DISTANCE-LEARNING SPECIAL 2010 - WHICH MBA? docx

Distance-learning special 2010 Including a rating of selected distance-learning programmes... 5 How a distance-learning MBA works A programme director gives the inside track 7 Distance

Distance-learning special 2010

Including a rating of

selected distance-learning programmes

Contents

Distance-learning special

3 Introduction

4 A triumph of democracy?

Should an MBA be open to anyone?

5 How a distance-learning MBA works

A programme director gives the inside track

7 Distance-learning diary

Home, not quite alone

9 Programme profiles and ratings

10 How we rated the programmes

Schools

11 Aston Business School

11 Bradford School of Management

12 Curtin University Graduate School of Business

12 Euro*MBA

13 University of Florida—Hough Graduate School of Business

13 Henley Business School at the University of Reading

14 IE Business School

14 Imperial College Business School

15 Indiana University—Kelley School of Business

15 Open University Business School

16 Royal Holloway School of Management

16 Thunderbird School of Global Management

17 Warwick Business School

25 St James’s Street London SW1A 1HG

Telephone:

+44 (0) 20 7830 7000

E-mail:

whichmba@economist.com

Distance-learning special 2010

© 2010 The Economist Newspaper Limited All rights reserved Neither this publication nor any part

of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording

or otherwise, without the prior permission of The Economist Newspaper Limited

Published by The Economist Newspaper Limited Where opinion is expressed

it is that of the authors and does not necessarily coincide with the editorial views of the publisher or

The Economist.

All information in this magazine is verified to the best of the authors’ and the publisher’s ability However, The Economist Newspaper Limited does not accept responsibility for any loss arising from reliance on it.

3 Other ways of taking the degree Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

Introduction

Distance-learning business education is a resounding success story In America, specialist universities, such as the University of Phoenix, have hundreds of thousands of postgraduate business students enrolled In India the total is probably in the millions If, perhaps, the very top tier of universities are yet to offer distance pro-grammes, still some very notable ones do: Carnegie Mellon or Thunderbird in America, Warwick or Insitito Empresas in Europe, for example

Yet students who take their MBAs at a distance can find themselves railing against some intense snobbery Full-time counterparts often decry that the only way to take the degree is to immerse oneself in the experi-ence—to take time out from one’s career to contemplate

Perhaps, in an ideal world But many people don’t find themselves in the happy position to be able to take such an expensive sabbatical Distance-learning programmes fall into two distinct camps, both of them laudable The first might be labelled “democratic” (see page 4) These are programmes that are open to all, regardless of geographic location, previous work experience or, because they are often cheap, ability to pay It

is easy for an MBA at a prestigious institution to sneer, but there is nothing to say that business education should be the bastion of the elite Of course, there will always be a demand for Har-vard MBAs in the boardrooms of McKinsey or Barclays But business education is fundamentally about personal betterment And that is something to which everyone should be able to aspire Nevertheless, such programmes can be thought of as a distinct branch of distance learning, and are not intended to be the focus of this report It is the second type of programme that we are concentrating on here; those that are somewhat less democratic Programmes that apply stricter entrance criteria and are offered by more traditional universities Where students are expected to have good first degrees and significant work experience And where the degree they receive will be of an equal standing to the full-time variety Students might choose such a pro-gramme because they are in a part of the world which lacks high-quality schools, and it is the only option available to get a good degree Or they may just prefer the idea of working at the time that suits them best Students on these programmes are less likely to change careers than their full-time equivalents But they would expect to rise up within their own company Indeed, many students will be sponsored by their current employers with just this is mind And it is here that we see one of the most important benefits Rather than squirreling themselves away in academic isolation, distance-learning students can apply what they learn on their programmes the very next morning in the workplace, making it the most practical way to study

Distance learning isn’t for everyone It is very difficult to juggle work, family and study Students need plenty of self-discipline Choosing a school means considering more than a school’s reputation: does the school keep you engaged? Is the technology effective? Does it offer value for money? Hopefully this report will go some way to helping answer those questions

Bill Ridgers

Business education editor, The Economist

4 A triumph of democracy? Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

A triumph of democracy?

❝

“Even if you think it

is going to be hard,

you can trust me, it

is much harder”

❞

Distance-learning student

Should an MBA be open to anyone?

technology, with its culture of instant access, has made our lives easier is open to debate

But what is certainly true is that it has changed the face of business education Once the poor relation of its campus-based equivalent, the distance-learning MBA has become a valuable alternative for students unwilling or unable to invest up to two years

of their working lives in the classroom experience

But has the concept of distance learning spun out

of control? The sector now boasts a dizzying array of offerings from traditional, established providers like Warwick Business School in Britain to super

schools such as the University of Phoe-nix in America, with over 455,000 students around the globe In India, where universities and corporations are launching courses on a daily basis, distance learners are now counted

in their millions, and look set to increase Many observers expect the Indian distance-learning market to double every year for the next five years

Online degree costs vary

wild-ly, from as low as $200 for a set of books and a year of internet study, to

$30,000 for a degree programme at

an established school So does pricing indicate the intrinsic worth of some programmes over others, or are we just seeing a logical fragmentation of a vast worldwide market? While it might be easy to sneer at the low-cost providers,

do they perform a valuable function in democratising business education?

Although President Obama wants America to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the end of the next decade, William Pepicello, president of the University of Phoenix, warns that for the first time in American history a new generation is

in danger of being less educated than the previous one

Left unchecked, this will result in a shortfall of high-ly-skilled professionals—a problem that will not be addressed just through conventional students who go

directly from high school to live and study on campus According to Dr Pepicello, such students make up only 27% of his undergraduate population today The remainder are those who want to participate in higher education, but who are shut out of traditional institu-tions They are often in their early 30s, possibly par-ents, working full- or part-time, and likely to be the first generation in their family to get an undergraduate education Such students need to access classes at times that are convenient to them This flexible integration

of learning is one of the underlying appeals of distance learning, from Kansas to Kolkata

But does student quality drop when targeting such

a mass market? The University of Phoenix views its admissions approach as being inclusive, arguing that bricks-and-mortar universities exert a form of elitism

by using grades and standardised testing as a way of restricting class size, whereas the distance-learning uni-versity can offer places to a wider student body whose priority is simply to move ahead

Warwick Business School, on the other hand, insists

on the same rigorous academic entry criteria for all its MBA programmes, whether distance learning, full- or part-time Ray Irving, the school’s head of learning

5 A triumph of democracy? Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

How a distance-learning

MBA works

resources development, explains that Warwick is

tar-geting a different market segment, focusing on

experi-enced managers with no option for a career break An

accredited distance-learning programme offers them a

good alternative and access to a world-ranked school,

no matter where in the world they are based With

stu-dents from over 110 countries, Warwick points to

dra-matic growth in the number of distance learners on its

programmes from African countries such as Nigeria, as

well as from North America

India emerging

It is India, though, that is witnessing some of the

fast-est rates of adoption for distance learning Since 2001,

24x7 Learning, one of the country’s leading e-learning

technology platforms, has welcomed over a million

students to the various courses that they host for both

academic institutions and corporate universities Anil

Chhikara, the company’s president, believes the Indian

market for online education is just five years behind

America’s—and is catching up fast Inadequate

physi-cal infrastructure for India’s 230m potential students,

coupled with better technology, has driven a huge and

diverse distance-learning market Many of India’s

lead-ing firms from retail to telecoms are also uslead-ing

e-learn-ing to meet their business traine-learn-ing needs

Indian legislation ensures that a government or

public sector employee who earns an online degree will

benefit from an increase in both pay scale and pension

And for a student at the other end of the scale? Michael

Cann, a graduate of the Warwick DLMBA, used his

degree to move from middle management at a

medi-um-sized pharmaceutical firm, through the executive

committee of a leading UK bank, to the recently elected

position of chairman of the British Generics

Manufac-turer Association For Michael, distance learning gave

him the chance to apply immediately what he learned

in the classroom as he moved up the corporate ladder

A case of mission accomplished

Matthew Symonds is a freelance journalist specialising in

busi-ness education

IE Business School in Spain has been running its distance-learning programme, the International Executive MBA, for ten years It is aimed at executives with around seven years’ work experience—three of those managerial The MBA lasts for 13 months and students are spread across the globe Gamaliel Martinez, the director of the programme, gives the inside track

students meet for two weeks at the beginning of the programme in Madrid, then work online for six months The group get together again for

a further two weeks in Shanghai in the middle of the programme, before another six months of remote stud-ying Then the final two weeks are spent in Madrid The MBA is taught almost exclusively using case-studies—whereby students discuss real dilemmas faced

by actual companies This is similar to many full-time programmes, where the debates are held in classrooms

❝

“Not only do I get to continue working and earn money, but I can

directly apply the knowledge gained from my coursework the next

day at my job.”

❞

Distance-learning student

6 How a distance-learning MBA works Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

❝

“The only thing I greatly missed was the interaction between students and faculty in a classroom setting—especially in the classes I don’t have the talent for”

❞

Distance-learning student

The difference on the distance-learning MBA is that the discussions are online and last for three or four days

Before the class students must prepare—both individu-ally and in pre-assigned groups The professor opens

up by asking questions and the students then begin dis-cussing the case

We try to avoid real-time interaction We have stu-dents living in 20 countries—scheduling a session for 7pm is not going to mean the same for everybody So

we try to make as much of it as asynchronous as pos-sible So cases are discussed in an internet forum Stu-dents enter the discussion at the time that’s best for them Sometimes they prefer early in the morning before they go to work, sometimes in the evening or even late at night Usually they will be involved for two

or three hours every day

We have been running the programme for ten years and we don’t like to change the basic technology

We have experimented with multimedia materials and video conferences But we like to keep the technology light It is important if you want to have a diverse class

We have students in places such as Nigeria and Turk-menistan who cannot access fast internet connections everyday And they add a lot of value to the class

We know that the online case discussions go deeper than the face-to-face type used on the full-time pro-gramme People have time to think about the issues and

to find out how things are done within their own com-panies Surprisingly, the network is also deeper than on

a face-to-face programme This is because the interac-tion is very direct—the students participate in discus-sions outside of working hours when they are relaxed

So they talk about very personal things—it creates a deep contact

It is probably true that you need more self motiva-tion on a distance-learning programme But our meth-odology—where students work in pressurised teams and professors are always asking questions—means that the programme can become addictive When any of my students pass by a computer they jump on it They can’t resist seeing what has been said in the forum and contrib-uting And they need to participate every day If they are not participating then they lose track

Professors asses their students in three ways: some-times with an exam—either online or face-to-face; sometimes they grade the teams; or they will grade students on their participation in the online discus-sions Professors grade every message on the forum They might award each message a mark between one and three, depending on whether the student has sim-ply read the case and understood it, or whether he has opened up a totally new area of discussion Students who really want to get the best grades send a lot of mes-sages and sometimes we have to ask them to limit their contribution They have to learn to give the others the opportunity to contribute

Professor Martinez was speaking to The Economist’s business

education editor Professor Martinez

7 Distance-learning diary Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

Distance-learning diary

Home, not quite alone

Terri Pepper Gavulic, an alumna of the University of Florida, says don’t be fooled into thinking a distance-learning MBA is anything but tough But she wouldn’t have had it any other way

might buy a sports car or resort to plastic surgery,

I went back to school for an MBA As a manage-ment consultant, working mum and frequent flier, I needed a flexible schedule so decided on distance learning

The list of highly-ranked programmes seemed a short one, but I was delighted to discover the

Universi-ty of Florida on it—I’d taken my undergraduate degree there almost 30 years before Its Internet MBA seemed tailor-made for me—a 27 month programme with on-campus sessions every eight weeks on the weekend For

me, the six-hour drive seemed manageable

Taking the GMAT entrance exam was a wake-up call that I was about to embark on an experience that would require a lot of maths This, more than anything else, caused the most anxiety throughout my MBA But

my admissions officer was encouraging and thought I could overcome my maths deficiency He was right

As an older student I had a lot to prove and wouldn’t contemplate failure So I applied to the pro-gramme as early as I could That way, the admissions team could make a decision based on my merits, with-out having to compare me to other candidates

The first day we headed out for team building,

including rope courses and group challenges It was a smart way to start the programme We bonded

instant-ly and our cohort was quickinstant-ly able to size each other up and determine with whom we wanted to work on our class teams Also, some activities were physically chal-lenging and terrifying For many of us, overcoming our fear walking a tightrope or leaping off a 30-foot pole gave us confidence that we could do anything, includ-ing succeed on our MBA programme

And then the hard work began There’s a lot I liked about my MBA But it is also important to be aware of the drawbacks If I were to list the toughest challenges they would be:

teammates accountable and resolve conflicts

and we didn’t have a few promised classes, includ-ing the one I most wanted Distance-learninclud-ing pro-grammes don’t usually allow for elective courses

Every-one makes sacrifices Some classmates dropped out because they couldn’t manage this aspect

things I could do in advance to prepare, such as learn calculus, relearn algebra and brush up on Excel

straight with no breaks at all—not even one day off

❝

“Surprisingly,

you are probably

more connected

to the programme

because the quality

and quantity of

your participation is

monitored.”

❞

Distance-learning student

8 Distance-learning diary Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

But don’t let that scare you The positive aspects out-weighed the challenges:

real-world experience and were not too academic

Several used innovative teaching methods—bring-ing in venture capitalists for us to present to, for example—which kept the interest high And they were always accessible

only on the weekend was manageable for busy pro-fessionals

quan-titative (eg, finance, and operations management) and qualitative (eg, marketing and entrepreneur-ship) courses

sup-port staff were incredible We were always well fed, encouraged, and had no uncertainty about our schedule

programme and our feedback was regularly solicited

formed lasting friendships and business relation-ships

When people ask what I thought of the distance learning format I tell them I can’t imagine going to school any other way Studying from the comfort of

my own home allowed me to continue being active

in family life and meet my work obligations But stu-dents require different skills than on a traditional pro-gramme Distance students must be technology savvy, organised, and self-motivated In our programme every class involved a blend of team and individual assign-ments, so good communication skills, both written and verbal, were essential to be successful on virtual teams When we donned our caps and gowns we were a smaller group than when we climbed the 30-foot pole

27 months earlier Several classmates had dropped out for reasons ranging from job transfers to an inability

to do the work I stuck it out, though there were many times when I felt over my head In my company we talk about the “big why” Why do we work hard? What motivates us? Walking across the graduation stage 30 years after I’d received my undergraduate degree, I closely watched my ten-year-old daughter’s face beam with pride That, in a nutshell, was my big why

Terri Pepper Gavulic is now an entrepreneur and heads three

companies

❝

Distance learning is flexible to your pace and mode of study

However, the academic support given is very much equivalent to those on campus

❞

Distance-learning student, UK school

9 Distance-learning diary Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

Programme profiles and ratings

10 Programme profiles and ratings Distance-learning special Which MBA? 2010

judg-ing very different criteria than one might look at

when ranking other types of MBAs One of the

main differences is that distance-learning students

tend not to be career-switchers, so the metrics related

to careers services—such as the percentage of graduates

finding work or even their salaries—are not of great

concern Equally, while schools offering

distance-learn-ing programmes like to claim that remote workdistance-learn-ing is

no barrier to networking, this is not, by and large, why

students themselves sign up

Instead, we looked at three broad areas: the

pro-gramme content; the quality of the students; and a

category we have described as the quality of the

dis-tance-learning elements These latter metrics focus on

those areas unique to distance-learning programmes,

such as the effectiveness of the teaching methods used

and the students’ sense of connection to the school

Schools’ ratings have primarily been determined by a

survey of distance-learning students

In each category, percentage scores have been

assigned to schools The top rated school received a

score of 100% and the rest were benchmarked against

it Schools with a score above 95% were awarded a

rat-ing of “excellent” A score of 75%-94% rated as “good”;

50%-74% “average”; and below 50% “poor”

It is important to note that we deliberately called

the survey a “rating” rather than a “ranking” This is

because the list of schools is not exhaustive As noted

in the introduction we have deliberately excluded from

the ratings some of those schools with large cohorts

and less-stringent admissions requirements Instead we

have concentrated on those programmes offered at the

institutions which feature in The Economist’s ranking of

the 100 full-time programmes

Results

Distance-learning programmes have traditionally been

concentrated in Britain and America Both countries

have a tradition of “correspondence courses”, the

pre-cursors of distance learning Of the 13 schools covered

in this report, only three do not come from one of

those countries

Two programmes achieved our top rating of

“excellent”: Florida’s Internet MBA and the

Interna-tional Executive MBA offered by IE Business School in

How we rated

the programmes

Spain Both schools scored well across the board IE’s students, for example, have an average of 13 years of work experience, and although students are spread as widely as Nigeria and Turkmenistan, they also say they feel incredibly connected to the school Furthermore, despite its hefty price tag—programme fees of €52,000 ($76,440) make it the most expensive surveyed—stu-dents still consider it to be excellent value for money

It is a similar story at Florida Although its students have much less work experience than those at IE, they

do rate their classmates as being the best of the schools surveyed They also rave about the quality of the dis-tance-learning materials used by the school And it, too, scores well on value for money

Both schools also have a low student attrition rate

It is an unfortunate feature of distance-learning pro-grammes that students are more likely to drop out than counterparts on other types of MBA This is because

of the high levels of self-motivation and self-discipline required At the best schools, which work hard to keep students engaged, one might expect over 90% of those who begin the MBA to finish it Elsewhere, however, this rate may fall below 50%

Honourable mentions go to Thunderbird School

of Global Management, Indiana’s Kelly school (both

in America) and the Euro*MBA, which is offered by a consortium of European business schools, all of which rated as “good” All three got “excellent” ratings for their programme content

❝

“I found the environment very collegial Many

of my classes incorporated a lot

of group work and used discussion forums to spur discussion among classmates.”

❞

Distance-learning student

Category Criteria Weight

Programme content (33%)

Percentage of faculty with a PhD 8%

Student rating* of the programme content

8%

Fellow students (33%)

Percentage of students who complete the programme

11% Average number of years’ work

experience of students

11% Student rating* of culture and

classmates

11%

Distance learning elements (33%)

Student rating* of the effectiveness of the distance-learning materials

11% Student rating* of their sense of

connection to the programme

11% Student rating* of the programme’s

value for money

11%

* Student ratings out of 5