Buffalo DL MBA on hold indefinitely

Like a few others that have applied to the Buffalo on line MBA (OMBA), after 9 months waiting, I have received a e-mail from Dean Newman announcing:"
(...)I regret to report that we have experienced setbacks in the development of our courses and programs in the online environment, and that we are putting on hold indefinitely our plans to go forward with a formal online program.(...)"

I am glad I haven waited for this and I am already through half of the program of my second choice. No my second choice doesn't make it to the Business Week ranking but it delivers !

 

This does happen. My ex-MBA program was cancelled one year after I enrolled. So I have to drop out.

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Jonathan Liu
http://www.geocities.com/liu_jonathan/distance.html

 

[Correction]

This does happen. My ex-DL-MBA program was cancelled one year after I enrolled. So I have to drop out. I can not go to campus even though they are offering a weekend end option now. But the campus is over 1000 miles away.

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Jonathan Liu
http://www.geocities.com/liu_jonathan/distance.html

 

The Chronicle has an article today about the SUNY Buffalo online MBA:

SUNY-Buffalo Drops Online M.B.A. Program

 

I get the impression that a lot of the explosive growth in on-line MBAs in the late 90's was associated with the internet bubble.
Some schools seem to have thought that the internet was a road to easy riches. On-line = big bucks. So they put programs in with the expectation that they would be money engines that would subsidize the school's other programs.

But like much of e-commerce, making a profit has proven more difficult than anticipated. So schools are burning through their initial funding, being reassesed more skeptically, and in some cases the plug is being pulled.

The Webvan's of academia.

In these failed-MBA cases, I get the feeling that expectations were unrealistic. I also sense a reluctance by schools to treat DL as a legitimate part of the school's academic mission, as they would typical 'arts and science' offerings. I suspect the plug is getting pulled a lot quicker here than it would be for many other departments that aren't showing a profit.