new players such as Coursera begin with products that are easiest to provide—such as MOOCs, and the kind of tailored workforce training Udacity is now creating in collaboration with employers such as AT&T. But those new players then move on into product types that are harder to create, he says.
“The incumbents say, ‘Now they’re doing stuff that’s eating my lunch,’ ” Lyons says.
Coursera seems to be trying to illustrate Lyons’s point recently. In late August, the company announced the creation of “Coursera for Business,” which it calls “our enterprise platform for workforce development at scale.” In September and October, the company added 130 new specializations, many in business-related fields like accounting and digital marketing. These modules are usually made up of a series of courses rather than a single course, often with hands-on assignments and capstone projects.
Last year, Coursera co-created an online MBA degree program with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business, at a cost to students of about $20,000. More than 160 other business schools now offer online MBAs. This opens up a global pool of potential applicants, but also pits the programs against scores of other schools that may have better reputations in the eyes of employers.
Top business schools are considered much safer from all these competitive pressures than those in the lower ranks, Lyons says. But even some in the bottom rows of the top 100 may be vulnerable, he says.
“If you’re not in the top 30, I think it’s getting a lot harder in the MBA market,” Lyons says.
Some well-ranked schools are seeking to bolster themselves financially by expanding their undergraduate programs, which can draw robust philanthropic support, Lyons says. Such business schools may then lobby their universities for a greater share of total campus revenues to match the larger number of students they serve, he says.
This raises some questions: Will the defensive business tactics of business schools worsen the financial problems facing other departments, such as literature and social sciences, that have to compete for university resources? Could the B-school dilemma help reshape an entire university’s mission? Or will business school revenues continue to sustain universities financially?
My more limited question for Lyons was, “What will the Haas school do?”
The UC Berkeley business school already has close to a “full stack” of offerings, including a traditional full-time, on-campus MBA, an evening and weekend MBA, and short executive education courses of one to three days. The school has not crossed the threshold of creating an online MBA program, though that option has been under discussion, Lyons says. Its high rankings would make it very competitive in the online market.
Haas’s full-time MBA program was rated seventh in the world in the Economist’s 2016 rankings, and Haas also took the seventh spot among top business schools named by U.S. News & World Report.
The UC Berkeley business school has achieved even greater distinction for its part-time MBA program, which is ranked first by U.S. News. The size of the most recent entering class for the part-time, three-year MBA—252 students—is the same as the most recent entering class for the full-time, two-year MBA program. Haas also has 140 students currently enrolled in its Berkeley MBA for Executives program. And its short executive education courses, on topics such as “The Start-Up Mindset,” bring in $20 million of Haas’s operating budget of $140 million a year, Lyons says.
Haas faculty members have been experimenting with educational technology for several years, and the needs of its part-time students have created a greater impetus to use those tools. One of the most popular features is what Lyons calls “synchronous” lectures, which are recorded so they can be viewed live online by students who can’t make it to campus. Those students can also join in live interactions with faculty via their Web connections.
For part-time MBA students who are fighting Bay Area traffic as they commute to the Berkeley campus two nights a week from the Peninsula or even farther away, synchronous lectures can make it possible to eliminate one or more of those visits each month, Lyons says.
How advanced educational technology enhances learning
As Lyons’s working paper, “Economics of the Ed Tech Revolution,” reveals, he’s largely a fan of educational technology, especially as its tools become more sophisticated and data-driven.
Learning improves, for example, when students get quick feedback on their first attempts to solve a problem, Lyons says in the article. He calls these computer-aided grading tools “Learning Engines.” Rather than the traditional binary result of testing—pass or fail—the student can study, answer a test question, fail, try again, fail, study, re-take the test, and succeed.
Among the other edtech features Lyons sees as improvements on traditional learning are
