The future of HE: what will the sector look like in 25 years time and what does this mean for executive education?

[Introduction]: The concept of ‘university’ has been around for centuries and yet the majority of British Universities have yet to reach their 50th birthday. The higher education (HE) sector has been through extensive change over a relatively short period of time and this is likely to continue in the future. With regard to Executive Education, the HE sector has been the provider of a range of qualification programmes, most notably the MBA and now it’s Doctoral upstep, the DBA; as well as short course provisions and accreditation of inhouse training programmes. Individual HE institutions partner organisations to provide bespoke, tailored qualification programmes, sometimes linked to the organisation’s Corporate University (Blass, 2001). As the MBA shifts from being the pinnacle of executive education to a mass delivery graduate conversion course in business (Blass and Weight, 2005a), and organisations are experiencing the impact of a global recession and the ‘credit crunch’, the future of executive education provisions within HE is questionable. Universities need to be identifying exactly what it is that they can offer organisations, that are ‘better’ than the organisations can provide themselves. Simple accreditation of programmes is not going to be enough in the medium to long term as the Privy Council is demonstrating willingness to offer corporate entities degree awarding powers. The market for short course provision is becoming increasingly competitive and specialised, and expenditure on executive education is being reined in as the impact of the recession takes its toll on organisations. The current debates governing the future of HE centre on the issues of globalisation, use of ICT and the internet, and the knowledge economy