As a successful entrepreneur who founded a Chicago natural foods distributing company 13 years ago, John Paul Higgins wanted to sharpen his business skills. But he didn’t feel he needed a traditional MBA degree.
“An MBA would offer me little economic or organizational value,” said Higgins, 41. “I’m not entry level, and I’m not trying to work myself into a bigger organization.”
He turned to De Paul University’s School for New Learning, which allows him to custom-design his degree program.
“In this particular program, you craft your own concentration,” said Higgins, who has been in the program about 2 1/2 years and expects to complete his degree requirements by the end of December. “It’s a master of arts degree with a business focus.”
Whether individually tailored degree programs such as Higgins’ or custom-designed courses that corporations commission for groups of employees, universities and business schools are finding a growing market for made-to-order learning.
“There has, in general, been a very dramatic increase in custom-designed programs,” said Steve Burnett, a professor of strategic management and director of custom-designed programs for Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston.
Higgins is concentrating on human resource management. He felt he already had acquired many of the skills offered through a traditional MBA program and that his time would be better spent focusing on specific areas of his education.
“Primarily, you draw from your business experience and your areas of interest,” Higgins said of the “learning contract” he developed under the guidance of an academic adviser and a professional mentor assigned by the university.
Students are required to mesh their educational program with their long-term professional goals, said Jean Knoll, Higgins’ academic adviser and an associate professor who teaches undergraduate history and graduate research methods. In developing a learning plan, she said, students conduct extensive research in their field to determine trends and educational requirements.
“My role is as a collaborator in the design of a program, which is both personally and professionally relevant (to the student’s goals),” Knoll said.
With his adviser’s help, Higgins is honing his skills in employee training and working on instructional videos that combine humor and drama to make their points. The result will be products that benefit his company and will be marketable to other companies, Higgins said.
At Kellogg, custom-designed courses account for about 30 percent of executive education offerings. The percentage could be much higher, but the university decided to limit it so it could continue to provide a balanced mix of executive education programs, Burnett said.
Custom programs differ from other executive educationcourses in that they typically are offered to several executives in a company. Traditional courses usually serve representatives of many companies.
“Companies have gotten to be more sophisticated users of executive education,” Burnett said. “The more sophisticated you become, the more you’re going to want that (educational) product to really fit what you’re trying to do.
“The other major force giving rise to more custom programming is that companies are now beginning to use education as a way of changing themselves.” That means that companies need to train several people simultaneously, he said.
“Usually we are approached by an organization that has a particular problem (or a) a new strategy it wants to implement. A lot of the curriculum we already have. What is `custom’ about it is that particular mixture of sessions. And we tailor even those existing subjects” to the business.
Typical custom courses run from one to three weeks, conducted at Kellogg. Companies from around the world send executives, who are housed at Kellogg facilities, Burnett said.
At the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, custom courses make up 60 percent of its executive education program, said Michael Seitchik, director of program development.
“More and more companies are trying to change the way they do business or make significant changes in their strategy or their leadership,” he said. “They’re trying to change an entire team or an entire division or an entire level or an entire company. They need everyone to be learning the same things and talking the same way (because) it’s influencing the way the entire company manages.”
A company’s program is “totally customized in terms of length and topic-and when we customize (one), we try to make it so there’s a true bottom-line impact.”
Programs range from short courses lasting a few days to longer sessions meeting five times a year for a week at a time, Seitchik said. Like Kellogg, Wharton draws students from around the world, and has occasionally conducted courses in Asia or Europe.
“More and more, there’s a trend” toward custom courses, Seitchik said, noting that companies are scrambling to keep up with changing business climates.
“They’re not looking for cookbook answers because everyone knows they don’t work. We help them with (learning how to) manage in more complex environments that are rapidly changing.”
A side benefit of these programs is that the faculty works closely with corporations to design them, he added. “By having these close partnerships with companies we learn a lot too. It’s really a mutually beneficial type of relationship.”
In the Chicago area, schools such as De Paul’s Center for Professional Education recently have begun offering custom courses, and others, such as Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, are considering expanding their involvement.
Holly Zimmer, program manager for De Paul’s Center for Professional Education, said her school concentrates on nondegree programs in production and inventory control, purchasing management, distribution management, quality management for manufacturers, and quality management for service organizations.
“They (companies) want specialized training with the courses tailored for their programs,” Zimmer said.
Larry Baskin, vice president and dean of academic affairs at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, said his school has offered a few custom courses over the years and is exploring expanding the program.
“Our mission is to provide a practical education to working executives,” Baskin said. “If a corporation has a specific need (for a custom course), we see that as part of our mission.”
The school’s primary offerings so far have been executive MBA programs, with tuition routinely being paid by the executive’s respective companies.
During recessionary times such as they now face, companies often cut back on training expenses, Baskin said. “Companies are looking for (training) alternatives. We, as business schools, can provide that alternative.”
DeVry Inc., the parent company of Keller Graduate School of Management, in 1991 formed a new division-Corporate Educational Services-to deal with the growing demand for custom courses.
Anne Faulkner, marketing manager for Corporate Educational Services, based in Oakbrook Terrace, said her organization offers its programs solely at the workplace.
“We specialize in management training, particularly in the areas of project management and process improvement,” she said. “We have some basic core courses we offer, but we tend to do a lot of tailoring of those courses.
“We incorporate a lot of exercises, case studies and examples that are related to, if not specifically drawn from, their own company or their division or their department. What they’re learning and applying makes sense to them.
“There seems to be more demand for courses that are different from the more academic courses, which tend to be more general,” she added. “People were asking for courses that were more directly related to their business needs. The same course just doesn’t work for everybody.”
