ethics or do they think they are a waste of space? This was an issue dividing the deans and directors who attended the Association of MBAs' (Amba) conference in Berlin last week. Some speakers thought that students were thoroughly sceptical about companies that embraced business ethics; others detected an increasing consciousness of business ethics in the student population.

"Creative" is a much-abused word. It is all too often applied to things which really are just a little different or simply doing their job. But creativity plainly exists – there would be no art, literature or music if it did not – and understanding what it is and how it works will be increasingly valuable to businesses in an ever more competitive world.

When Simon Ramsay and Professor Jonathan Gosling of the University of Exeter Business School talk of an MBA these days, they intend it to stand for Masters of Business and Action. Which may sound like Mattel's latest addition to the Barbie and Ken range, but, in fact, Ramsay explains, it is what they hope students who take their new One Planet MBA (in this case Master in Business) will become.