Is the executive DBA degree the next big thing?

Demand for the executive DBA degree is set to grow significantly, especially in mainland China, according to Joseph Weintrop. The programme director for the executive doctorate in business at Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business, believes there is an untapped market and increasing interest. 

“Right now, this is one of the most interesting phenomena in post-MBA education,” he says. “It is still very much in the early stages, but it is going to expand, and I think we’re going to see the entire Ministry of Education get more involved in coordinating and supervising. There is real potential in the mainland and Hong Kong as well.”

Zicklin recently decided to offer an executive DBA and expects to start the first classes in New York in the second half of 2017. Steps are also being taken to collaborate with appropriate mainland-based business schools in order to offer a suitably balanced and comprehensive programme.

“We’re just figuring out who’s the best partner to dance with,” Weintrop says. “But there is certainly a demand.”

In the first instance, that comes from business school alumni, who want to continue their education, and from successful executives keen to understand the theory and principles behind new trends and the practicalities of global finance.

“Graduates from the top MBA programmes tend to say they learned as much from their classmates as from the professors,” Weintrop says. “That’s fine; it is very much what the MBA market is all about. But in a successful EDBA programme you learn more sophisticated, rigorous ways of addressing problems through economic and behaviour-based approaches.”