Full-time work and grad school? Make it happen for you

DAN O'BRIEN, Sun Staff Sunday,
January 23, 2005

.Let's say you're 32 years old, hold a bachelor's degree and have a job as a middle manager. It could be as a hedge fund manager earning a six-figure income or a $40,000 line manager at a manufacturer or service-oriented company.

You want to move up, but the prospect of going back to school for the sake of adding to your credentials is cause for pause. After all, at 32, you may have mouths other than your own to feed, or a mortgage to pay. Or both. And even if you don't, the prospect of dropping out of the work force for two years to go back to school is no easy call. Neither is going to school part time for five long years, while juggling work, family, education and (did we mention) those bills.

"It's the classic middle-manager squeeze; you work harder, faster and smarter, and you get the same financial reward," says Jason Price, a 34-year-old Chelmsford native who solved this dilemma by completing the increasingly popular "executive MBA," or EMBA program.

Price is author of The Executive MBA: An Insider's Guide for Working Professionals in Pursuit of Graduate Business Education. Don't bother looking for it at Barnes & Noble, though it's only available online at www.embaworld.com That's the site for EMBA World, a voluntary organization that advises those who are considering an executive MBA.

Price says he helped start EMBA World because few people were even aware of what an executive MBA was.

"I found out from a UMass Amherst classmate while I was on the subway," Price recalls.

EMBA programs are not exactly new. The University of Chicago offered the first program in 1943; there are currently about 230 programs worldwide, including those at Suffolk University, Boston University and Northeastern. Price estimates that about five more are added each year.

So what's the difference between a conventional MBA and an executive MBA?

For starters, structure. The executive MBA program is a full-time endeavor that is squeezed in to accommodate the working professional. Price says a common arrangement would be for the student to go to work four and a half or five days a week, with classes taking place on Friday nights and weekend days.

There's cost as well. An executive MBA program ranges from $25,000 to over $100,000 at such places as New York University. In many cases, it's quite a bit more more than a regular MBA program.

Price says the caliber of students is top-notch.

"It ranges from doctors and lawyers to entrepreneurs," he said. "Generally, they are executives, older people who have already experienced successes and failures in their careers. There's a level of credibility that's shared."

And that credibility is put to work in a big way.

"The executive MBA is a more hands-on, real-world education, whereas a traditional MBA is more theoretical," Price says.

For example, during Price's experience at Fordham University in New York City, one executive program served as a consultant to Chinese tech giant Lenovo. One project involved advising how Lenovo could extend its reach globally by 2010. A big chunk of the answer came a couple months ago, as Lenovo acquired IBM's personal computer business a move Price says has the Fordham EMBA program's fingerprints on it.

"Opportunities like this groom middle managers for senior management," Price says.

"Maybe 20 percent get fully sponsored, with another 20 percent self-sponsored," Price said, with the remaining 60 percent getting some combination of the two. "The executive MBA program is designed for the full-time employee."

Price, for his part, is a remarkably accomplished young man undergraduate degree at UMass Amherst; a master of science (health services) at UMass Lowell; and an executive MBA from Fordham. Along the way, he founded two e-business companies, and won an award from Microsoft for his technology prowess.

No, the executive MBA is not for everyone. But in education, as in anything else, there's no one way to get to where you want to go.

Dan O'Brien's e-mail address is dobrien@lowellsun.com.