I'm still in my decision making process on choosing an online MPA and I'm basically down to these 3 places. Many people I talk to haven't heard of Anna Maria and I think Marist probably "sounds" better, but I wanted to know if anyone on here had any first hand knowledge. thanks
Anna Maria College is a nice little school located just outside Worcester, Massachusetts, not too far from where I live. It caters primarily to the local population and so I'm not surprised that people don't know about it. There are so many big name universities in Massachusetts that it might easily get pushed to the back of the room but in central MA it's well known with lots of grads employed across a wide spectrum of career paths.
The Anna Maria MPA program is apparently not NASPAA accredited -- but neither is the Marist MPA program. It's true that Marist is an institutional member of NASPAA -- but that's not the same as being accredited by NASPAA. There are currently 275 member institutions in NASPAA, but only 162 of these schools have actually received NASPAA accreditation for their programs. Marist is one of the schools that have joined NASPAA, but have not received accreditation. Marist claims that their curriculum is based on NASPAA standards, but they don't actually use the word "accredited". Anna Maria is neither a member nor accredited. If you check the current NASPAA list of accredited programs, you will see that it does not include either Marist or Anna Maria. Troy is currently the only NASPAA accredited program of the three.
Troy is a great school and I am thoroughly enjoying my program there (MS HRM) however I know nothing of their MPA. Have you looked at Valdosta? They seem to get a lot of rave reviews on here and I believe offer a very good program with relatively affordable tuition and they are NASPAA accredited.
Valdosta's program looks OK, but I'd have to take the GRE or GMAT, and it looks like they run semester-long classes. I think I'd like the 8 week sessions better.
