Dr. Joyce Kurpiers and Brian Mahoney of Percept Research, attended the 2017 Executive MBA Council Northeast regional meeting from June 5-6. The Cornell SC Johnson College of Business hosted over 50 attendees at the event.
The regional meeting included sessions covering topics such as “High Demand Courses,” “The Value of Coaching,” “Being Agile in Times of Disruption,” “Evaluating ROI using KPIs in Career Management,” “Integrating Entrepreneurship and New Venture Creation into the EMBA Curriculum,” and “What Will the Landscape be in 2025” for discussing best practices.
We wanted to share some of the interesting insights we heard at the meeting...
- Alex Baranpuria (Ivy Exec) suggested three potential funding sources for EMBA students including SoFi, Common Bond, and Prodigy.
- Marissa Hairston (Cornell) pointed out that some companies will not offer financial support to employees with terminal degrees while Geoff Miskinis (MIT) indicated that his university considers his students full-time and eligible to compete for fellowships. EMBA students can have an advantage over other students that do not have real-world experience to demonstrate impact in their fellowship applications.
- Bill Schmidt (Cornell) provided an insightful presentation referencing the story of Ignaz Semmelweis and his hypothesis of ‘death particles’ illustrating resistance to data-driven insights. The ‘Semmelweis reflex’ is a metaphor for the reflex-like tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established norms, beliefs or paradigms.
- Laurie Sedgwick (Cornell) posed questions to the attendees about what truly reflects the success of the EMBA degree.. the power of the network? The power of the brand? How to quantify soft skills?
- Geoff Miskinis (MIT) suggested that most EMBA students are already good at solving structured problems – EMBA programs should help employers see improved ability to solve unstructured problems as an impact of the degree.
- Manoj Thomas (Cornell) recommended that EMBA programs standardize ROI measurement across institutions while Kevin Richard (Suffolk) referenced his engagement of our EMBA Student Exit Survey to cover "90% of his needs for tracking ROI".
- Su-Lan Tenn (York) suggested asking employer contacts that recommended students to the program to evaluate the ROI of the program from their perspective.
Do you have other meeting insights that you would like to share in the article comments section below?
Dr. Joyce Kurpiers shares insights about Northeast EMBA programs
Dr. Joyce Kurpiers led a session focused on key business school metrics in the industry that were measured in the 2016 Executive MBA Council Membership Program Survey and from the MBA Student Entryand MBA Student Exit Surveys offered by Percept Research.
The session included an interactive discussion on trend drivers and how Northeast EMBA programs are adapting to the market, including the growing use of social media to reach prospective students.
Brian Mahoney describing the competitive market
Percept Research serves as the research partner to the Executive MBA Council. The mission of Executive MBA Council is to educate, network and inform. The council both captures and disseminates valuable industry data to member schools, the media, and the corporate sector.
Nicole Woodard (Cornell), Loubna Erraji (Rutgers), and Nina Lukin (Cornell)
Percept Research also conducts higher education market research and communications consulting for over 240 business schools worldwide. Consulting engagements include new program feasibility studies, brand positioning, student lifecycle assessments, and messaging strategy.
Many thanks to Ivy Exec, Prospect Cloud, WorldStrides, Converge Consulting, and Study.net for sponsoring this productive meeting!
Be sure to check out more photos from the regional meeting on the Percept Research Facebook page.
