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NOVEMBER 6, 2000 B-SCHOOL NEWS Q&A: The University of Texas' R. Britt Freund The director of the Texas Evening MBA talks about what it took to start its new part-time program But figuring that it's never to late to join the crowd, the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, in Austin, is giving the part-time MBA business a shot. Its three-year program, launched in the fall of 2000 with 65 students, costs students nearly $50,000 in tuition. McCombs' part-time effort is the direct product of pressure from the Austin business community, which had reported feeling underserved by the B-school as late as 1998. On Oct. 30, Business Week Online B-School reporter Mica Schneider recently spoke to R. Britt Freund, director of the new Texas Evening MBA Program (TEMBA) and assistant dean of the day program. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation: Q: What's the biggest challenge to starting a new part-time MBA program in 2000? A: Getting it through the faculty. We had to show how an evening MBA program would be an asset to the business school and to the existing programs, and not simply dilute the coin of the realm. If I can't explain that, then it's a nonevent. It's actually become a way to give their teaching schedules some flexibility, and we have found a way to make it part of their regular teaching load. Q: Public business schools are often looking for new sources of revenue to ramp up existing programs. How does the TEMBA program benefit the rest of the graduate business school? A: That's a big can of worms. The bottom line is that as a special program, it isn't constrained by all of the rules of the day program. So we start asking questions like: Why don't we offer everything this way? It makes us question if there are better ways to structure our programs. These students are paying substantially more than they would for the day program. Right now, the school has added someone new in career services, and my position is partially funded through TEMBA, too. Q: What other B-schools did the McCombs school benchmark against when it began shaping its own part-time MBA program? A: It's not true that every major university offers a part-time MBA, so we looked at schools that are comparable in size and ranking. We benchmarked against the University of California, Los Angeles' Anderson School of Business, UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, even though they aren't active in the evening MBA [space], as well as Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business and Chicago's Graduate School of Management. They are the larger, well-known schools that offer all three degree-granting programs -- an executive MBA, a full-time MBA, and a part-time MBA. Ultimately, we only looked at the other schools to see if they have clever ways of offering 60 hours of class in a reasonable time. And then, how did they price their programs? However, we were really benchmarking against our day program. What most concerned us was this idea that people would always perceive an evening MBA as inferior. They think that part-time courses aren't as hard. So when we set [TEMBA] up, our expressive wish was for it to be as good as our day program. That's the only condition that the faculty would agree to. So the same faculty that teaches during the day teaches at night, and we have the same course requirements [as the day MBA program]. The only problem is that you can't do it in two years. [Editor's note: full-time MBA programs are often completed in two years in the U.S.] The thing that makes the MBA is who you get to know and [who you can] network with. So we had to come up with a way to offer a cohort structure and a way to offer electives. Q: A lot has been said of the length of time that it takes to complete a part-time MBA. The Texas Evening MBA has to be done within three years. Why did the school decide on three years? A: You can't do it in four years. We had to figure out a way to make it work in three. Our big market in Austin is high tech. And most of the people that want their MBAs have been in a company for four years already. So for them to expect to stay in one location for another four years? There's too much going on, and too good a chance that they'd move away from Austin. We figure that three years is already a problem. Q. The TEMBA requires students to be on campus, in front of professors two nights a week, for three and half-hours each evening. But other schools claim that flexibility is the name of the game if a part-time program, catering to a busy professional, is going to fly. What's the reason behind Texas' schedule? A: Students are locked in that schedule for the three years and know that Monday and Tuesday nights are already spoken for. Our job is to provide the core courses at that same time [so students take them together] as a cohort, and [we] have to offer the electives at that time, too. And we have to figure a way to offer electives without clobbering our finances. So, they'll get 11 core, or required classes, [and the school offers] five electives. [Editor's note: each semester, students take no more than two courses] The students also have directed reading, when a professor supervises their masters theses, and three, one-week business intensive courses, which meet from Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. each day. We offer a crash course before program starts and each summer after. That way, [each semester] I only have to offer two courses as if everything were a required course. Q: The TEMBA program was in large part prodded to life by the Austin business community, which told the school in 1998 that it felt underserved by the B-school, and wanted a part-time MBA program. Does that mean that more companies sponsored their employees to study at the McCombs school? A: Probably 75% to 80% of the students receive some sort of support from their companies. A lot of the students fall under the "I've spent $48,000, and my company is giving me $16,000 to $24,000 back." Motorola, 3m, Tivoli, and IBM all pick students that they really want to go into this program, then fully support them. Those students make up one-third of the class. Q: Business Week Online surveyed the McCombs School over the summer and found that of the 65 students, 8 are women, or about 12%. That surprised me since the school's full-time program is 22% female. A: Me, too. I suspect that it's because we're in a high-tech community. We went to the high-tech companies and set up information sessions. I don't know the answer, but we're trying to figure out how to tackle that issue more effectively. The acceptance percentage for women was probably at least as high for the women as it was for the men. It's just that we had fewer applications from women. Our applicant pool was just much smaller than it was for the men. Also, since our students average seven years of experience, vs. five in our day program, we're getting more women at a different time in their life. That's the key objective of our community relations officer, Janice Hughes, who's going to different women's groups and focusing on that issue now. Q: Does the school plan to increase the number of TEMBA students in a cohort? A: We do not intend to expand the cohort size beyond 65, which is the size of the current cohort and approximately the size of our full-time cohorts [Editor's note: a cohort is a group of students that moves through segments of an MBA program as a group]. We will probably vary a bit around 65 depending on yield and/or applicants, but 65 is the target number. But we don't know what the ultimate demand will be. Q: Earlier, you spoke of maintaining the quality of the day MBA in the TEMBA program. But still, the school admitted 69% of applicants to this first fall class. A: That's a misleading statistic, because I interviewed everyone before they applied. I explained that they had to meet the same requirements as the full-time program. I actively discouraged people from applying if they didn't have the work experience or the GMAT score that we were after -- you didn't have much chance of getting in if you didn't score a 630 on the GMAT. We're not going to let those criteria get any lower than the day or executive programs. So I'm going to err on the side of keeping the program small and the demand out there. Q: How are day students reacting? A: The initial reaction was that it debases the coin of the realm. But given the fact that we're reinforcing the point that it's the same requirements, I don't get any pushback for this anymore. Q: Seems to me that one of the issues part-time program directors are grappling with is what to do with the placement office? A: On the way in, our thoughts were that we wouldn't offer many placement services, because people were funded by [their employers], and if we got them new jobs, pretty soon, the spigot's going to dry up. Now, we're really grappling with it. We're doing a benchmark study to see what other schools are doing, but so far we decided to offer career counseling and guidance, and nonplacement services as part of their standard fee. But the students will have to purchase one year of career placement services, which they can buy at any time, and can buy for all three years. They will be responsible for paying a fee that we haven't set yet to go through the interview process, etc. I'll only charge them around $750 for career placement. That's in addition to their guaranteed tuition of $48,000 for three years. Q: Have you talked to any companies about this yet? A: Nope. We're struggling with this right now and haven't spoken to them about it yet. Q: You can't start a part-time program without considering e-learning as an option to reduce the time an MBA has to be on campus. What did Texas decide to do? A: We have an official position on this as a business school. Right now, we won't offer Web-based courses. And I agree with that policy. For the evening MBA and the day MBA, there's too much that goes on in the class that's not captured on the Web. Getting an MBA is more than reading and typing stuff into a chat line. Until we figure out how to capture that, we're not banking on it. Q: Have you been surprised by anything? A: I've taught for seven years now in the day, as well as executive programs, and the honest truth is that I enjoy teaching the evening MBA students the most. I've been through the Marines boot camp, and going through that one-week business intensive [in August before classes stared] just gelled the students. Also, the students are not nearly as cynical about what an MBA program can be as the day MBA students, who think that by doing the program, they'll earn $100,000 at the end of it. Evening MBAs are in this for the right reasons. I wouldn't change a thing so far.  | | [an error occurred while processing this directive] Learn about your online education options |
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