(A Short Campus Tale about a Student Journey)
The following fictional short story is a typical student journey of our current students and alumni.
On the first night, Maya wasn’t thinking about a doctorate. She was rinsing baby bottles, checking homework, and staring at a new login page. The Master of Business Administration (MBA) at EIM promised part-time, flexible, online study for working professionals, precisely what a founder-mom needed. After an admissions review that recognized her prior learning (RPL) from years of building and exiting a startup, she was cleared to begin with one 5-ECTS module.
She chose “Artificial Intelligence in Business”. Between school drop-offs and morning patient-safety huddles, she learned how machine learning could forecast clinic flow and reduce supply waste. EIM’s adult-learning approach, ‘learn today, apply tonight,‘ fits perfectly: she tested simple models on last year’s appointment data and watched patterns emerge. When the module ended, an Award arrived in her inbox. Small. Official. Powerful.
Weeks found a rhythm: late trains, quiet headphones, notes that smelled like coffee. With many MBA tracks on offer, she committed to Healthcare Management, the field that truly resonated with her. Courses leaned into experiential learning with live case studies, often her own service: “mapping a referral-to-discharge data flow, negotiating with hospital partners, redesigning consent forms to improve health literacy”. After completing six modules, she surpassed 30 ECTS and earned the Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert)—a notable achievement on her website and a stronger voice at the leadership table.
Momentum carried her to 60 ECTS, the Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip), as she piloted a weekly “telehealth follow-up clinic for chronic care”. Because the platform let her learn whenever and wherever she was, she studied from “ward break rooms and quiet clinic corners”, saved travel costs, and kept her carbon footprint low. At 90 ECTS, the MBA wasn’t a finish line but a doorway, propped open by a capstone she had carefully designed to serve two masters: solve headaches about the acceptance of a new e-prescribing software now and build a literature base and methods she could reuse in her doctorate later.
Inside that doorway stood three routes: a Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), a PhD in Management or Healthcare Studies. This was the crossroad where a knowledge consumer becomes a knowledge producer. Maya chose the PhD in Healthcare Studies and expanded a leadership theory focused on women leading clinical teams, how “interprofessional collaboration, clinical risk, and community identity” shape decision-making. The literature she’d started in the MBA grew teeth; the methods she’d piloted grew muscle; her sample stretched across regions. She wasn’t scrambling for a topic; she was deepening a story already in motion.
The graduation ceremony was a once-in-a-lifetime blur—kids in their best shoes, her parents misty-eyed, a short speech about second chances. What mattered most, she realized, was the people: a high-caliber peer network already swapping spare-time ideas and real business leads; professors with academic and industry careers and visible publication records; and personal tutoring with quick turnarounds that had steadied her when life wobbled. This is what she’d hoped for: a government-accredited, boutique-style institution with individualized support and clear outcomes.
When the dissertation was bound and signed, she refused to treat it like an ending. A doctorate is a starting point. She wanted to continue investigating, publishing, and refining her theory through new fieldwork. To do that—and to teach the way she wished she’d been taught—she sharpened her toolkit with two precise credentials: the PGCert in Technology-Enhanced Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (to design engaging online and blended courses for busy professionals) and the PGCert in Academic Research and Publication (to navigate peer review, plan special issues, and turn field notes into articles). Practitioner instincts plus researcher patience—now tuned for the classroom and the journal.
And there, chalk in hand, slides queued, citation manager tamed, Maya saw the path that had carried her: Award → PGCert → PGDip → MBA → Doctorate (PhD in HCS) → two PGCerts for academia. Each marker stood on its own. Together, they formed a map to her goal and a runway back to the field, where the following season was already growing.
For program details, dates, and admission guidance (including RPL), see EIM’s site www.eim.education.
