An Inflection Point for Executive Education

• Executive education is experiencing a significant shift toward online and hybrid formats, requiring educational institutions to offer varied and multimodal learning options.
• Business schools must balance the demand for in-person education with the trend toward digital solutions, ensuring executives have access to both on-campus and remote learning experiences.
• The growing interest in shorter, more intensive courses and personalized learning journeys highlights the need for flexibility and individualized scheduling in executive education.

Transcript

Simon Mercado: [0:16] We're at an inflection point in terms of executive education and professional education more broadly. Obviously, the effects of the pandemic have been dramatic, turbocharging a shift towards more online education. We are seeing a significant move towards more online and more hybrid activity.

[0:42] In terms of executive education, schools have an absolute responsibility to make sure that their offer is varied, is multimodal, multiformat. We still want to see executives on campus. We still want en présentiel or live, interpersonal, on-campus education offer and intervention. We also have to respect the trend line towards more hybrid and digital solutions.

[1:18] We need to be agile and adaptive, and make sure that we're in a position to offer busy people, working people, executives and professionals, different ways of learning, different formats and modes of learning, and different ways of accessing the intelligence and the knowledge that we have to offer.

In terms of executive education, schools have an absolute responsibility to make sure that their offer is varied, is multimodal, multiformat.

[1:42] Also, in the executive education sphere, we are seeing a growing level of interest in shorter courses, in microcredentials and courses that are maybe a little bit more intensive. People want to have the freedom increasingly to dip in and out of their learning journeys and set their own schedules and timeframes for learning.

[2:09] This is an area where we must also make significant progress. That's very much the focus at ESCP. First and foremost, it's about what we contribute, what we share, and what form of education we're actually offering executives. There is growing interest in ESG-related issues, EDI, significant interest in areas, such as risk management, collaborative working, remote collaboration specifically.

[2:45] We have a responsibility to be reactive and responsive to those changes, which of course, reflect changes in the work and agendas of the companies from which these executives are sourced.