Jack Welch at his computer in New York City
The institute itself is run like a business, not an academic enterprise. Welch is constantly asking students what they think of the program and how it can be improved. He treats them as customers as well as students. He also keeps close tabs on the institute’s “net promoter score” (NPS)—used to gauge the loyalty of a firm’s customer relationships. The institute claims a highly impressive score of 65% which would put it in a class that includes such companies as Apple and Google. The average is 10% to 15%.
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEYS AS COMMON AS FINAL EXAMS
Customer satisfaction surveys at the institute are as common as final exams. “They ought to know that when they fill out a survey we are all over it,” insists Welch. “We look at that NPS score like an animal. We want to find out every detail about it and we want to fix something whenever we have a score that is not at the top of the range. Everybody at our school is measured on it.”
As Andrea Backman, dean of the institute, informs the students during the latest Welch videoconference, “We are employed to make sure your experience is a thousand times better than you ever expected it to be. Let us know when it’s great and let us know when it can be better.”
The latest satisfaction survey, completed Oct. 31 by a sample of 94 current students, found that 93% said it was highly likely that they would recommend the program to others, while 98% said it was a valuable investment (with 27% saying it was the most valuable investment they have ever made). Perhaps even more surprisingly, 54% of the responding students said they have received a promotion, a raise or some professional recognition since they started the program. One in four students said they are achieving significant career advancement since starting the Welch MBA.
AVERAGE SALARY OF GRADUATES SPIKED 20% IN THE PAST YEAR
From 2012 to 2013, the institute says that the average salary of its graduates has increased 20% since graduation to $122,984. Based on the average pay boost, Backman says that the payback time for the Welch MBA degree is about 1.8 years.
Welch initially started his institute in 2010 with for-profit education provider Chancellor University. After two years, he moved the institute to Strayer Education Inc., a stronger player with deeper resources in the for-profit education market. So far, there are more than 130 graduates of the program.
It goes without saying that this is not anything like a two-year MBA with a summer internship that lines up a student for a new job at graduation. Online MBA programs are best suited for managers who want to learn the business basics and who generally want to advance in their own organizations. Though Backman contends that some applicants have considered the institute along with some Ivy League options, it’s certainly fair to say that a Welch MBA won’t have the cache of the imprimatur of a Cornell, Dartmouth, Yale or Harvard degree. After all, applicants to Welch’s institute do not have to take the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) to get into the program, although they must have five years of professional experience and a 3.0 grade point average from their undergraduate experience.
‘THE REVOLUTION HAS HAPPENED’
What of the often-stated notion that online learning is hardly equal to on-campus study? “Even the best schools are moving into the online space,” argues Backman, who has worked in the distance learning at DePaul University and the University of Virginia. “People aren’t going to want to sit in a lecture hall for two years. The revolution has happened. The online environment is more personal than a classroom setting because students get a lot of individualized support from faculty. It does give you more time to think about your responses.”
When Welch recruited Backman from the University of Virginia, where she was director of online and off-grounds programs, earlier this year, she asked him why is he so interested in online business education. “I’m not in it to make money,” she recalls Welch saying, “‘but I want to rid the world of bad managers and I don’t think there is a program out there that does this.”
Just how involved is Welch is this enterprise? “He is incredibly involved and students have access to him,” says Backman. “I was hoping when I made the move that I would have a lot of interaction with Jack and get to learn from him. That has been 100% the case. The ability to get coached by Jack is way more than I anticipated.”
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