Executive education gives working adults the additional skills and knowledge they need throughout their working lives, says the University of NSW’s inaugural dean of lifelong learning, Professor Nick Wailes. “We all need to be thinking about what we’re going to learn next,” he says. “It’s not a terminal journey. You don’t get to an end-point. It’s something you have to constantly work on.” While the Master of Business Administration continues to be the premier executive education course across the sector (and around the world), universities have long understood that executives want to choose from an extensive range of focused short courses to stay abreast of technological developments and changing markets.
In-demand executive education courses deliver learning in fields that include artificial intelligence, the energy transition, data analytics and all facets of leadership.
The University of Sydney’s two-week micro-credential course on artificial intelligence – ‘AI Fluency Sprint’ – is one of the most popular of the university’s Sydney Executive Plus courses, with more than 1,000 executives enrolled over the past two years. Other Sydney University sprints include ‘Net Zero’, ‘Geopolitics and business’, ‘Brand Leadership’ and ‘Leading Complex Projects’.
At the University of Western Australia, two week-long full-time executive education courses – the ‘Future of Energy’ and ‘Scenario Planning’ are in demand, along with an ‘Executive Decision-making’ course – a strictly face-to-face series of ten to 12 masterclasses with renowned industry leaders spread over an entire year.
The range and shape of Australian university executive education courses is constantly shifting to meet the demands of the employment market. Massive technological changes have disrupted careers and executives must have the capacity to pick up new capabilities to sustain their working lives.
Executive education course delivery can range from a 90-minute masterclass to a full-time year-long master course. The courses can be bite-sized, chunk-sized, or semester-sized; on-line, face-to-face or an amalgam of the two. Bespoke courses can be shaped, sized and delivered as required for employees of a specific corporation.
Professor Wailes, who is also the director of the University of NSW’s Australian Graduate School of Management, says executive education is important for those professionals who are already executives but who don’t necessarily have all the skills and capabilities needed to be corporate leaders.
“They may have been promoted because they’re a fantastic engineer or great salesperson, or fantastic at marketing, but the chances are they need to think differently in leadership roles.”
This demand drives the popularity of a range of shorter leadership courses which give students an understanding of how best to engage with others, he says. Students learn how to think about the broad strategy of an organisation, how to communicate a vision for the organisation and how to create a high-performance team or inspire a team to work to the best of its ability.
“There is clear evidence that leadership is a set of skills and there’s things you can work on and get better at,” Wailes says. “The ability to communicate, the ability to delegate, how set up collaborations, and how to go beyond being a technical expert to really getting the most out of a team. They’re all skills that can be learnt.”
An extremely popular two-day leadership course – ‘Authentic Communicator’ – is one of the five most popular short courses from a total of 40 on offer at the UNSW Australian Graduate School of Management. The five are largely leadership-oriented and include courses such as ‘General Manager’, ‘Emerging Leaders’, ‘Accelerated Leaders’, and ‘Essentials of Finance for Non-finance Managers’.
Meanwhile, more than 1500 students are currently enrolled in the AGSM’s suite of MBA programs, overwhelmingly managers and leaders looking to enhance their skills or move into executive roles. The last cohort in the part-time Executive MBA had an average 13 years’ work experience and five years managerial level experience. Some 75 per cent were at managerial level, 13 per cent were at director level and four per cent were C-suite level.
At the same time, in Victoria, Monash University deputy dean of leadership and executive education Professor Richard Hall says the demand for skills-specific or area-specific short courses in executive education has increased, and there has been sustained demand for leadership skills and leadership programs.
“Anything that can help businesses understand how to confront the challenges of AI is obviously currently pretty hot and pretty much in demand,” he says. “We’re building on a few years of increasing levels of interest in data analytics in the skill-set but also digital and digital transformation from the business perspective – how do we get our businesses more digitally enabled and efficient.”
There’s also “strong and ongoing interest” in executive education courses in the field of well-being and psychological safety, Hall adds. Post-Covid, and in a business landscape where many employees prefer to maintain a distance from the office, engagement is a key issue.
“This a leadership management responsibility and skillset: the way in which leaders and managers are interacting with their people has big impact on the level of stress, pressure, and levels of engagement,” he says.
Organisations are increasingly responsible for managing psycho-social risks in the workplace, and relevant executive education courses include interpersonal communication as a leadership skill, and ways of building connection and rapport and higher levels of trust in organisations.
As well as building skills and capability, short course credentials burnish a resume, and, on a more substantive note, Hall says there “significant pay premiums associated with the completion of MBA programs”.
University of Western Australia MBA director Professor Allan Trench says the two MBA courses the university runs in conjunction with institutions abroad top the popularity scale with more than 1,000 students enrolled.
A Global MBA program is offered in partnership with the Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIM-K), and another Global MBA is offered with the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in the Philippines. The first half of the MBA program is taught by the international organisation and UWA picks up the second half.
“There is also a growing demand for short courses,” Trench says, noting the demand for online courses is also increasing. “Students want 100 per cent flexibility, but there’s also demand for the face-to-face courses that start on Monday and finish on Saturday.”
A popular UWA week-long course conducted jointly with the Australian Institute of Management, ‘Creating, leading and growing high-performance environments’ is held in early December and aimed at helping leaders and managers ensure teams are working optimally.
The university’s courses are adjusted according to moves in the market, Trench says. The ‘Global Mineral and Energy Markets’ course now includes uranium for the first time in five years and hydrogen – an important mineral in terms of renewables, is now a prominent element of study.
At the Queensland University of Technology, meanwhile, a full-time MBA course is no longer on offer. “We don’t see huge growth in that market, says the university’s head of the Graduate School of Business, Professor Sarah Kelly, noting that working professionals prefer to study part-time while maintaining a professional presence in their workplaces.
She sees increasing executive education demand from corporations, governments and not-for-profits that want to upskill their employees. “It’s around the big topics,” she says, “AI, ethics and governance around AI, regulation, socio-political nuance, cultural overlay to negotiations, and conflict resolution.”
There is also sustained demand for an understanding of the broader sciences, including quantum and climate science, Kelly says.
“Executives now need the basic knowledge, don’t have to be experts but have to understand it for their reporting. There is increasing regulation; it’s a really complex ethical, legal, socio-political overlay they’re all operating in.”