Illinois Gies’ Latest Innovation: Stackable Degrees & Credentials

Brooke Elliott, EY Professor and Executive Associate Dean of Gies College of Business, speaks at iConverge 2022. Courtesy photo

In 2020, Poets&Quants named Gies’ iMBA the No. 1 business school innovation of the decade. Catch us up on what Gies has been doing since then in terms of innovation.

I think at that point in time, we recognized that we had really been a leader in transforming and disrupting the graduate business education space, and the primary disruption was launching an MBA degree that was very high quality for under $23,000. It was affordable, flexible, and we were able to serve a population that hadn’t been served. It’s now the fastest growing MBA program in the world.

We’ve continued to innovate from that point. We really started to think about how to build upon that program to ensure that we’re meeting our mission of expanding access to high quality graduate business education. We’ve made investments in expanding the portfolio of educational offerings that we provide, all with the intent of expanding access and creating flexible pathways to degree.

That’s really where we’ve been focused, and I think we’ve done it in a couple of a couple of different ways: One, we created the Campus Graduate Certificate, which in and of itself isn’t innovative. Other institutions have that type of credential. What’s innovative is we are basically creating a portfolio of graduate certificates that are already part of the existing degree programs — our fully online Master’s of Science and Management and our fully online Master’s of Business Administration.

Brooke Elliott

Those programs are structured in three core sequences as well as focus areas specializations. What we’re doing is breaking apart the degree in those core areas and creating certificates. It’s a pathway for people who may not quite be ready to pursue a degree, or who maybe already have a graduate business degree, but they don’t have the specialized knowledge that we are offering.

We have also been very innovative from a content and curricular perspective. We have specializations in business analytics, in entrepreneurship and innovation, and we recently launched a brand new one around mergers and acquisitions. You can imagine that there are individuals who have completed a degree, but still have demand for that type of content. The key is that it is content that’s job relevant and also provides a stackable pathway into a degree.

Then we thought, in terms of ultimate stackability, about stackable degrees. We are partnered with Coursera, and we developed with Coursera this idea around a stackable degree. At our foundation, we have MOOCs that sit on the Coursera platform that are part of every one of our credit bearing courses. So, you can enroll as an open MOOC learner, you complete that MOOC and, if you would like to do more, you can apply as a non degree student, complete the high engagement portion of the course, and now you have credit. Now, you can take that single credit bearing course and stack it into a certificate, and then take that certificate and stack it into a degree. The next innovation is around actually creating stackability across degrees.

Now, we are at a place where our Master’s of Science in Management program is stackable into our Masters of Business Administration. From an academic institution perspective, the integrity of each credential is foundational to what we do. The MSM is really an entry level management degree, but it is a foundational portion of the MBA degree. What the MBA degree then does is layer on and allow you to dive deeper in specialized areas of content.

A group photo of women iMBA candidates at iConverge 2021 at Gies College of Business. Courtesy photo

What kinds of students are you targeting?

What we wanted to do was provide a pathway for individuals who are maybe ready to pursue that basic Master’s in Management degree because that’s where they are from a professional perspective. Maybe they have two to three years experience, and they need that base business knowledge. They continue to either work for their current firm or they switch roles, and later they need something that’s a little bit different. We want to ensure that they are able to still receive credit for all that they learned in that Master’s in Management and fully stack it into an MBA.

We’re trying to create a portfolio of stackable offerings that serve a learner throughout their lifetime, and so that they never lose credit for the investment that they’ve made. And we believe that’s really important to learners right now.

When did you announce these stackable degrees?

We just announced that this semester, starting off in August. We’re working on other pathways to stack any Gies Master’s degree — residential or online — into an MBA.

What kind of response have you gotten so far?

Extremely positive.

I think that, historically, academic institutions haven’t been very flexible in the path that they have laid out for learners. Traditionally academic institutions have kind of dictated the idea that, “We know what you need and at what point you need it. Here is the path, follow it in a very linear way.”

At the Gies College of Business, and even at the University of Illinois, we’re shifting towards a learner-centric mindset. Everything that we do in developing new programs, thinking about our portfolio, thinking about affordability, flexibility, and pathways, is from the learner approach.

I think our learners have really started to recognize that holistic view, and they’re very appreciative. Many of our current MSM students are at a point in their careers where they are uncertain about an MBA, but they love that they now have the option, either immediately upon completing the MSM or at some point in the future, to exercise this. From a prospect perspective, we’ve already started to see increasing demand for the MSM just knowing that that option value is there.

I’m an academic, and in the finance literature, options have real value. I think it’s a place that will really differentiate us. There are great institutions and great business schools across the world, but what we hope is that if we provide that option for stackability and another institution doesn’t, then a learner would choose Gies.

NEXT PAGE: Is the online MBA market getting overcrowded? + Innovations for undergraduate business education

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