How the Katz EMBA Prepares Students for the Global Forces Changing Business

More than ever before our success as individuals and as a society depends on how well we can adapt to the forces changing and reshaping the business world.

Keeping up with these changes is a challenge—it requires new ideas and approaches. Earning an executive MBA is one of the best ways for experienced managers, executives and entrepreneurs to gain the skills and knowledge needed to meet those challenges.

The Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, for example, has created an 18-month curriculum designed to enhance its students’ understanding of all facets of business and enable them to adapt to a rapidly changing business landscape. Katz’s curriculum is built on a philosophy of experienced-based learning and includes classroom time in São Paulo and Prague as part of the EMBA degree program.

The EMBA program at Katz uses a cohort model, much like a general MBA program does, where all students take the same courses. But in the EMBA program, each cohort of students is created with an eye toward diversity in terms of experience, expertise and industry. In that way, students learn as much from each other as they do from their instructors. Katz is unique because of that emphasis on experiential learning. “Students engage and take action in class through projects, presentations and research. They function in a team environment and put to use what they are learning in the same way they would in an organization,” says Bill Valenta, the assistant dean of MBA and EMBA programs at Katz.

The international components of the program are built around the issues of strategy and change in emerging economies. “We have students and instructors from Brazil join us and we visit companies there. That allows our students to view business from different points of view, rather than coming out of the EMBA program with a solely American perspective,” says Valenta.

Although EMBA students are generally seasoned professionals, programs like Katz’s give them the tools and strategies needed for negotiating with parties that come from different cultural perspectives, something many of them have not had experience with before. The program’s focus on global learning mirrors the greater EMBA landscape. According to the Executive MBA Council, global experiences are a growing priority for business graduate schools, with more than 93 percent of EMBA programs offering an international trip. The most popular destinations are emerging economies such as China, India, Brazil, Chile and other Latin American countries.

Katz is an example of an EMBA program that, while global in perspective, is also mindful of the local economy. Its program attracts a high proportion of engineers and scientists from the Pittsburgh area, where the local economy is dominated by industries that rely heavily on those types of professionals, as well as technologists. The program is also attracting an increasing number of entrepreneurs, a departure from the traditional, corporate-sponsored EMBA student. Entrepreneurs are turning to EMBA programs to help them move from founding to scaling up a business.

“In terms of founders growing their businesses, the EMBA program gives them an understanding of the risks involved in the decisions they’re making,” says Valenta. “They also bring that perspective on risk-taking to the other students.” Valenta says he often hears from students with an entrepreneurship background that they harbor deep-seated doubt about their ability to ask the right questions and do the right things when it comes to building their start-up. Participating in the EMBA program gives them a level of confidence to match their level of risk taking, he says.

The addition of more entrepreneurs to EMBA programs is changing the way the degree is perceived, no longer exclusively a stepping stone to the C-suite but now also a way for start-up founders to evolve into business executives that know how to grow a start-up. And many EMBA participants are using their degree to change careers, not just climb ladders.

Because EMBA students generally have more than a decade’s worth of experience—and an average of nine years of management experience—they are often able to fully or partially self-fund their graduate educations if their companies don’t. The average EMBA student is about 38 years old, and in 2015, the number of EMBA students receiving full funding decreased slightly; last year more than 40 percent of students paid for their own education, as compared to 39.8 percent in 2014. Although more than 50 percent of EMBA programs nationwide provide scholarships and fellowships, the decision to pursue the degree is still a complicated one.

“We’re talking about individuals who in may cases may be finishing paying off student loans, starting families and buying their first home, so the cost of an EMBA has to be an investment in their career and their future,” says Valenta. “It’s something we certainly take very seriously and recognize it’s a huge decision, in terms of both the time and financial commitment.” But there is usually a valuable payoff from that commitment. The degree can help those wanting to move from middle and upper management into a vice president or C-level role. In fact, more than half of Katz’s EMBA students get promoted while they are attending the program, or find a new job at a higher level. Students also build their professional network and are able to leverage that to find new positions elsewhere.

Much of what students gain from EMBA programs isn’t truly realized until after the program ends. There are the global alumni connections students can tap, and the expertise and connections of their fellow students within their cohort. “Those students,” says Valenta, offer each other a wealth of information and connections moving forward.”

And the value of the knowledge gained through the Katz EMBA is realized more and more as time goes on. “Our alumni may be in the midst of negotiating a deal with a business in an emerging economy, or seeing ways that corporate social responsibility fits into their company’s mission, when they realize they’ve seen this situation before in our classroom,” says Valenta. “They are able to access what they’ve learned when they need it.”