After the MBA: the evolution of executive education.

The market for executive education is growing worldwide as corporations have come to appreciate the importance of developing executive talent.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Recent studies indicate the key to this growth is the evolving consensus that business education should be seen as a strategic asset, not an expense.

No longer is an MBA the benchmark, however; nowadays it is simply the starting point. Companies are finding significant return on investment by paying for strategic leadership training for the organization's emerging talent.

One issue driving this development is the debate over the relevance of theory vs. practice. The 2006 edition of America's Best Graduate Schools in U.S. News & World Report titled its business school section with a question: Is the MBA Obsolete?

The magazine cites Henry Mintzberg, a professor at the prestigious McGill University in Montreal, who is a vociferous critic of the current MBA school curriculum. The argument is that MBA students are too young to be taught administration since they have never managed a business.

In his book "Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development," Mintzberg insists that analysis and technique are mistakenly emphasized instead of clinical experience. Leadership, teamwork, communication skills and thinking outside the box of a discipline are more valuable than absorbing case studies, he says.

U.S. business schools are beginning to reflect this argument. For example, the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business now puts 12 MBA students on a team that operates the school's own US$1 million investment fund.

Other schools are dropping traditional business departments such as Finance, Marketing and Accounting in favor of an interdisciplinary approach which is "more in tune with the realities of today's business world," U.S. News & World Report writes.

Continuing Education 

This is all well and good. But these changes serve to emphasize the need for ongoing education, especially wherein companies pay for their employees--even executives and junior executives--to do post-graduate work at top business schools.

The need to embrace executive development is a lesson corporations have been learning for the past decade.

The Financial Times Executive Education 2005 survey indicates that the market for this type of executive education is growing again after a three-year lull.

"Young people need to be developed for increasingly sophisticated jobs," Marie Eiter, executive director for executive education at MIT's Sloan school, told FT. "There's much more of an emphasis on getting middle managers up to a higher level."

The data collected for the FT survey also shows corporations are developing stronger and deeper relationships with the business schools they use. Additionally, an increasingly high number of customized programs are being specified at board level to handle strategic issues.

As corporations learned to embrace executive development, this new focus produced a demand for customized programs--those designed especially for one company--and a gradual drift away from traditional open enrollment programs.

The good news for corporations operating in Mexico is that business schools here are keeping pace with these new ideas. And what's more, schools here in Mexico continue to be held in high regard. The latest Wall Street Journal/Harris Interactive survey ranks Mexico as a worldwide leader in MBA programs outside of the United States. The prestige of Mexico's business schools ranked ahead of European and Canadian schools, according to corporate recruiters, the survey found.

And now these schools are working overtime to develop customized programs to attract corporations looking to invest in the executive talent they already employ. As they do so, they'll find there's plenty of room in this growing market to make a name for themselves.

Douglas Ready, president of ICEDR (International Consortium for Executive Development Research), concurs with this view.

"Brand is not the defining factor any more ... companies are savvy. They don't just blindly go with Harvard because it's Harvard," he told FT.

What is important, he says, is that schools deliver what the client wants.

The FT survey showed customized programs have increased each of the past three years.

The 45 business schools that participated in the FT survey reported that they ran 5,309 custom programs last year, compared with 4,259 in the 2004 survey and 3,905 in the 2003 survey.

Making The Right Choices

So how can a company in Mexico find a school that will work with it to develop a program that suits its needs?

The first thing to do is identify your needs and objectives. Next, you should do a bit of research and see what programs are available, while evaluating the expertise of the schools and the types of companies they already work with. Then, you can begin negotiating with the school to develop a customized program, offering strict terms for your objectives and demanding a clear methodology to achieve these objectives.

While it might make sense to start your investigation with the most prestigious schools--IPADE, EGADEITESM, Universidad Iberoamericana or UAG, for example--quality programs are being designed throughout Mexico.

Convenience (a campus nearby, e-learning programs), return on investment (technological investments required, time required of employees) and potential to transform the program as time goes on are important factors, too.

What follows is a brief examination of several schools, the programs they offer and their educational objectives:

* IPADE (Instituto Panamericano de Alta Direccion de Empresa, www.ipade.mx).

Ranked by FT as the No. 1 business school in Latin America for the third straight year, this school features campuses in Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Puebla, Leon, Tijuana and Torreon. In the Wall Street Journal survey, IPADE graduates ranked No. 3 in the world in the categories of communication and interpersonal skills, and second worldwide in leadership capacity.

The WSJ praised IPADE for its humanistic vision of business, social responsibility, and its emphasis on personal integrity and ethics, themes that have been among its fundamental principles since 1967.

IPADE features customized executive programs within its Programas Especiales Nacionales.

* EGADE-ITESM (Escuela de Graduados en Administracion y Direccion de Empresas at the Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, www.mty.itesm.mx).

Perennially ranked in the Top 10 among Latin American business schools (and ranked No. 1 in this year's Reader's Digest Guia Universitaria), its stated goal is to "develop leadership abilities--providing skills and knowledge necessary to affect change in the world." ITESM has dozens of campuses throughout the republic.

Among its programs, ITESM offers a 16-week Certificate in International Business (undergraduate level) and several masters level degrees ranging from international negotiations to marketing to MBAs with specialization in global business and strategy. They also have part-time MBA programs for working executives, and have had great success with customized programs, which they call Programas Ejecutivos.

They also boast a program offering post-graduate degrees and customized programs for corporations via Internet at their affiliated Universidad Virtual del Tecnologico de Monterrey (RUVITESM, www.tecvirtual.itesm.mx).

* Universidad Iberoamericana (www.uia.mx and www.mty.uia.mx) ranks among the top five Mexican universities and has campuses across the nation.

The Ibero's stated mission is to develop business leaders with creativity, innovative vision, competitiveness and high academic and professional skills.

* UAG (Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, www.uag.mx).

This school offers a reputable MBA as well as a Master of Science of Administration in conjunction with Central Michigan University. The MSA degree is designed to provide a broad background in management skills and the breadth of knowledge needed to perform managerial roles in a variety of organizations. The qualities fostered include insight into human and organizational relationships and the capacity for sound analytical judgment and decision making.

Other schools with well-respected business programs include the Instituto Tecnologico Autonoma de Monterrey (ITAM), the Universidad de Anahuac, the Universidad de las Americas Puebla, the Universidad Regiomontana, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), the Instituto Politecnico Nacional and the Universidad LaSalle.

Most schools offer scholarship and financing programs. For instance, the UAG has a "corporate scholarship"--if a company pays tuition for three employees the fourth is admitted free of charge.

Tom Buckley is the former editor of BUSINESS MEXICO.

RELATED ARTICLE: Learning By Doing

Those who learn by "doing" retain around 75 percent of the information given to them, while after reading materials the typical retention rate is 10 percent and after listening to a conference a mere five percent, a study by consultants Accenture shows.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

When it comes to in-house training, a simulated experience is better than no experience at all, the study says.

In analyzing the way in which people learn Accenture looked at the tendency for some companies to use games to make education more enjoyable. However games are not the only form of "interactive learning"--firms are also using computer simulations, in which participants can take on the role of a director, sales person etc, in order to better understand processes.

Promoters say that simulation makes teaching more effective by imitating the form in which people learn best--putting knowledge into practice.

Learning by simulation is not a new concept. Astronauts and pilots have trained for years using this technique in flight simulators. More recently, the same technique has been used to train surgeons and medical technicians, while office workers will be familiar with simple simulations that allow them to learn new computer applications.

However, Accenture says a growing number of companies with the latest technology are now using the simulation method to teach "soft" skills, such as how to make sales calls, answer the telephone in a call center, or personnel administration.

"When one has a dissatisfied client on the telephone there is no time to consult anything. Employees must be sure of the way to work," said Chris Draper, a partner at Accenture and responsible for learning services for the East Coast area of the United States.

Some learning simulations use animation and video in order to immerse the participants in impressive, three-dimensional worlds. But the majority are like classic computer games, where the students navigate through a series of situations as they respond to questions about the next action they need to undertake.

Training experts agree, Accenture says, that such learning by simulation works by putting employees in an artificial environment where they can fail--repeatedly if necessary--, without suffering the penalties of the real world.

--Tara FitzGerald