Virtually all of the professional master's degree (PMD) programs have consulted with industry along the way, and each academic institution maintains strong communication through retreats, conferences, and meetings.
"We've been involving industry pretty heavily, not so much in developing curricula--we're doing that ourselves--but certainly in getting feedback from them on industry trends and jobs, and lining them up for internships for our students," says Keck Graduate Institute's David Galas. "We have maybe 25 companies that have been representative members of our corporate roundtable for the last six to nine months." Those companies include Allergan, Amgen, Baxter, Beckman Coulter, DuPont, Genentech, Monsanto, and SmithKline Beecham. "With the information revolution, the demand side is changing very fast, and that industry input is important," says Jesse H. Ausubel of Rockefeller University and the Sloan Foundation.
At Michigan State, says PMD project director Estelle McGroarty, "We talked with industrial advisers about what...