A recent study for Tufts University by market research specialist B2B International examines how universities can develop engineers and scientists into business leaders of the future.

One of the biggest challenges facing any higher education institution is attracting students through its doors. The Tufts Gordon Institute, part of Tufts University’s School of Engineering in Boston, Massachusetts, recently commissioned global market research specialist B2B International to research the views of potential masters degree students across North America. The project’s objective was to assist Tufts Engineering School in updating its innovative masters program in management specifically aimed at engineering and science graduates—the Master of Science in Engineering Management (MSEM).

The MSEM degree is a relatively new phenomenon, only recently appearing at various top universities across North America. Tufts University has been one successful school with this offering, and its directors were interested to learn more about potential students’ preferences so it could optimize the program further.

Eve Lenkowsky, Research Executive at B2B International explains, “Typically, science and engineering college graduates have been faced with the choice of either learning about business completely outside of their scientific fields, or simply continuing with an advanced engineering or science program like a masters or Ph.D. Few institutions give ambitious science graduates the chance to make their skills more applicable to the modern workplace and, in particular, management positions. Our project confirmed that there is a rising need for this kind of offering.”

The study was conducted among American and Canadian professionals who had all previously completed an undergraduate course in engineering or science. Nearly all are currently employed in an engineering, scientific or technical role and stated a possible interest in pursuing a graduate masters degree or Ph.D. in engineering or science. Carried out via e-survey, some of the key findings from the study include the following:

• A modern masters program will ideally provide a blend of distance learning and in-person contact. While students require the flexibility to learn as and when their schedules allow them to, they also demand the opportunity to meet and discuss subjects with professors and peers.
• Students have become more price-sensitive due to the economic recession, and are more insistent on combining studying with their employment. Successful universities need to provide flexible learning at a reasonable cost.
• The students most interested in MSEMs have strong business aspirations, and seek to use their technological knowledge to create practical, marketable products.
• The motivation to enroll in an MSEM derives more from a desire to gain applicable knowledge that enables them to advance professionally, as opposed to the desire to learn about theoretical technical topics that might be more suitable for academia.

Mary Viola, Engineering Management Program Director, concluded, “We were very pleased with the success of the research. The feedback from the participants reveals clear trends and preferences which we will build into our program to meet the needs of our potential students even more effectively. We look forward to better serving students who are looking to develop into leaders of technology companies.”

NOTES

 
About B2B International
B2B International is a specialist business-to-business market research consultancy that provides customized business-to-business market research and intelligence studies on a global scale. In the last decade alone, it has carried out over a thousand surveys in almost every industry for corporations, government departments, educational institutions, and medical specialists alike.

With 30 years’ experience in business-to-business market research, B2B International has built up an impressive client portfolio and has published books, white papers and articles on marketing and market research. It has offices in three continents (North America, Europe and Asia) where its research specialists have researched all the major geographical areas of the world.

B2B International’s offering includes market assessment and market entry studies, segmentation studies, product development studies, branding studies, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction research, pricing strategy and advertising studies. B2B’s leading practitioners have also run a large number of training courses on marketing and market research.

About The Tufts Gordon Institute
Tufts Gordon Institute, a nationally recognized center within Tufts University’s School of Engineering, in Boston, MA, focuses on engineering leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship to help graduate and undergraduate students develop the tools they need to advance their careers, inspire teams, and bring innovative products to market.

Their focus on engineering leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship – in classes, hands-on projects and real-world experiences – gives students the practical leadership tools they need not only to advance their careers, but to inspire teams, and to encourage and develop innovative ideas that will make a difference in the world.

In this week’s Thursday Night Insight, Oliver Truman ponders whether being unique and innovative is always something we should strive for.

Plagiarism. It’s a word loaded with negative connotations, but we’d all have to admit to indulging in a little copying in our time.

It’s often said that the majority of popular music is highly derivative. To pick one trite example, only a few weeks ago, a music rights company successfully brought legal action against the 1980s antipodean pop behemoths Men At Work for “stealing” the signature flute riff of the song from a copyrighted nursery rhyme penned many decades ago by an Australian primary school teacher. And only the other day, the shuffle function on my mp3 player threw up another lawsuit-in-the-making: The Jam track Set The House Ablaze was immediately followed by Helicopter by Bloc Party – The guitar refrain in both songs being almost exactly the same to the note. I cannot imagine Paul Weller ever assenting to his work being used in this way.

We know from a lot of our work in the education sector that plagiarism is a particularly hot topic – New GCSE specifications being introduced this year will do away with many of the coursework elements of courses in an effort to curb the problem of copying from the Internet and drawing on parental help. In its place, pupils must complete assignments under “controlled assessment” conditions – effectively an exam in a classroom. In the consultation work we’ve done with the teaching profession in the run up to the new GCSEs, doubts have been voiced as to whether this focus on “cheating” is at the expense of encouraging children to be creative.

In the higher education sector, of course, ensuring plagiarism doesn’t take hold is crucially important to the vitality of intellectual thought and the academic process – and this rigour is instilled right from the very start at undergraduate level. Universities are actively seeking to use electronic systems of submission of students’ assignments so that all work handed in can be automatically verified using automated systems.

Looked at another way, though, plagiarism is possibly best seen as the flipside of the insatiable human desire for true innovation. Anything that is very obviously the same as something else is railed against – Not just because it might have been appropriated without someone else’s permission, but also because of the “oh no, not that again!” effect. And attempting to be genuinely different is the perennial challenge laid at the feet of marketers (and by extension, market researchers).

Taking all elements of the marketing mix – price, product, place and promotion – market research is often seen as the gateway to addressing how a company can position each of these uniquely against its competitors. But as all the best ideas are thought of – it could be argued that the room to innovate is closing.

From a price perspective – The supermarkets provide no better example of the way in which cost can be eliminated as a genuine differentiator. The shopping comparison site Mysupermarket demonstrates this amply. A simple search for virtually any branded product reveals that all the major players have pricing (promotions excluded) that is nigh-on identical. A few months ago, Sainsbury’s even ran a national print media campaign highlighting the fact that the products shown “Look the same… and cost the same”. And I thought price fixing was illegal(!).

Taking promotion as another example – a lot of the segmentation work we do is with a view to addressing the common needs of like-minded customers with effective, targeted and relevant marketing and service. This is a laudable ideal, and an approach we’d naturally endorse. However, segmentations only work if they’re usable and it’s here that our obsession with always doing “something different” can come unstuck.

When segments are awkwardly labelled, indistinct from each other in the real world and where there’s too many of them, an “innovative” approach soon becomes an unworkable one. Something far less glamorous, tried-and-tested but, crucially, actionable is the one that sometimes needs to win out. In other words, it’s sometimes better to be roughly right, than precisely wrong.

So what’s my conclusion in this innovative/conservative debate? I’m going to shirk out of this one, I’m afraid, and go for something non-committal by returning to the theme of music. I’ll leave you with the words of the late John Peel who, in describing one of my favourite bands, The Fall, concluded they were “always different, always the same”. Awkwardly for us market researchers, we have to be both too…

Market research specialist B2B International believes that current student dissatisfaction can be used to enhance educational experience in the future.

The current climate of student protests about minimal contact time, poor tutor feedback and shoddy lectures raises questions about the shift in students’ attitudes and behaviours related to their educational experience.

Much of this current unrest could be attributed to the requirement for students to pay higher fees.  This has prompted discussions within the sector about the positioning of the student as a “customer” or a “consumer”.  It has been argued that the term “customer” is not appropriate for the field of education as the relationship is completely different to that of the conventional commercial buyer/seller experience…yet students do purchase and experience education.

Carol-Ann Morgan is head of B2B International’s specialist education market research unit:

Such comments come from first-hand knowledge of the sector.  B2B International has more than a decade’s experience in conducting bespoke student satisfaction studies amongst Britain’s leading educational establishments, working with organisations within the education and training sector – schools and colleges for 14-19 year olds, universities and HE, and awarding bodies. B2B International has also been approved as one of a small number of preferred suppliers to conduct research for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA).

Morgan continues:

In answer to demand from the HE sector and drawing on years of experience conducting student satisfaction studies, B2B International has developed its Independent Student Experience Programme (INSTEP), an independent, off-the-shelf, student e-survey package which complements the National Student Survey perfectly.  This technologically advanced programme delivers understanding of student perception, overall satisfaction levels across the institution, identification of areas of strength and weakness, priorities for improvement, and potential for ongoing tracking of changes in satisfaction.

Morgan feels that the recent student protests have vindicated the need for a simple and cost-effective product such as INSTEP, the demonstrations having served to underline the obligation of educational institutions to take student satisfaction seriously:

They say that the customer is always right.  But how exactly do you define a customer?  Recent protests by British university students about the quality of the education they’re ‘purchasing’ have caused Carol-Ann Morgan to reflect on the lessons we can all learn in a wider business context.

Who would have ever thought it? …Students protesting about not enough teaching classes? However, this is exactly what has recently been seen at a number of well known UK universities, and reported in the national press.  Thinking back to the days of my education, most students breathed a sigh of relief at the cancellation of any classes and headed for the nearest place of recreation.  The recent actions from some students raise questions about the shift in students’ attitudes and behaviours related to their educational experience.

Higher education has undergone significant changes in recent years.  Many of these changes have impacted directly on the perceptions of students themselves; not insignificantly the requirement for them to pay fees.  This has prompted discussions within the sector about the positioning of the student as a “customer” or a “consumer”.  It can, and has been argued that the term “customer” is not appropriate for the field of education as the relationship is completely different to that of the conventional commercial buyer/seller experience.  The successful attainment of an educational qualification requires mutual investment from both sides of the equation.  This said, many academics have directly observed a shift in student attitudes and behaviours in favour of the “customer” positioning; most recently in the very public protestations by students about both the quality and the quantity of the educational “product” they feel they have purchased.

Whether or not we agree that an educational qualification can ever be thought of as a “purchased” product given the nature of the necessary relationship between the parties involved, the student protestations serve to remind us of two things.  Firstly, the importance and power of the voice of the customer, consumer or service user (by whatever name we choose to use), and secondly, the perceived value for money of the product.  The students’ action was an open demonstration that their expectations are not being met as far as the delivery of the course is concerned, and that they would like to place the issue on the management radar screen.  Customers in commercial markets may simply switch to use competitor suppliers.

Reputations take time to build, and taking our eye off the mainstream product, from which these reputations have been built, can have disastrous effects.  Customers are generally unconcerned about internal operational or financial issues which can impact on the quality or delivery of a product to them; their satisfaction is rooted in expectation and direct experience.  Taking care of our customers not only enables us to respond with offers and services which meet current and future needs, it also serves to protect the reputation of the company by ensuring we have a loyal base of advocates willing to spread the word – a valuable source of free PR.

B2B International offers an innovative student satisfaction package.  Click here to read more about it.