It appears that an M7 or a Top 3 (Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton - HSW) is launching an Online/Hybrid MBA program with 75% of the program being completed virtually. Comes with the same pricetag as their Executive MBA program at $214,800. You either better have company sponsorship, deep pockets, or be welcoming to a heavy debt load. https://poetsandquantsforexecs.com/admissions/wharton-goes-online-launching-a-global-emba/
It feels to me like that price is more about the entry fee to the network, same as what Wharton typically would be. I have taken some moocs from them and the teachers were good, but the idea of paying that much for an MBA boggles my mind.
Mine too. I was flat broke at 65, so I conceived the idea of saving up enough for a Cadillac and not buying it. It worked - completely, and then some. But not buying this Wharton degree? That's given me a whole new goal! I've a head start, this time, so $214,800, here I come! Thanks, Wharton! Great lesson!
I've never once ran into this issue. Ever. We are in 2022, almost 2023. The stigma of pursuing education online is gone.
only 200k?! that's a steal ! assuming you get a 100k job once you've graduated, that's what ? 6k after tax ? you only need 6 years to pay off assuming you put 50% or more of your salary towards clearing the student loan each month you'd be paying a lot more for law school or an MD program
The only employer asked me about the degree whether online or not was The United States Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in Quantico, Virginia. The civilian workforce does not care, or never asked me about my degrees.
I don't see a problem with the price. At all. Companies hire external experts, consultants, trainers, and other subject-matter experts all the time. They pay handsomely for it, too. Why? Because they're investing towards the bottom line. As a consultant, I price what I do not on my level of effort, or what I should get paid. Instead, I price what I do on the value it brings to the client. I've coached a lot of would-be consultants. Some of them have fantastic ideas for what they'd like to deliver to their (potential) clients. A question I ask myself all the time I also ask them: who pays? This question is critical here. No one is going to run an MBA program at $200K a pop filled with self-paying students. You won't find them. But you may find corporations with much deeper pockets willing to make that investment, confident it will pay off down the road--in terms of improved performance, retention, and succession planning. Businesses who would spend this kind of money developing their executives don't do it foolishly. If Wharton is able to charge this, and they're able to fill seats, then it's because enough corporations see the value proposition. Here's another nugget to consider. Your ROI and the company's ROI are on two entirely different scales. When I was a consultant for a company, I was responsible for bringing in more than a million dollars a year in revenue while earning approximately 10% of that. (This was almost 20 years ago.). So, take that ratio and apply it (roughly, obviously) here. Now, $200K investment becomes a $20K investment. Can you see your ROI on $20K? Probably. Are you getting a Wharton MBA for that? No. But there are literally thousands of other choices for your MBA, many of which can be had for that sum. Finally, can you get a good ROI for $200K? That's a much tougher proposition. Why? Because, as an individual, you are much less capable of generating the revenues necessary to do that. But your company might.
I come from much farther back, but my experience has been the same. I've had exactly two situations--both regarding my undergraduate degrees from USNY Regents--where there was ever any concern. Tangentially, they were related to distance learning, but not directly. In the first, I applied to a large state university's MBA program. I had earned a BS in business, but had done it nontraditionally. The university had a tw0-year, full-time MBA. The first year was for pre-requisites. This was fully waived for graduates of AACSB-accredited programs. If not, the university would consider the undergraduate degree and waive pre-requisites on a course-by-course basis. Of the 10 pre-requisite courses, the school waived exactly one. This meant I would be entering as if I had a degree in English or something. Hard pass. (Ironically, although I didn't attend, I did teach at that university as an assistant professor for four years, my professor rank justified because of the MBA I subsequently earned elsewhere.) In the second, the Air Force insisted I attended a school I had never seen. I don't know how they do it today, but back then officers' educational records were recorded and maintained by the Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT). They received your transcripts and coded your degree--source and major. Then, as you earned subsequent credentials, you submitted your transcripts so they could update your record. (Enlisted personnel records were updated locally at your base of assignment. I used to be responsible for doing that, and for submitting officers' records to AFIT.) Well, AFIT, in it's less-than-infinite wisdom, recorded my USNY Regents bachelor's as having been issued by SUNY Albany. (USNY is the blanket organization for higher education in New York. They operated the Regents College Degree Program and were located in Albany. That program has since been privatized and is now Excelsior College.) AFIT, seeing "USNY" and "Albany," coded by degree as coming from SUNY Albany, a completely different school. No amount of correspondence could get them to change it. But the real kicker was when I called them. The clerk in the Registrar's office insisted that I had attended SUNY Albany and that I was wrong. Amazing. How locked into your paradigm are you when you tell someone they attended a school they'd never seen, because that was the only way you could make sense of what you were looking at? And I wasn't just some rando; I was a subject-matter-expert in this very subject. Bottom line: they never changed it. And it never really mattered.
That's very insightful, and something I've never considered when it comes to the price tags of these programs.
