When Pablo Heyman decided to earn an executive MBA while holding down a full-time job in marketing and sales with Cadbury Schweppes plc, he knew he'd need to squeeze every minute of time out of his days.

The program he chose, at York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto, would eat up every other weekend over 18 months as well as require intensive, week-long study periods that included trips to Chicago and Hong Kong. On top of that, he and his wife were expecting their first child.

No surprise then that between school and his job, Heyman had little time left for what he calls "the third leg" — family life.

"It's like a marathon and you run on a kind of adrenaline," he says. "You just work harder because you're motivated. But you can't keep up that rhythm of life."

Like many young executives, Heyman, who finished the program a year ago, chose to go back to school to upgrade his skills, improve his career prospects and challenge himself.

"I always wanted to do an MBA," he says. "It builds your confidence, your ability to manage your time, and your soft skills" such as leadership.

What's more, learning from other executives — both professors and other students — would expose him to real-life management lessons he could immediately apply to his job. But, as his experience proved, to gain those benefits requires a commitment to find an extra 20 to 25 hours a week over up to two years in what are typically already busy lives.

Back to school

EMBAs are part of a larger wave of adults flocking back to school. The number of full-time adult students more than tripled between 1976 and 1996, and continues to rise, according to Statistic Canada.

In 2001, 14 per cent of men and 15 per cent of women were taking courses.

"The notion that formal education is something one completes before entering the labour market has become increasingly outdated," write Boris Palameta and Xuelin Zhang in a 2006 StatsCan report.

Young executives hoping to advance — and companies eager to groom future leaders — have made EMBA degrees particularly popular. These programs typically offer part-time and weekend schedules to allow students to keep working full time — in fact, two-thirds of Canadian MBA students today study part-time.

But the schedules are just one of many differences between the MBA and the EMBA experience.

"You're dealing with people in mid-career, while in an MBA you have people in early career and probably changing their careers," says Michael Pearce, director of the Executive MBA program at Western University's Richard Ivey School of Business.

The typical MBA student at Ivey is 27 years old and single, while an EMBA student is 40 and has a spouse and young kids.

The students' professional and educational backgrounds are also unique.

"Often we find in the executive MBA program people have not had recent, or any, formal training in business," says Pearce.

These tend to be people who've risen through their organizations, sometimes over decades, and have vast hands-on know-how but little theoretical knowledge outside their area of expertise. Most importantly perhaps, EMBA students are extremely self-motivated and eager to learn.

"They tend to be ambitious and hungry," Pearce says.

Not a cheap experience

That desire has to be there, because for many, getting the prized MBA designation comes at the cost of tens of thousands of dollars.

When EMBAs were first introduced three decades ago, they were financed entirely by employers wishing to groom their most promising staff for advancement. Over time, however, companies have been looking to employees to pitch in toward the cost.

Pearce says that at Ivey, only a third of EMBA students are fully company-sponsored; the rest either pay part of the cost, or all of it.

And that cost isn't small. At top Canadian business schools, a full program can run north of $100,000. Only a few years ago that amount was closer to $60,000, but schools vying for the lucrative executive tuitions have been adding top-notch faculty, overseas study trips and other inducements, and passing the cost onto the students.

Accordingly, anyone thinking of signing up for an EMBA should first check whether their employer offers executive education benefits and whether they qualify for them. Typically, companies will only invest in top performers and need to see that the degree will benefit them as much as the individual. So a pitch should point out that, since EMBA students work on real-life problems, they can use lessons learned over a weekend to solve problem at work on Monday.

Those who need to find their own money have several sources to explore. Ottawa supports continuing education through the Lifelong Learning Program, for example, which lets Canadians withdraw up to $20,000 ($10,000 a year) from their RRSPs, which then must be repaid over 10 years.

Many schools offer scholarships for students who meet certain criteria, such as membership in a particular profession or executive level, in order to create diverse and balanced classes.

As well, most EMBA institutions have set up programs with banks to offer their students access to preferred rates and repayment schedules on loans.

Still, a formal EMBA is not the only executive education option.

"A lot of companies are moving away from executive MBAs to their own on-site development," says Barbara Moses, a Toronto author and career adviser. "They might partner with an organization like Ivey or Schulich to develop a special curriculum customized for their organization, which will typically be much cheaper than [a] standard executive MBA."

But the lure of the MBA marker from a prestigious school is a potent draw.

"It’s a label some people like to wear," says Pearce, "and for some who are trying to get a new position, it becomes a door opener."

Heyman didn't pursue an EMBA for the sake of promotion, he says, but after completing it, he got one anyway. And he feels he got what he paid for.

"If anything," he says, "it exceeded my expectations."

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