Charting the course of executive education
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Business schools now offer a wide range of open enrolment courses aimed at middle and senior managers.
So the FT worked with Ilya Breyman, founder of the educational technology companies Coursalytics and Alma Learning, to analyse some of the most significant trends in the provision.
Coursalytics scraped the websites of 163 top business schools around the world that have been included by the FT in one or more of its different rankings since 2023, in order to generate insights into the volume, topics, formats, price and teaching of more than 4,200 courses.
The courses are in a wide variety of subjects, but the most widespread are broadly themed around insights into leadership and coaching. Then come environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, business acumen, and finance and investment. A smaller share cover emerging fields, such as data and business analytics, and blockchain and cyber security.
Breyman notes: “Dedicated AI courses are still relatively few because, usually, the exec ed industry lags several quarters behind a new hype to roll out new courses. At the same time, business schools are swiftly adapting to market demands by integrating AI-related content into their existing programmes.”
Executive Education Rankings 2024
Read the rankings of custom and open-enrolment programmes
The largest single provider of open courses in the sample is Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany, followed by Politecnico di Milano in Italy and Fundação Getulio Vargas — FGV EAESP in Brazil.
As a percentage of the total open courses offered, the University of Strathclyde Business School in Scotland has the highest proportion covering ESG, followed by Fordham University in New York and UCLA Anderson School of Management in California.
Within ESG, sustainable business principles are the most widely offered sub-theme, and the dominant one provided by business schools, while diversity, equity and inclusion is most popular among US schools.
However, in a sign of the value of the content and seniority of the audience, the most expensive courses — measured by median daily price — are for in-person training, led by strategy and change management.
Overall, courses offered by US and Canadian business schools cost the most, and those offered by African schools, cost the least.
Across all in-person courses, the median daily rate is highest at Harvard Business School, followed by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Daily costs also vary significantly between in-person, blended and online formats.
The data also provided insights into teaching, with a median number of four faculty members teaching on in-person open courses lasting at least one week. IE in Spain had the largest number of professors, overall, teaching on its courses, while Wharton had the highest number of “distinguished” faculty leading courses — those with chairs or named professorships.
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