California State - Dominguez Hills

I am considering the Online MBA program at CSU DH. Does anyone have information about the quality of the program? I know that it is not a top-tier program, but as a foreign national I am wondering what the advantages and disadvantages are of studying at a University like CSU and how recognized a diploma from CSU is in the United States. Thanks.

 

It´s definetely a good, but not an excellent program. DH is regionally accredited (WASC), and the business programs are ACBSP accredited also - and I heard they´re interested in receiving AACSB accreditation as well (but not yet)
I guess you´ll receive a "good" degree with the DH-MBA, especially since everybody knows the "California State University", and only very few know the various campusses that belong to this system...
(besides, the curriculum is LESS in quantity than MOST other Online-MBA´s, plus it´s totally non-resident - if you decide for the DL version - which is by the way the same courses as the on-campus-MBA).

Greets,
Trigger

(DH is one of my options too when applying in September to various Business schools)

 

Because CSU is state-owned and regionally accredited, I think a degree from there will be widely accepted. The only caveat I would add is that CSU-DH does not have AACSB accreditation, which is generally considered the most prestigious professional accreditation. A DL MBA which is AACSB accredited is offered by the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. http://web.uccs.edu/business/dmbamain.htm

Bruce

 

That should read "the most prestigious professional accreditation for business programs".

Bruce

 

Ralle, refer to the recent "CA Approval versus RA thread" to be advised of the warning status CSUDH is currently in with its regional accreditor, WASC. Odds are they will come out of this eventually, and be back to normal status, but the possibility exists that they will be the first RA school in CA to lose its RA status and revert to (hopefully at least) CA state approval status. Something to consider.

Gary

 

I gave my opinion on this more than a year ago on AED, and have found no reason to change it. Here it is again.

First of all, CSUDH has not had its accreditation put on probation, it received a warning. But despite the fact that CSUDH is purporting to make all the documents and correspondence public, finding out the actual reason for WASC's displeasure is a hurculean task. There are pages and pages of... verbiage... saying absolutely nothing.

Nobody seems willing to post a simple list of CSUDH's deficiencies or what CSUDH is doing to address them. Instead both WASC and CSUDH seem equally interested in keeping the details hidden while creating the illusion of openness. Ironically, CSUDH calls this obfuscation a "Culture of Evidence". It's almost nauseating.

So why are they acting this way? Academic politics.

I believe that WASC is firing a warning shot across the bow of the entire CSU system. A couple of years ago the California press was filled with the news that a large number of incoming CSU freshmen were unable to function at a basic university level in math and English composition. The new admits were best prepared at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and worst prepared at CSUDH.

This was in spite of the CSU entrance requirements. The problem is that many poorly performing high schools, particularly in poor inner city areas, promote students socially. That and grade inflation mean that lots of kids are graduating from high school with excellent GPAs but academic skills years below that expected of graduating seniors.

Because of this problem, the CSU campuses were offering more and more remedial high-school courses, trying to bring these students up to speed.

Well, both the state government and the central CSU adminstration felt that this was an inappropriate use of university resources. So they started phasing out the remedial courses and put in a strict new testing requirement. All those new students who failed the math and writing exams were told to seek remedial help at community colleges or high school adult schools. If they failed to correct their deficiencies within a year, they were out.

This has led to a sharply increased attrition rate among freshmen. And once again this hit CSUDH hardest. CSUDH is in a low income area and many of its students are trying to juggle jobs and school, attending part time. They come from some of the state's weakest high schools. Their attrition rate was already high, and this only pushed it higher.

So WASC stepped in, and choosing CSUDH as their example said in effect that they weren't going to accept the new CSU policy. If students were going to be admitted in the first place, they had to be given the means to succeed. That's what the vague references to "student success" in the posted documents refer to.

So why isn't everyone more upfront about the issues? Two words: Race and Class. The new freshmen admits that are failing are disproportionately poor, black and Hispanic. In addition, there are powerful countercurrents in California higher education that just don't want to hear it. The UC system is trying to do an endrun around the state ban on affirmative action, proposing to deemphasize SATs and to admit the top 10% of high school graduates from each high school taken individually, instead of the top 10% of state high school graduates overall. Well, obviously that kind of new policy is going to run headlong into the same problems that CSUDH is facing, namely kids from weaker highschools that have good GPAs but are less well prepared.

In other words, there are powerful educator/politicians that simply don't want this subject discussed right now. So the issues are buried in a vapid "Culture of Evidence".

This leads to another of the almost unstated issues that you have to tease out of the posted documents, the issue of defining CSUDH's mission. Apparently WASC has been insistent about this. I would have thought that this wouldn't be a problem at all since CSUDH has the same mission as all the other CSUs. But the documents tell us that CSUDH has three options:

1. To place greater emphasis on undergraduate education, meaning that the school has to take steps to make itself more attractive to incoming undergraduate applicants. In other words reversing the new CSU policy.

2. To place greater emphasis on adult education including distance education. Though they don't say it, they apparently mean having CSUDH deemphasize serving its local community.

3. Some pious-sounding thing about "promoting greater diversity". I'm not sure if that means trying to do both of the above roles simultaneously, or whether it means turning CSUDH into some kind of dedicated center for political activism. I'm not very good at translating academic buzz-words.

But the bottom line of all this is that the state of California is a very different place than it was in 1960 when CSUDH was founded. The CSU system is faced with a startlingly different student demographic, and CSUDH is taking the point.