Hail the Chief – Jack Welch Injects Executive Education with Competitive Boost
Friday, July 10, 2009 | Posted by: Brian Maguire
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Neutron Jack is back. Jack Welch, General Electric’s supercharged former CEO, is putting formidable wealth right next to his informative mouth, launching a new online MBA which he claims will compete with bricks and mortar programmes.
Welch is paying $2m for a 12% stake in a Chancellor University System LLC, and perk of perks, they’re going to name the MBA programme after him.
The Jack Welch Institute, as it will be known, is the brainchild of education entrepreneur Michael Clifford. Clifford tends not to build educational establishments from scratch, preferring to buy-out troubled colleges, converting them into fundamentally online universities – that’s the game plan for Myers University in Cleveland - ground zero for the Jack Welch Institute.
Principles implemented by Welch during his monumental reign at GE form the curriculum backbone. Welch’s wife, Suzy, former Editor of the Harvard Business Review, is recruiting Ivy League professors, and is part of the programme development team. At $600 per credit hour tuition, students can gain an MBA for just over $20k, meaning that in unsettled economic times, you can keep your job and keep studying.
Welch isn’t new to education. At GE, he developed competitive talent using the Six Sigma quality-focused mentoring approach. His philosophy is firmly rooted in the pursuit of efficiency, productivity and talent development. If your business in the GE group wasn’t No.1 or 2, Welch closed you down or sold you off; underperforming was a cardinal business sin. He regularly fired the lowest performing 10% of management.
Critics argue that online MBA’s lack the rigour and quality offered by classroom based programmes. Welch and Clifford counter that an innovative format and delivery approach is at the heart of the Jack Welch MBA; they are recruiting the finest teachers and ensuring a high calibre student is enrolled. More than most MBAs, the Jack Welch Institute is an exercise in brand awareness. Welch is the Freud of business heroes. A ‘Freud Institute of Psychology’ would be more easily distinguished from every other ‘Minor City School of Psychology’. So what becomes of the school as Welch, now 73, gets older, and eventually, passes on? What’s your $20k going to get you?
In the months and years to come, The Jack Welch Institiute will idolise Welch as a lion of American innovation and industrial success, a Carnegie of our times. At this moment, as the globe contracts, as governments fumble, we need more heroes and fewer villains. The narrative for this new online MBA will be simply understood – its time has come.
Welch was one of the first to understand the complex reality of an American industrial giant becoming a global, non-American company. Many were appalled by his capacity to outsource to India, and to equate low-paid workers in Delhi with high-cost workers in Connetticut. For Welch, it really is about the bottom line; business is not about nation or culture, it is about financial results, and that is the key difference between The Jack Welch Institute and Harvard Business School.
Many Ivy League business schools teach a softer, much less aggressive side to business, taking oaths to act always for the good of society. For Welch, this is a denial of reality. Business is brutal. If you want your business to survive and prosper, train the warriors who can lead change.
Welch is the primary advocate of modern innovation; when Jack said "jump" at GE, well, you jumped. So, when Jack say’s "double-click", you’d better be quick; a new breed of hungry young executive just got the tools to double their incomes. Sorry Harvard, Jack just stole your clothes, took your wallet, burned your books, and introduced ‘value for money’ and ‘competitively priced’ into the education market place. It could have been worse; he might have closed you down or sold you off!
Executive Education
MBA Earning Potential
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/feb2009/bs2009029_859361.htm
Jack & Suzy Welch
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Selection of Commentaries and Interviews featuring Jack Welch
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