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The Changing Face of the MBA

Michael Dwyer spends most of his workweek caring for fragile newborns as the director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Alexandria Hospital.

Though he works a crazy, demanding schedule and has his own newborn at home, the 34-year-old physician sets aside alternating Fridays and Saturdays -- with some study time the rest of the week -- to attend George Washington University's Executive Master of Business Administration program.

Dwyer said he's back in school to learn how to be a better health care manager. He works for a Florida-based company that contracts with hospitals such as Alexandria and places physicians in managerial positions to run the operations they know best. The company is paying Dwyer's $48,500 tuition for the 21-month program.

"Going through medical school, I [received] no business instruction," Dwyer said. "Medicine has changed so much. Now, we are finding we really have a need for business skills among our doctors."

Dwyer exemplifies a growing number and variety of professionals in the Washington area who, faced with increasing competition within their fields, advances in technology and demographic changes in the workplace, are flooding admissions offices of universities and colleges in the region with applications for graduate-level programs designed to hone their business and management skills, including managing diversity.

Once designed for and marketed to young, up-and-coming business executives hoping to quickly climb the ladder in their corporations or financial institutions, these programs are now targeted to typically older professionals in a range of fields -- including medicine, the law and engineering -- who want to run their businesses and departments more effectively. Some universities, such as George Mason University in Fairfax, and Georgetown University and Howard University in the District, are developing specialized programs aimed at industry segments as well as more senior managers.

Several universities in the area within the past five years have established "executive MBA" programs that cater to experienced middle- and senior-level managers. Other schools such as the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have upgraded their MBA programs or increased their offerings.

For example, since Hopkins opened a D.C. center at Dupont Circle four years ago for its School of Continuing Studies, the center's enrollment has increased 210 percent.

Professionals today typically want a course of study that minimizes the time they have to spend in the classroom, while still maintaining the quality found in many full-time MBA programs.

To meet the increased demand, business schools in the region have introduced new programs or restructured others in an effort to accommodate prospective students with busy personal lives and time-consuming careers. As a result, the offerings run the gamut from expensive MBA programs for managers and fast-track executives that feature catered meals and study trips abroad (Georgetown and George Washington universities) to part-time graduate degrees emphasizing the business side of such specialties as nursing or information technology (the University of Maryland and Hopkins).

Experts advise professionals contemplating graduate-level business programs to carefully weigh a number of factors before choosing their school, including costs, length of the program, schedule and whether an employer will pay all or part of the tuition. Applicants also are urged not to choose their program or institution on prestige alone, but to consider whether they want a general MBA, an MBA with an emphasis in a specialty area or a master's degree in a particular business field, such as real estate, engineering or information technology.

Hopkins, for example, has developed a number of specialty business programs including those for physicians and nurses. The nine-month program for physicians, called the Business of Medicine, is designed to give doctors the financial groundwork they need to cope with the changing business of health care.

The graduate nursing program at Hopkins offers a combined degree in nursing and business and includes such courses as accounting, nursing management, marketing and information systems.

Hopkins also offers a graduate degree in real estate, which focuses on the commercial side of the business. Program courses include advertising and marketing, leasing, property management and construction.

Elizabeth Blankenship, who got an MBA from the University of Maryland several years ago and completed the real estate program at Hopkins in 1993, said she would have opted for just the Hopkins program if it had been available earlier. Blankenship said the business courses in the real estate program allowed her to study the various aspects of commercial real estate that her general MBA didn't cover.

"As a senior manager, I have a much better understanding of everyone's department," said Blankenship, chief financial officer at Washington-based Rosecliff Realty Inc., a commercial real estate firm.

Addressing the concerns of graduates such as Blankenship, the University of Maryland's nationally ranked MBA program has increased the number of electives students can take, allowing them to concentrate in a particular field such as information technology. This change was made to respond to students' demand for more specialization, according to Mark Wellman, assistant dean of the MBA and master's of science programs at the University of Maryland in College Park.

"People want to package themselves to focus on one or two areas," Wellman said. "The whole idea of specialty programs has become more and more critical."

Wellman said he also sees a trend in which more universities are forming alliances to pool their strengths in graduate business programs. For example, Maryland recently entered into an agreement that will allow its MBA students to take up to three courses at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Hopkins. Students in Hopkins's international study program will be able to take up to two courses at Maryland's business school. The agreement takes effect this fall.

Another trend in graduate business education in the area is the growth in executive MBA programs. The concept, introduced in 1943 by the University of Chicago, picked up steam in the 1970s and 1980s but has only recently come to the Washington area, according to Charles Hickman, director of projects and services for the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business.

An executive MBA program differs from typical full-time and part-time MBA programs in several ways. First, the programs try to minimize the disruption to working professionals by offering an MBA in two years in a condensed format. Classes are generally held all day one day a week, usually alternating between Fridays and Saturdays.

The hallmark of an executive MBA program is recruiting a diversified student body with a great deal of business and management experience. To be accepted, most professionals must have at least seven to 10 years of work experience and hold a managerial or executive position. Students usually remain with one group of classmates, with a variety of backgrounds, throughout the program to capitalize on each other's management experiences.

"We really do fill a genuine need to provide a high-class education for very senior people," said Richard G. Donnelly, a professor and director of the executive MBA program at George Washington.

Currently there are 10,000 students enrolled in 120 executive MBA programs across the United States. Washington's reputation as a government-oriented rather than a business-oriented region caused it to lag behind the rest of the country in establishing such programs. The region's first programs were introduced five years ago by George Washington and George Mason. Since then, as the area has evolved as a business and technology center, universities have added programs and enrollment has shot up.

Georgetown University started its program in 1994 and Howard University expects to have an executive MBA program up and running within the next two years.

"There really was a pent-up demand," said Peggy J. Crawford, director of George Mason's executive MBA program, which last year had a waiting list for its program.

Several other schools in the area, such as American University in the District and the University of Maryland, are contemplating whether they too should introduce executive MBA programs.

Locally, the cost of an executive MBA education ranges from about $30,000 to $55,000 for the programs, which take from 18 months to two years.

The programs are designed for professionals. Class schedules and courses are spelled out for the duration. Tuition usually covers books, materials such as case studies, parking at urban campuses, meals (breakfast, lunch and coffee breaks) and accommodations and transportation costs for trips within the United States and abroad.

However, price is a major concern for professionals considering an executive MBA program. As a result of downsizing and consolidation, corporate tuition reimbursement plans have changed dramatically, with fewer companies paying the whole bill, according to university directors. Additionally, most programs require off-campus residencies, including one or two study and research trips abroad.

Corporate tuition reimbursement polices vary greatly. Whether a company will pay all or some of a program's cost is determined on an individual basis.

For example, when George Mason started its executive MBA program in 1991, employers were paying for nearly all of the students' tuitions. However, only one-third of the students are fully funded now, with the remaining two-thirds receiving some assistance.

And, in some cases where employers are fully reimbursing tuition costs, they are requiring employees to pay back some or all of the costs if they leave shortly after completing their MBA program. At Reston-based Hughes Information Technology Systems, for example, employees must pay back tuition if they leave the company within a year of graduation.

Before the creation of local programs, workers in this area looking for an executive MBA had to travel north to Loyola College in Baltimore or the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, or south to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg.

"Clearly there is a market here," said Barron H. Harvey, dean of Howard's business school. "I think there is a large group of junior executives and fast-track professionals in management [positions] who would not want to go to a full-time program."

Harvey said he hopes Howard's proposed executive MBA program, which would explore issues of diversity in the workplace, can capitalize on the university's standing as one of the leading black centers of learning in the country.

"I think we have a natural advantage. We can educate business leaders to explore the challenges they face in corporate America. We can give them the strategies they will need to overcome the possibilities of discrimination," Harvey said.

Though executive MBA programs are costly, some recent graduates say they are well worth the price. The appeal, they say, is the condensed format of the classes and the ability to draw on the vast experience of their classmates.

"The program at George Washington was extremely effective because it gave me exposure to other companies and peer managers," said John Geraghty, who graduated from GWU's executive MBA program in 1994. Geraghty works in a consulting group of IBM that focuses on Internet business.

Students in the executive MBA programs say they make important contacts and build bridges to other industries that more traditional business programs do not foster.

"After completing the executive MBA, my vision widened because I had a benchmark measured against other people that were my age," said Parag Ambardekar, 44, who graduated from George Mason's program in 1993. "I built up a lot of confidence."

In fact, Ambardekar said the program made him realize he could go farther in his career. So, he quit his project manager's job at Computer Sciences Corp. after 10 years there and joined Hughes in Landover.

"They were looking for someone that had a good feel for what general management is about and that's where the executive MBA helped me," said Ambardekar, who now oversees some of the work on his company's $1 billion, 10-year contract for NASA. "The program helped catapult me into senior management."