EMBA: Executive MBA or Entrepreneur MBA?
09 September 2024
Andrew Crisp draws on findings from the Executive MBA Council and CarringtonCrisp market research to suggest a new way forward for the EMBA degree.
Historically, the EMBA was a degree where corporations sponsored individuals who they had identified for senior roles in their organisation, it was the ticket to the C-suite. However, in recent years, corporate support has been in decline. The Executive MBA Council 2023 program survey found only 16% of students received full sponsorship from their employer.
Despite the decline in corporate sponsorship, The Executive MBA Council reported that the degree was in good health, “In 2023, EMBA programs witnessed a notable surge in interest, as reflected in the increase of average inquiries from 795 in 2022 to 982 this year. Completed applications rose to an average of 113, compared to 104 in the previous year. The most striking growth was observed in the average class size, rising from 46.1 in 2022 to 53.4 in 2023.”
So what is going on with the Executive MBA? It is perhaps a change in the nature of the degree and a change in the desire of those wanting an EMBA.
Executive MBAs, although often part-time, tended to be classroom-based degrees. Increasingly, and especially post-COVID, the EMBA has been delivered in hybrid and blended formats, most notably the Wharton Global Executive MBA, with fees of just over $230,000.
While few can afford the Wharton fees, a raft of other Executive MBAs, offered at lower cost, delivered with a large element of online provision, are opening the market to a wider cross section of students. For these new students, motivation is still largely career driven, but may not be all about the C-suite.
The most recent Tomorrow’s MBA study from CarringtonCrisp and EFMD found that while the main motivation for EMBA study was that ‘it is essential for me to advance my career as I desire’, the second most popular reason for study was ‘it will equip me with key skills to start and/or grow a business’.
COVID has again had an influence on career aspirations. Prospective EMBA students perhaps become disenchanted by the corporate response to the pandemic in some cases. Others have simply come to believe that some large organisations have strategies, products and services with limited futures, that new technologies will produce new business models which current corporations will find hard to adopt.
The target market for the EMBA may not have changed in terms of age but rather experience. A US study in 2019 found that the mean age of founders of the fastest growing new ventures was 45. The typical age of an EMBA student is 39. However, today’s 40 something may be different from that of a couple of decades ago, instead of a largely corporate career up to that point, they may have had some previous start-up experience as part of another venture.
Consequently, the Executive MBA may be becoming a degree for those who rather than wanting to progress to the C-suite, prefer to leave the corporation and start their own business. Such a shift in student preferences means schools needing to rethink content, connections, delivery, networking and the promotion of the EMBA.
The future may be less Executive MBA and more Entrepreneur MBA.
The next round of the Tomorrow’s MBA study will take place in November 2024.