College degrees over the Internet must fight a reputation for being inferior, and if they ever become mainstream, they will owe a lot to traveling executives who earn MBAs from airplanes and hotel rooms.
Schools like Phoenix University and Regis University have more students earning master of business administration degrees than such top-tier schools as Harvard or Yale. It's unlikely the top-tier schools are losing students, but the lesser-known schools are greatly expanding the market by attracting those too busy to quit work for two years, too busy even to show up nights and weekends.
Regis University in Denver has 1,800 students in its MBA program. That's enough to swamp its 1,400 parking spaces, except that some students live as far away as Europe and Africa.
Edward Pratt, a 47-year-old surgeon based in Memphis, travels heavily but logs in nights and weekends for lectures via streaming video and class discussions via threads on bulletin boards. Pratt says the Regis courses are high quality, and he would not waste his time if they were not.
The case for classrooms
Yet top-tier business schools have stayed away. Just 3.3% of the schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business have significant online programs. Smaller, regionally accredited schools have grown flush with money by attracting tens of thousands of students using Internet courses to obtain an MBA degree. The most popular master's degrees are the MBA and education. There are about 2.5 million MBA graduates from 900 universities.
But 100% Internet learning is taking the concept too far, Snyder says. "Technology can complement a classroom, but the intensity of pushing ideas to their limit, that can't happen online. That's why we don't do it."
Duke University's Fuqua School of Business has 709 students in its Global Executive MBA program that combines online learning with traditional classroom sessions that convene every eight weeks. The classroom sessions are held on various continents. The degree costs $100,500, including tuition, books and room and board when they meet, but not airfare.
So-called spam diplomas can be had over the Internet for $200. But legitimate online degrees from Regis and Phoenix aren't cheap. David Sand, who travels extensively as medical director for a health care company, says he will spend about $25,000 for his Regis MBA.
While some students might be able to hide in the corner in a traditional classroom, online courses require minimum participation on the discussion boards. Assignments are e-mailed to the professor for grading. Tests, by necessity, are open book.
Undergraduate Internet courses are also expanding rapidly. Saint Leo University, a Catholic college in Florida founded in 1889, now has 50,000 online students earning bachelor's degrees. Among them is Morgan Hezlep, who lives in San Diego and flies each Sunday to Boston and returns home on Thursday. The University of Phoenix says it has 45,000 online students, including graduate students, in addition to 125,000 attending 116 campuses.
Seeking acceptance
Schools are counting on MBA graduates, the future leaders of business, to bring mainstream respectability to Internet degrees. Critics, however, say students may be able to get the nuts and bolts online, but not the critical thinking skills. And, critics add, online students won't establish the relationships that traditional students use to network themselves to the top for years to come.
The faculty at Duke worried about the lack of networking until its first batch of semi-online students gathered for graduation in 1997. Those students who had conversed by e-mail and over bulletin boards seemed to be better friends at graduation than traditional students, says Nevin Fouts, associate dean of the Fuqua School of Business.
Regis students say they grow very close to each other even though they rarely meet.
"The only concern I harbor is the respect that such a degree will carry in the business world," Pratt says. But increasingly, students can keep that secret. There is no difference in the diploma Regis offers for MBAs whether they're online or on campus.
Testing will tell
That leaves a lot riding on how well online students score on the certified MBA exam (www.certifiedmba.com), a voluntary certification exam that starts this spring and will measure the knowledge of MBA graduates much as the CPA measures the knowledge of accountants.
If online students test high, it might influence hiring decisions and perhaps cause prestigious schools to rethink their reluctance to jump into the online fray.
Copyright 2003 by USA Today.
