They have been described as “get out of jail free” cards for bored managers, but executive education short courses play a vital part in business skills and leadership development.
The days are (mostly) long gone when companies expected little return on their short-course investment. What could employees realistically hope to learn from a classroom session lasting a few days, or even just a few hours? For many attendees, the main advantage was a welcome break from the daily office grind.
Not any longer. Now, employers expect a measurable benefit from every rand spent on education and training. Business schools, once frustrated by the laissez-faire attitude of corporate clients and the limited interest of attendees, welcome the new attitude.
Their product was already high quality. Now, employers play an active role in content development to make it even more valuable. That value, it should be noted, is two-way. Short courses are an important source of revenue for business schools. Market research for this FM survey shows that they can charge R7,000 for a one-day course, compared with R72,000 for one lasting a year.
A short course is typically a condensed, focused educational programme designed to teach specific skills or knowledge areas. It takes a special ability to distil complex business and financial concepts into digestible bites in such an abbreviated time frame.
For example, Johannesburg Business School’s five-day financial management and costing programme promises small business owners “the fundamental knowledge, insight and skills needed to plan and implement an appropriate financial costing practice within their business”.
Grant Freedman, executive education programme leader at Nelson Mandela University (NMU) Business School, tells the FM that short courses are best suited for “high-impact skill development, strategic capability building and timely topics such as AI integration, leadership transitions, innovation and change management”.
Longer programmes, he says, are more appropriate for “deep technical mastery, comprehensive professional transitions or formal qualifications”.
Short courses today are not optional. They are a strategic lifeline for business schools, participants and employers
— Leoni Grobler
Wits Business School executive education director Leoni Grobler says: “Short courses today are not optional. They are a strategic lifeline for business schools, participants and employers.”
Wits courses, she adds, are designed to equip leaders with practical, sector-ready skills “and foster strong corporate partnerships and lifelong learning pathways”.
The history of short courses is closely tied to the evolution of executive education in the 20th century. Unsurprisingly, Harvard Business School is credited with pioneering its development.
In South Africa today, whether serving the public or private sector, demand for business school courses leans most heavily towards leadership and management knowledge.
“Professionals, managers and heads of department do not have enough time to sit in a classroom to learn for a whole year,” says Pfano Mashau, director of the Durban University of Technology Business School.
“We have these short learning programmes that are designed for people to acquire the necessary skills to respond to the changes that are happening in the world and to learn very quickly.”
That usually means practical knowledge, rather than the academic type. Many schools use businesspeople as lecturers to plug the gap between theoretical classroom learning and practical application in business. Grobler calls them “pracademics”.
She says different course durations require different applications. Those lasting up to a week are generally designed for just-in-time skills acquisition and include courses such as managing and leading people, finance for nonfinancial managers and various masterclasses.
Longer courses offer more in-depth skills training such as leadership, team performance and strategic management.
Course duration is usually tailored to the needs of corporate clients. In some cases, the use of the word “short” is open to interpretation. Mashau says: “Recently, we designed a short course for the State Security Agency, which is running for six months. That is the longest short course we have now.”
How do business schools gauge the success of their programmes? Client feedback is the main measure. “Success is reflected in client satisfaction and testimonials, referrals within the sector, programme expansion and repeat commissions from clients,” says Grobler.
For an NMU theological education leadership programme for clients from 14 African countries, success was measured more by participant engagement during the programme and their contribution to the completion of projects in their own countries later.
Freedman says demand for short courses is growing fastest across industries undergoing disruption, particularly mining, agriculture, higher education, public service and financial services. “Knowledge areas attracting the most interest include digital transformation, ethical and values-based leadership, strategic foresight, AI integration and sustainable development,” he says.
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