Source: The New York Times
March 19, 2015
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Conshohocken Curve, a bend in Interstate 76 west of Philadelphia, is one of those traffic-report designations with a plethora of nightmare rush-hour delays. Through much of the winter, nearby St. Joseph’s University took advantage of the inevitable delays to place a billboard promoting its executive M.B.A. program along the curve.
Similarly, there are billboards for Elon University’s part-time M.B.A. program on the I-40/85 commuter corridor near its North Carolina campus and one for the Villanova executive M.B.A. near the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge crossing the Delaware River from New Jersey into Pennsylvania.
While it may seem unusual to market something as sophisticated as a master’s of business administration degree on a mundane format like highway billboards, schools that offer nontraditional M.B.A. programs know their market: commuters.
“The average E.-M.B.A. student is 37 years old with 14 years of work experience and still working,” said Michael Desiderio, executive director of the Executive M.B.A. Council, a trade group. “They look a lot different than someone pursuing a day M.B.A., who is not employed, lives on campus and doesn’t work full time.”
In addition to its billboards, Elon runs sponsor messages about its program on WUNC-FM, the nearest affiliate of NPR, the public radio network, while Temple University’s Fox School of Business has ads on KYW-AM, the Philadelphia all-news station. Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business advertises in commuter train stations, and Rutgers-Camden buys spots on Bloomberg radio.
“That has worked for us,” said Jaishankar Ganesh, dean of the Rutgers-Camden School of Business. “Our target audience is commuting between home and work in New Jersey.”
St. Joseph’s University places advertisements on the exteriors of buses to take advantage of the city’s mass-transit orientation. And it advertises on the Internet radio service Pandora. “You can segment different demographics on Pandora, so we can really target,” said Carolyn Steigleman, the school’s senior director of marketing communications. “Women tend to be a larger group for the executive M.B.A. than the regular one because of the usual at-home issues, so we try to target them.”
The executive M.B.A. has grown in the last several decades as companies and workers require more advanced business knowledge to move up, and potential entrepreneurs seek more education toward their goals. Two hundred thirty-two universities offer the degree, says the council, enrolling about 26,000 students annually. About 126,000 full- or part-time M.B.A.s were conferred in 2011, according to the Education Department.
Executive M.B.A. classes generally convene one or two intensive weekends a month and typically take a few months’ less time to complete than a regular two-year M.B.A., although the cost is about the same within the same school (Temple: $92,000; the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania: $181,000)
The typical executive M.B.A. student is less worried about grades than about practical education, said Linda A. Livingstone, dean of the George Washington University Business School and chairwoman of the accrediting organization the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
“Executive education is almost the opposite of regular education in that students don’t compete with one another but want to collaborate,” she said. “The programs want to dig down to find those people, which is harder than the normal group.”
The Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, which Bloomberg Businessweek rated No. 1
among part-time M.B.A. programs, still markets in traditional spots, like M.B.A. fairs and web seminars, said Deb Lantz, Tepper’s executive director of marketing and communications.
“We want to show the students they are not getting an M.B.A. Lite, that we have the same professors and same education as a regular M.B.A.,” she said.
Social media and other digital methods are used widely to attract students. According to Mr. Desiderio of the E.M.B.A. Council, 82 percent of his members used Facebook to market programs in 2014, compared with 52 percent in 2010. And last year, 91 percent used LinkedIn, while only 58 percent did in 2010.
“LinkedIn especially can really allow you to target people with the right kind of experience,” said Kristy Irwin, a marketer at Villanova’s School of Business and a 2013 Villanova executive M.B.A. graduate.
While most executive M.B.A. programs focus on local residents, the Wharton School programs — one at the main Philadelphia campus and one in San Francisco — market globally. Peggy Bishop Lane, vice dean of the program, said only 20 percent of the students in the Philadelphia program and 50 percent of those in the San Francisco program were local residents. The rest come twice a month from as far away as Europe.
“We depend on digital advertising,” she said. In San Francisco, though, Wharton has banners on street lamps and advertisements on local news radio “so there is an awareness that Wharton is in San Francisco, too,” she said.
In the end there is no better marketing than results. Schools ask graduates to encourage others to look at the program.
“This is not an inexpensive degree. Even here at a public school, it is close to $100,000,” said Michael Rivera, the academic director of Temple’s executive M.B.A. program. “We depend on graduates to tell prospects how we have helped them. Even in the digital age, there is nothing better than word of mouth.”
