More Businesses Jumping On The Online Accreditation Programs

Employees of Federal Express, Rolls-Royce Allison and Cinergy have already participated in the Online Accredited MBA Program over the past year. Based on the success of the program, IU decided to open it to the public, said Richard Magjuka, associate professor of business administration and chairman of Kelley Direct, IU's new Online Accredited MBA Program.

While students enrolled in the past year were pleased with the accessibility and flexibility of the online MBA, the unknown factor was educational quality, Magjuka said. "The key to that is to be highly interactive and yet be Web-based with a very dedicated faculty. Our faculty are driving that through e-mail and personal interaction with students," he said.

Whether students attend classes online or on campus, they concentrate their studies largely on casework -- the hallmark of the MBA degree. The cases can be analyzed just as well in a classroom or via e-mail, Magjuka said.

John Shade, an IU online MBA student and a chief engineer at Rolls-Royce, said he hopes to develop "cross-functional" thinking -- pulling marketing, finance, operations and accounting skills into his current job -- through his MBA studies.

Shade had been interested in earning an MBA for some time, but couldn't figure out how to be a student and still keep his full-time job. "It's difficult to fully appreciate this flexibility until the other issues (work and family) demand your attention, and you can simply take the night off from schoolwork," said Shade, who estimated that he spends 15 hours a week on his MBA studies.

Erika Steuterman, director of masters programs at Purdue's Krannert School of Business, boasted that Purdue has had its online Executive Masters Program since 1983. "Purdue had e-mail before there was e-mail," she said, explaining that Purdue used its own early e-mail system, called K-mail, for the program until 1990, when globally linked e-mail became widespread.

There are 250 students in all of Purdue's executive education programs. Steuterman makes no distinction between those studying on campus in West Lafayette and those working toward their degrees in India or Great Britain. "Our student body is completely global," she said.

Purdue students come to the West Lafayette campus for two weeks at a time, six times over the course of their two-year MBA studies. The Purdue students have an average of 12 years of work experience "in a diversity of sectors," Steuterman said.

Could there be a day when an online MBA is the norm, when few -- if any -- students set foot on a campus?

MBA Online