Swiss Management Center

Business degrees are not of any particular interest to me so I don't pay attention to all the details of these programs. One thing I do know however, is that there are a skajillion of them. Now if somehow SMC was one of the very few DL business programs out there then maybe I could see what all the fuss is about but in the real world of DL today, with all the choices available worldwide, why would someone actually have a preference for this school? What is the compelling reason for choosing this program over all the other available programs/schools?

 

I can't see one.

You said: "...there are a skajillion choices."
I said: "... running approved programs at a decent school for a reasonable fee sometimes isn't enough."

I think we're both right.

J.

 

Yes, very sad.

Business owners could in fact benefit from a SMC degree. IMO, so could people with a MBA or similar degree who are already set in their career path, but want (not need) a higher degree.

 

I am currently ABD in the SMCU DBA program. My dissertation is with the Academic Review Board and I hope to defend soon.
I began following various discussions on the accreditation of SMCU as an institution back in 2013 because all the conflicting cross-talk made me a little nervous. I wound up pursuing the program with the dual degree option with the University of Central Nicaragua. SMCU awards a DBA and UCN awards a PhD in Business Administration. UCN's accreditation is solid and uncontested in the US.

I hold a Master of Arts in Management and an MBA, both from brick and mortar institutions in the US that hold AACSB accreditation. The program at SMCU blew them both out of the water. While I learned a lot from both AACSB programs. SMCU actually changed the way I think about business and instilled in me an enduring love for Economics. I am not just better educated on business; I think the programmed methodology at SMCU actually made me smarter in general. If the accreditation question bothers you, doing the dual degree program with UCN should address your concerns with regard to acceptance... plus, you have two doctorates from two different institutions at the end of it.

Any doctoral program (excluding those that result in professional licensing) is going to be what you make it. Because a doctorate is specifically a research degree, the value will derive almost entirely from the effort you put into it.

 

Thanks for sharing. Double degree with UCN is a smart option, the main issue is usability. If the purpose is just to increase a profile for professional purposes, I believe that employers in general put all the online degrees from unknown schools in one basket and they will not do much research about accreditation status other than verifying that the school is not a fraud. The main issue is for academic purposes, if one wants to use this degree to be able to qualify for an academic position or professional membership, normally a degree equivalency from a recognized foreign academic credential is required. In Canada, there are few that are recognized but I have only dealt with WES, this last one would not recognize UCN mainly because they claim that Nicaragua's PhD are not in general equivalent to a Canadian PhD but the same for other countries such as Cambodia. However, there are many credential evaluation services so you might have one that recognizes the PhD from UCN as equivalent. The equivalency is just the minimum requirement to be considered but in a competitive market, a Nicaraguan degree might not be able to compete with an American or Canadian degree even if you offer an equivalency report.
The option of SMCU is not a fraud but has its limitations so prospect students need to be aware of them.

 

I absolutely agree with that, but I think the real barrier is at the door. Once you can get through, one of the great things about SMCU is the amount of original writing you have to do. I have over 50 publication grade papers I did for SMCU that I can use to demonstrate that I know what I am doing.

Also, online degrees are gaining acceptance at a staggering pace. A school that maintains the quality of the SMCU DBA program will have its day in the sun. Of that I am certain.

 

Personally, I think you got screwed. Face it, even you feel the need to resurrect a thread that has been dead for almost four years just to present an apologia for your decision, just as you will have to defend your two credentials in the future. (Why would a Swiss institution even consider partnering with a so-called university in Nicaragua, of all places? Think I'm being provincial and snobbish? Damn right.) Even then, your apologia reads like a product testimonial, presenting no data whatsoever but only your opinion of how wonderful you feel it has been.

There have been several people in this thread alone asking about the legitimacy of SMC. Rule of thumb: If you feel compelled to ask whether a school is legit, it is not. And if all you can find are blurbs that read like product testimonials avoid it like the plague.

 

Mainly cost, you are assuming that SMC marketing strategy is to aim the American that needs to impress others with a ranked credential. Many people in the world do not have 100K to spend. I have met few people from Africa and Latin American that are doing fine with their degrees from UCN, UNEM, Azteca, or any low profile Latin School.
In some countries, UCN would be considered fine in particular if you are in a country with low percentage of doctorate graduates.

A partnership with an American, Australian or British school would raise the degree tuition to the 100K range and perhaps this is not the market that SMC is aiming.

 

My goodness. So hostile.
I am pleased with the outcome of the educational journey I have had with SMCU. I experienced the rigor of the program first hand, and was offering my perspective on what I experienced. What sort of data were you looking for? The title of the thread is "Swiss Management Center". Why is it not acceptable to simply comment on my own experience without addressing your agenda?

Just out of curiosity, does your provincial snobbishness extend to Yale University, the University of Southern California, Stanford University, UCLA, the University of San Diego, the University of Texas, Wake Forest University, and Georgetown University?

 

No, it does not. But thanks for asking.

It looks like you've put together a list of schools that largely represents the recent admissions bribery scandal. I don't particularly give a shit about that, either.

 

Still, so hostile. If you are the Steve Levicoff I think you are, I understand your skepticism. It surprises me, however, that your provisional snobbery only seems to apply to accreditation and not to actual business practices of the institutions I named.

My original point was that a doctoral level degree is a research degree primarily driven by the student. You get out of it what you put into it. Because the orientation of my thinking has shifted to requiring credible sources before accepting a premise, I think my doctoral level studies had the effect they were supposed to have. I accept the value of an SMCU education because I have experienced it, and in comparison to the brick-and-mortar AACSB programs from which I have graduated (with honors), gained both a deeper intellectual capacity and more knowledge.

 

This is life, you will always face criticism of your choices. If you selected a RA PhD, you will be criticized if the school is online with no B&M presence and not ranked, if it is ranked maybe it is not AACSB, if it is AACSB maybe it is not a research University, if it is a research AACSB university maybe it is not ranked in the the financial times, if it is AACSB and ranked maybe it is a DBA and not a PhD, if AACSB, ranked and a PhD maybe the subject is not good such as leadership.

You make out of the degree what you want and you should not let others comments bother you. The real world is about perception and not so much about facts, most people trust you because they way you present yourself and few would care about the degree but you always have people as the person that criticized you that would always try to put you down but not because the credential but because their own personal failure that is reflected in their comments.

Yes, your choice has limitations but again, you might not care about being a professor but a successful corporate trainer or manager, an for this results count more than a diploma hanged on the wall.

 

An excellent point. U.S. based education has become obscenely expensive. I have always been proud of the fact without having any scholarships, I was able to get through my bachelors degree with no loans and graduate debt free simply by working extremely hard. Given the skyrocketing cost of tuition, I don't know that my model would even be possible today.

 

What will the SMC/UCN cost you?

 

When I signed up, I paid for the whole tuition up front. €8600 as I recall.

 

Refer to the 5th reply on the following thread: https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/top-deac-schools-for-dba.54650/

 

Let's see if I understand this . . . The current exchange rate between Swiss francs (CHF) and USD is almost an even 1:1. So what you're telling us is, barring any significant variations at the time you paid it, you paid $8,600 for both a DBA from SMC and a Ph.D. from UCN.

Well, they say that you get what you pay for. I still say that you got screwed. And, whether singular or put together, neither degree is worth $8,600. Therefore, I laugh at you again. If, indeed, you have two RA masters degrees with AACSB accreditation (and we have no way of verifying whether you're telling the truth on that one), you should have known better.

And, even in an age of online education, I can imagine how everyone will laugh at you when they see that you earned a European DBA and a Central American Ph.D. on the same day.

No wonder I'm "RA or the highway."

By the way, you misinterpret my attitude as hostility. I have no hostility, nor any kind of grudge, toward you. I view you as entertainment, pure and simple.

 

This is how you express amusement? That may say less about me than about you.

If you want to argue that somehow paying $100,000 for self directed research makes you superior, I am not sure how to address that.

My mentor is a world renowned economist, and he seems to think my work has value. As he is actually an expert in my field of interest, I think I might pay more attention to him. You have a splendid body of work, certainly worth the money you paid for your provincial education.

 

I made a similar point earlier this month. Unless you graduate from an Ivy League school with a major in a high-demand field, there can always be some form of criticism thrown on to whatever educational choice you make.

But the most important thing is that one should always consider the source of that criticism. It's fairly common for it to come from sources that aren't that reputable, mature, or trustworthy, and those criticizers tend to have very serious issues with their own past educational choices. So you have to do what's best for you, define your own success, and not get discouraged by carnival barkers.