Software trainer Izumi “Zoom” Yoshida thought a few years ago that she needed an MBA to advance her career, but she wasn’t keen on the travel required in going back to school. So she enrolled in an online MBA program at Elmhurst College.
Yoshida, 46, of Lombard, is among a growing number of people whose lifestyle, work schedules and family obligations nudge them toward online degrees.
To accommodate them, more traditional colleges and universities are offering MBA programs online, a space dominated by for-profit schools, said Jay Titus, senior director of academic services at EdAssist, a Massachusetts-based company that manages corporate tuition-assistance programs.
EdAssist last year managed tuition assistance of more than 11,000 employees who participated in MBA programs, and 48 percent of those employees chose an MBA program offered entirely online, Titus said. Another 10 percent opted for a blended program in which they did some coursework online, he said.
“They are absolutely valued by employers,” Titus said of online MBA programs. “They understand it’s more flexible and there’s a lot more opportunity for the person to stay engaged at work as well as get their degree.”
Yet some hiring managers say they’re still not comfortable with an online education.
“I would prefer that they have traditional coursework,” said Diane Alexander, owner of Montgomery-based human-resources consulting company DJA Enterprises. “That’s depending on the curriculum, the job title and the position requirements. A lot of roles require people skills, soft skills. You can’t get those through online programs.”
Still, students keep enrolling in them. Business programs at Indiana University, Syracuse University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are among those that offer MBAs online.
Lisle-based Benedictine University offers two online MBA options: one in which working professionals can take one course at a time and an accelerated one in which students take two courses at a time. Benedictine touts a 2014 university survey in which 48 percent of students who completed its online MBA program said they received a promotion or increased responsibility at work.
Most Chicago-area programs don’t offer online MBA degrees, though many offer some courses online.
The Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology hopes to launch an online MBA program within two years, said Krishna Erramilli, associate dean and director of graduate business programs. He said many of IIT’s MBA students work fulltime and travel.
“We have been a bit slow to take the online route because we were not happy, not satisfied, with the technologies available that would allow us to engage the students in a way we would like to do,” Erramilli said. “It’s not simply taking a bunch of lecture notes and putting them online.”
He said the school discovered a suite of tools in the Blackboard Learning Management System that allow for such interaction and collaboration among instructors and students.
The University of Illinois College of Business has launched an iMBA program that it says provides flexibility through blocks of study that it calls “specializations,” including core specializations in leadership and organizational management; business tools for successful execution; improving business finances and operations; and strategic financial management.
The program, part of a partnership with Coursera, a Silicon Valley educational technology company, aims to reflect “the way the business world works — not necessarily the way academic departments are structured,” the university says on its website.
The university says it’s offering the online program’s interactive content, including video lectures and quizzes, to everybody for free.
But “anyone interested in the iMBA degree program must first go through a rigorous admissions process,” Arshad Saiyed, interim director of the iMBA program, said in an email to Blue Sky.
At Elmhurst College, about 15 percent of the MBA students have taken online classes since the school launched its online program two years ago, said Kelly Cunningham, director of Elmhurst’s MBA program.
Cunningham said the degrees that Elmhurst awards don’t distinguish between degrees earned online and in traditional settings, though he said transcripts might indicate classes taken online.
He discussed a difference between online and traditional students at Elmhurst.
“Many of the on-grounds students connect in the classrooms,” he said. “They like the group discussions. They like the cohort. They bond with each other. Those students just like the dialog in the classroom. The online students, when they come to interview with me, they’re pretty much determined that is what they want to do. They have busy schedules. They like the flexibility. They just feel like they can’t commit to being on ground.”
Students complete Elmhurst’s online MBA in just under two years of part-time work, the school says. It says the degree requirements are the same as those in its traditional MBA program and that the cost is the same: about $25,000.
Cunningham pointed out that the school’s online MBA program doesn’t offer as many courses online as it does in the classroom.
That, along with a reduction in travel obligations at her job, led Yoshida to move to on-campus classes after completing core classes online. She says she’s two classes away from her degree.
“I’ve noticed that some of the people who have started in the cohort on campus have become friends,” she said. “I definitely feel like I missed out on that.”
“And with the discussions, I think people try to be a little more polite online. So sometimes the discussions don’t get as much in depth as they could in person. On campus, there’s more going back and forth and the instructor chiming in.”
Cheryl V. Jackson is a freelance writer.