Online Education Courses Executive Education

 Online Education Courses Executive Education

Online Education Courses Executive Education

 

However, Mr Sales-Cavalcade was eager to experiment. Online classes are “a fraction of the cost” of campus executive education courses, and mean less time away from families and jobs. Since January 2014, 120 employees have taken an open-enrolment online class from Columbia Business School. He rates the course highly and more staff will follow.

He adds that, in future, sending employees to residential courses “will be questionable” 

unless there is a clearly defined “experiential learning” component. “Business schools need to think about how they reinvent themselves and how they leverage technology,” he says.

It is a message top schools, including Columbia, Harvard and Wharton, are heeding. As technology improves and online learning gains credibility, many schools are creating a portfolio of online courses. These are intended to supplement — not replace — the short, residential executive education courses that have been a cash cow for decades.

Harvard, for instance, offers a three-week course called Disruptive Strategy with Clayton Christensen at $1,500 a head. The class, on the school’s online platform HBX, mixes video lectures, team assignments and case studies.

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Bharat Anand, who runs HBX, admits the growth in free and cheap content online may cause a small fall in numbers on campus courses — and therefore an erosion of a revenue stream. But, he says, companies have different needs and various models will coexist.

At top schools, campus courses retain the prestige and networking possibilities, and big, international client organizations are less price sensitive.

“Among the elite schools, executives will always want to have face-to-face programmers,” says Michael Malefakis, associate dean of executive education at Columbia. “It’s the network effect. The global elites want to be here — whether it’s New York City, Boston, or Fontainebleau

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Still, two years ago Columbia launched online open enrollment courses, costing $2,000-$2,800 per student. It also offers online custom courses.

“The primary goal is not creating a new profit making line of business,” he says. “Certainly, we want to cover costs, but our goal is an economically sustainable business model.”

Wharton last year introduced an eight-week, application-only course for executives taught by Peter Fader, the marketing professor, on the Strategic Value of Customer Relationships. The cost is $3,700 per student. Wharton also offers custom online programmes.

“In the past, the only option was to send people to campus,” says Shilpa Patwardhan, connected learning director at Wharton Executive Education.

“But [the costs] limited the number of people who could take the class. The reach that online education has is what organisations find attractive.”

The price of online courses varies with the number of tutorials, assignments and other “high-touch” features.

“The cost of developing the online programme [for Wharton] is significant,” she says. “The more times the programme is offered — that’s when you begin to see economies of scale both for Wharton and the customer