THE future of top executive management education will focus mostly on short custom-made courses rather than degree programs like an MBA or EMBA, said Chalom Schirman, a senior consultant and professor of international executive education.

Schirman was an Israeli diplomat for 20 years before he joined academia 20 years ago. He is now director of the International Executive Development Program (IEDP) at School of Economics and Management, Tongji University.

“For many mangers seeking continuous executive education, some have already taken an MBA or EMBA, while others have reached top level positions without an MBA or EMBA,” Schirman said.

“Given the responsibilities of both kinds of managers and their workload, both types hardly have time for a systematic and constant follow-up of all the novelties and innovations in the managerial disciplines.”

However, the desire of managers to continue learning remains strong, especially in China as many domestic and foreign companies continue to expand.

Under such demand, Tongji University created the IEDP two years ago, which is a flexible learning program catering to the needs of top executives either in one specific area or from an industry perspective in the short term.

The IEDP has over 50 different modules including workshops or seminars tailored to help managers gain the knowledge and skills catering to their business needs in the short term.

“If you do an MBA or EMBA, you cannot choose the content of the curriculum. But in the IEDP, we discuss with clients about his or her needs and we adapt the program to their needs in many ways including the number of days and how we should deliver the program,” Schirman said.

He said the IEDP provides managers with the latest and most updated theories and practices in every managerial domain they are interested in during an intensive two to three-day session. It also grants them the liberty to pick and choose a specific domain in which they wish to be updated rather than binding them to a full compulsory curriculum. The lecturers, facilitators and moderators are either from Tongji’s faculty or its 40 foreign partner business schools.

“The role of the lecturer is to facilitate the discussion while introducing new concepts, models and knowledge,” Schirman said. “Through discussion, people with different experience exchange their experience to learn from one another and to create new relations.”

Next January, the IEDP will invite Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry Ada Yonath to open a research to business platform for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Professor Yonath, from the Weizmann Institute in Israel, will speak from her experience on connecting science with the business world.

来源：Shanghai Daily          https://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/Tongji-offers-flexible-programs-for-executives/shdaily.shtml