For Masters of Business Administration graduates, the Wharton experience is not just two years long — it lasts forever.
As part of the new MBA curriculum launched in December, Wharton is promising its graduates — beginning with the Class of 2010 — free, one-week executive education courses every seven years throughout their working lives.
The courses, which will focus on “issues concerning career executives” are part of Wharton’s “lifelong learning initiative,” Vice Dean for Innovation Karl Ulrich said. The courses, taught by standing faculty, will be open enrollment.
Although the courses for alumni were originally expected to cost about $1 million a year, which Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson had estimated in The Wall Street Journal, Ulrich called that a “gross underestimate.”
“It’s going to cost a lot more than that,” he said, adding in an e-mail that “the school’s overall budget is a few hundred million dollars per year, and much of that investment will apply to lifelong learning.”
However, the administration believes that these costs will be repaid.
“If you know that by going to Wharton, you will get this lifelong education, you will be more likely to pay the high tuition,” Ulrich added.
1989 Wharton MBA graduate Bruce Eatroff added that alumni donations are likely to increase. The initiative “will make alumni closer to the school and help fundraising,” he said.
Although Ulrich stressed that the expected increase in donations is not the motive behind promoting lifelong learning, it helps the program “make sense financially.”
“The world is changing rapidly,” Ulrich said. “Our students’ educational needs are going to change over time.”
Another reason these courses will be useful is that “students don’t know what their career experiences are going to be,” Ulrich said. The executive education courses will help alumni learn about new fields they may not have studied as students.
While Wharton administrators stressed the educational value of these courses, students and alumni saw an added benefit from networking opportunities.
“I believe that these courses will be a good time to contact people and to talk with our colleagues in the business world,” second-year MBA candidate Rangel Barbosa said.
“MBA students have naturally a networking side,” Eatroff said. “[These courses] wouldn’t work across all disciplines.”
Some students, such as Wharton senior Elad Golan were “a little upset” that the program will not be offered to undergraduates.
Eatroff also expressed concerns about the ability to get away from work for a week in order to attend such courses. “It would benefit alumni if there were an online course as well,” he said.
Ulrich emphasized that Wharton’s “lifelong learning” objective targets both undergraduates and MBAs. In addition to the planned executive education courses, all Wharton alumni may audit classes for free and participate in annual Global Alumni Forums.
Wharton is “unambiguously the first to have taken a leadership role under the category of lifelong learning,” Ulrich added.
