Predicting the ROI of an MBA: Creighton Business School Launches New Career Advising Platform

Heider of College of Business rolls out a new data-driven career-advising tool to give prospective students more transparency around the value of the MBA

OMAHA, NEB. (OCTOBER 14, 2021) -- Creighton University’s Heider College of Business, ranked as a top program in accounting and finance by U.S. News and World Report, today announced the launch of an ambitious new initiative that will use data science to help prospective and enrolled students forecast the labor market value of a graduate business degree. In collaboration with data services firm AstrumU®, Heider College of Business is pioneering the use of a new data-driven career advising tool to help students understand the return on investment from its On-Campus and Online MBA degree programs at the front end of the enrollment process.

“What sets graduates apart in today’s competitive business landscape is the unique combination of a well-taught MBA core curriculum plus the human skills that are harder-to-measure—and define—but critical in today’s workplace,” said Todd Darnold, associate dean of graduate and leadership programs at Creighton University’s Heider School of Business. “The work is about helping prospective students understand the value of the MBA experience through the stories of our alumni and helping a new generation of business leaders to build legacies all their own.”

Located in Nebraska’s “Silicon Prairie” and serving a diverse population of career changers and online and adult learners through its MBA programs, Creighton’s Heider College of Business has become a recruiting hub for major corporations, including Goldman Sachs, Deloitte, GE, and Union Pacific. Using AstrumU®’s Enrollment Marketing Toolkit, staff and administrators at Heider College of Business can now analyze labor market, alumni, and employer data to demonstrate how the skills earned through the MBA translate into economic and career opportunities for Heider students and alumni.

The technology enables business school leaders to use sophisticated data science models to match course-level outcomes, academic performance, and extracurricular experiences with salary and job placement outcomes from data verified by employers. Using the same data, admissions counselors can easily personalize their communications with prospective students and enhance conversations regarding how degree programs can help to facilitate their personal and professional aspirations. Students receive a personalized prediction for their desired industry, based on how alumni with comparable career backgrounds and goals fared in the labor market.

“Despite the conventional wisdom, graduate business education has proven to be remarkably durable and offers a long-term return on investment in today’s fast-changing workplace. The challenge is that students often lack clarity about how far their graduate education investments will take them in the professional world—and why,” said Adam Wray, CEO of AstrumU. “By understanding how specific course-taking patterns and skills map to the needs of employers, programs like Heider College of Business are taking the next step in making the value equation of the MBA more transparent to prospective students.”

The Heider College of Business is one of the first graduate schools of business to pilot the new program. A total of twenty-five universities will form an initial cohort of pioneering institutions who will gain early access to the tool to boost student enrollment and retention using insights from the platform’s analysis of millions of student educational and career journeys.

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About Creighton University: Creighton University, located in Omaha, Nebraska, offers a top-ranked education in the Jesuit tradition for people who want to contribute something meaningful to the world. It’s where students, faculty, and staff thrive in a supportive community committed to Jesuit, Catholic values and traditions. Here, students learn to become leaders through service to others.

About AstrumU: AstrumU translates educational experiences into economic opportunity. We are on a mission to quantify the return on education investment for learners, education providers, and employers. We help institutions measure the value created for incoming and returning students, while assisting them in securing industry partnerships that lead students seamlessly into high-demand career pathways. Institutions partner with AstrumU to drive enrollment and increase alumni and corporate engagement, while extending economic mobility opportunities inclusively to all learners.

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