WEB MBAs MAKE THE GRADE

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, May, 2001 by Kimberly Lankford

CAREERS Get your degree from a BIG-NAME BUSINESS SCHOOL without leaving home.

HERE'S A time-management problem that would challenge any business student: You're a senior analyst at Cinergy Corp., an electric utility near Indianapolis. You're also the father of three children, ages 14, 12 and 10, and you devote evenings and weekends to coaching their basketball and softball teams. You'd like to get an MBA, but you don't have time to attend regular classes. What do you do?

If you're Rick Hensley, you enroll in the online MBA program at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. "I didn't want to miss two or three years of my children's lives," says Hensley. "My options were either to find something online or wait five or six years." Now he reads his professors' weekly lectures and completes the assignments when it suits his schedule, and he'll get his degree this year.

So will James McCoy, an online MBA student at the University of Florida, who wasn't derailed when his employer, DaimlerChrysler, transferred him from Chicago to Boston shortly after he enrolled.

Online MBA programs are one of the fastest-growing areas in education, according to Peterson's annual Guide to Distance Learning Programs 2001 (www.petersons.com/dlearn). And they've come a long way in quality as well as quantity. Early programs had a reputation for snap courses that lacked the team interaction that's an important part of business school. Headhunters and personnel managers weren't impressed, and neither were prospective students, most of whom are mid-career professionals and managers in their thirties and forties.

"They were all smaller colleges and lesser-known schools," says John Shade, chief engineer of Rolls-Royce's 501k-engine program in Indianapolis. "I thought that if I was going to invest the effort to get an MBA, I would do it only through a high-caliber program." Shade finally made his move when Indiana began offering its highly regarded two-year program online (www.bus.indiana.edu).

Shade was impressed that Indiana's Web curriculum has the same requirements, classes and teachers as its traditional program. Yet he doesn't have to race from work to a classroom--or fly to Chicago for a weekend program, another option he considered.

Don't think that studying online means getting off easy. It's not unusual for students to put in 15 to 20 hours a week for two full years to complete their coursework. And "flexible hours" is often a euphemism for the middle of the night. Still, Shade prefers the weeklong online forums to traditional class periods. "Online discussions are a big part of your grade, and students have an opportunity to collect their thoughts and figure out what they want to say," he says.

In addition to learning on their own time, students get to keep lectures, class notes, forums and other resources on their computer, rather than relying on scattered notes, handouts and what they remember from class discussions. "To me, it's a lifetime digital library, all on my hard drive," says Steven Nordlund, an IBM executive who is about to complete the online program at the University of Florida's Warrington School of Business (www.florida-mba.ufl.edu).

Some professors say teaching on the Web makes them more conscious of how much effort they put into their work. "You can't be as lazy when you do distance learning as when you're face to face with students," says Warren French, a University of Georgia professor. Because online students can't immediately ask you to elaborate on a vague statement, lectures "have to be tighter," says French.

Sanford Berg, a professor of managerial economics at the University of Florida, says, "I get to know my students better over the Web than in large, in-person sections," a sentiment that is echoed by other professors and students.

Big business

NOT ALL business schools are enamored of the online format. In particular, top-tier schools that don't have any trouble attracting students to their campuses have been slow to offer full-degree programs on the Web. "There is no substitute for physical interaction and dialog with students," says Jeanne Liedtka, associate dean for MBA education at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business.

But a growing number of well known colleges, particularly state universities with respected business schools, have discovered that online MBA programs can attract an untapped market of students who have little time but plenty of money (or employers with deep pockets). In fact, many schools charge more for their online MBA programs than for oncampus programs because the technology is expensive and the classes smaller. For instance, Indiana University's online program costs about $30,000 per student (typical of state universities), versus $14,000 for in-state, on-campus tuition.

Duke University's Fuqua School of Business offers the most prestigious online program. Its Global Executive MBA is a 19-month curriculum with tough admissions requirements: You must have at least ten years of professional experience and international managerial responsibilities. It also carries a hefty price tag of $95,000, which includes a laptop computer, portable printer, and lodging and meals during extensive residential sessions at Duke and abroad (but not travel costs).