Another long conversation with a friend of mine...She is currently enrolled in an MBA program in Europe and she is stunningly excited about it. She interestingly she shares more about her student life and extracurricular activities than from her program itself. I feel that her main motivation was to break out of her current routines and experience something totally new.
As for me, the situation is slightly different: I have already had the opportunity to study abroad. So, studying overseas again, maybe on another continent, it's nice to have but not a top priority at this moment. Since graduation, my career progression is great, and don't feel like ending this ride. However, in my network, more and more people decide to quit their jobs to go for an MBA. Am I strange? Am I going to be left out for being happy at my job? So, I started looking for online MBAs that I could pursue while working. My employer gives me full support but unfortunately not too much help financially.
Since the pandemic, the uptake of online/hybrid MBA programs has been on the rise. Similarly, employers see online degrees as more valuable than before (US News). There are many compelling reasons for that:
Imagine you run your own business and you have only one client (we don't look into business sustainability here). You can give 100% to this client whatever this entails. In this post, the client is your MBA, when you do it full-time.
Studying an online MBA, you have at least 3 clients: Your MBA, your company, and your family & friends. You need to juggle because you can't afford to neglect any of them. Neglecting your MBA would mean expulsion, neglecting your job is playing with your livelihood. Neglecting your family might put strains on relationships beyond repair.
Having the ability to cater to clients with diverse requests and requirements fosters adaptability and resilience, which are highly sought-after skills in today's job market.
Depending on how the degree is designed and whether it fosters teamwork and group engagement, online students build a stronger sense of community. They are connected online regularly and have created the habit of staying in touch. The residential periods, if any, become happenings that forge even stronger bonds.
After graduation, their sense of community extends to alumni relations. Online students tend to be very active alumni to leverage the physical engagements of the institution. Not sure whether to compensate for the lack of physical interaction during the program or simply because they perceive a stronger connection to the institution.
On-campus students build very strong relationships with their classmates but depending on the workload of the program and the community-building ambition of the university, it might just stay there. Just after graduation, the commonality of having studied at the same academic institution eases networking. It usually stays on an opportunistic level.
Online programs are typically not a 1:1 copy of the full-time program. They are more condensed versions with a reduced number of electives if any. So, full-time programs aim for more breadth, more choice, more options, and more personalization.
So, why do online programs go deeper? Let's take a hybrid program that combines face-to-face periods with virtual learning through videoconference and forum discussions. Typically a topic kicks-off in a videoconference and continues in online forums. While the videoconference is not different to a face-to-face class, but the forum discussions allow depths. As students are working, they have access to corporate databases, latest industry reports, white papers, and country analysis (Most of them.are inaccessible to any full-time students). In addition, forum discussions are spread out over days to cater to the very diverse group from around the world. It's not a 90-minutes session in which any discussion is killed off at 89:59 minutes.
This additional time allows for more profound contemplation, extensive research, and a significantly more comprehensive discussion enriched with real-time data. Or in other words, more DEPTH.
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