Beginning with the class of 2011, MBA graduates from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley will be eligible to participate, for free, in training offered through the school’s Center for Executive Education, Haas Dean Rich Lyons announced earlier this month.

The new initiative was inspired by the school’s defining principles, one of which is “Students Always.” Available immediately after graduation and for the next five years, the benefit provides two free days of executive education programs to recent alumni of each of the Haas School’s three MBA programs: full-time, evening and weekend and Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA.

Though the articulation of Students Always as a defining principle for the school is relatively new, the practice of providing alumni access to lifelong learning is not. Haas alumni have returned to the school to audit MBA courses for free, as availability allows, since 2004 as part of the Alumni Audit Program. Approximately 200 alumni take advantage of this program each year, the school reports. Haas alumni also get 15 percent off tuition for any open enrollment executive education course the attend.

“The culture at Berkeley-Haas is that we are passionate about learning, and we know we’ll always have plenty more yet to learn,” Dean Lyons said in a statement announcing the most recent continuing education offering. “That’s what makes the world exciting, and that’s what drives innovation in the marketplace,” he added.

Through the Center for Executive Education, Haas alumni can choose from multiple courses across a wide range of topics, from leadership and innovation to industry topics such as high-tech product management and energy.

For  more about the new alumni education offering at Haas, click here.

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