Tiffany Willis saw the writing on the wall. She had plenty of corporate experience in accounting, auditing and consulting but knew she would need more if she hoped to lead a team: Job listings for positions she wanted said “MBA preferred.” And she admired how colleagues who had the degree approached problems.
“I was missing out,” she says. So she enrolled in a program at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School that put her in class every other weekend. When Willis graduated in 2015, she had multiple job offers and landed at financial services technology company Fiserv as head of operational audit and advisory services.
Willis, now in her early 40s, is a prime example of the kind of person likely to benefit from an executive MBA program, which offers the same credential as a traditional full-time program but is formatted for professionals who want to keep their day jobs. She was at a crossroads in her career, clear on what she wanted to get out of her investment of time and money, and motivated to work hard.
While the Great Recession slowed applications to EMBA programs, demand has come back. In 2016, more than half of those surveyed by the Graduate Management Admission Council reported an increase in applications.
[Determine which EMBA program is a fit for professional goals.]
The structure varies, but EMBA programs are typically about 20 months long and designed so classes take place in a concentrated fashion. Students spend all day Friday on campus one week and all day Saturday the next, for example, or a few days at a stretch once a month.
Targeted students are in the middle of their careers; the average age of participants is about 38. The goal is to equip people with knowledge that they can parlay into greater responsibility and a bigger paycheck.
That paycheck may be more key than ever. Employers used to be willing to pay for all or most of the tuition. No longer. An EMBAC survey found that just 23 percent of students were fully funded by their employer in 2016, with another 36 percent getting some help.
As students have picked up more of the check, they’ve demanded an experience more finely tailored to their goals and interests. At the University of California–Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, for example, students can take electives in entrepreneurship, leadership and strategy on top of the nuts and bolts.
[Learn which professionals benefit the most from an EMBA.]
George Mason University’s School of Business in Virginia offers an EMBA focused on national security; the University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business will launch a 19-month program for health care professionals this spring in which each class will be customized to cover health care topics, from pharmaceutical development to insurance.
As with a traditional MBA, face time with professors and teamwork with fellow students — and the networking opportunities both create — are considered crucial. And many programs include blocks of travel time to give students international experience as a group.
But mindful of the difficulties of balancing a full-time job and family life with academics, a number of schools now broadcast some classes online so participants can occasionally skip the commute. At St. Mary’s College of California, for example, one EMBA program involves 50 percent in-person classes and 50 percent live videoconferencing.
“We try to use technology to replicate the traditional face-to-face experience,” explains Zhan Li, dean of the school of economics and business administration.
When employers were footing the bill — and, in return, expecting their newly minted MBAs to stay on for some period — career services for EMBA students weren’t essential. That, too, has changed.
Many people intend a job switch or career change. So prospective students should ask about services such as executive coaching, help with r e sum e s and positioning, and access to the alumni and student networks.
[Consider these key career benefits from MBA programs.]
And it’s best to be clear about what career outcomes they’re expecting, advises Joan Coonrod, senior director of the MBA career management center for working professionals at Goizueta. Willis credits Coonrod and her colleagues for pushing her to consider what skills she would need to rise to the C-suite as well as to hold out for a job that would make use of her new degree.
Anyone contemplating an EMBA should realize that it’s not a magic bullet, advises Hallie Crawford, an Atlanta-based certified career coach. It’s important to take stock of what you hope to gain.
Once enrolled in a program, you can improve the odds of achieving your goal by staying tightly focused on it, says Crawford. Load up on classes that address gaps in your experience.
Some kind of independent or team project will be required, such as consulting work for a local business; pick projects relevant to your job plans. And if you are aiming for a pivot into a new industry, prepare to be patient and possibly make multiple job moves to get there.
“I had years of experience behind me, but not the degree,” says Melinda Franks, 46, who graduated from Katz’s EMBA program in 2008. She found that “once I had the degree, I could leverage both.”
Eighteen months after graduating, Franks got a director-level position at her then-employer and today is clinical administrator for otolaryngology at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta. Her annual salary boost from that move almost equaled the cost of her MBA.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Graduate Schools 2018” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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Executive MBA: Boost a Career While Working originally appeared on usnews.com
