The Minnesota Daily ran a story today on the impact of the economy on executive education (see the story here). I was quoted in a few places describing the Carlson School’s response to the downturn.
As I noted in the article, we are introducing a new set of short, “bite-sized” courses this spring. This is actually an idea that we started kicking around in June. Having come from industry myself, I know how hard it can be to carve out time to get out of the office. Our core offerings require a pretty significant time commitment–at least 2 to 4 days. I realize that there are probably a fair number of people who don’t come to our programs simply because they can’t get out of the office for that long. So, we started thinking about what we could offer that would still provide participants great value, yet be delivered in a more compressed timeframe.
What we decided was to pilot a set of much shorter-format courses. The spring/summer programs will range in length from 1/2-day to full day, and will be very targeted to specific skill areas of interest to business managers and executives. For example, if you are interested in identifying sources of financing for a new business opportunity, we have a course specifically on that. If you are being asked to do more with less, we have a program focused on “personal operations management.” The full catalog of 20 short courses will be available soon.
We will of course continue to offer the bulk of our educational experiences in the more traditional, 2-4 day format, but these shorter programs offer a smaller, compressed experience for those who are not able to take advantage of the more robust programs we typically offer.
Filed under: Executive Education, Press coverage
