An MBA For The Cost Of A Jeep?

Imagine completing your MBA for just $28,000? For the price of a jeep, you could earn an online MBA from a prominent institution that boasts Apple’s Tim Cook among its alumni. At the same time, you’d enjoy the same faculty, lectures, projects, and support as your on-campus peers. With many MBA degrees priced at $100,000 (or more), this program would keep your debt low, while providing the basic MBA courses as on-campus students receive.

As Poets&Quants' staffer Jeff Schmitt writes, that’s the value proposition at Auburn University, a public university consistently ranked among the top 50 public universities. Known for its iconic oak trees and pro-football and baseball All-Star Bo Jackson, Auburn’s online MBA program has cracked the code when it comes to fusing quality with value. At $775 a credit for 36 credits, Auburn’s $27,900 price tag is the lowest for an online MBA program from a top 100 “name” business school.

In contrast, Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, the highest ranked business school in the U.S. offering an online MBA, has priced its offering at $116,160. UNC’s online MBA, dubbed MBA@UNC, costs $93,500, while Indiana University’s KelleyDirect online MBA is priced at $59,925.

That old adage that you get what you pay for is somewhat appropriate here, however. Auburn’s program is a no-frills affair, where the cost does not even textbooks. The Tepper program, for example, includes a four-day orientation on campus along with three-day on-campus sessions every two months during a program that lasts 32 full months. UNC’s online experience includes two global immersion trips as well as three-day sessions quarterly, while Kelley’s program includes two full weeks on campus. Auburn’s online students only meet each other in person once, when they come to campus for a three-day capstone project in the final semester, and they can graduate in as little as 21 months.

Still, it’s hard to beat the value Auburn is delivering for a fraction of the cost of the more highly ranked online MBAs—or for that matter the value against schools ranked even lower than Auburn, such as Howard University, Pepperdine University, and Hofstra University in New York. Auburn currently has 121 enrolled students in the program from 27 states and Canada. About 23% are women, though none are from outside North America.

Since being founded in 1990, the program boasts 1500 graduates, including America’s first female fighter pilot and high level executives from AFLAC and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Within the online program, students can pursue concentrations such as marketing or analytics and dual degrees in areas that range from MIS to finance. With over 75% of students completing the online program within four years, it has become a resounding success.

While Dean Bill Hardgrave refers to the program’s mission as providing “a very high quality program and making it accessible to the masses,” an anonymous graduate offers a more succinct tagline: “Price, flexibility, prestige.”

So what’s the secret behind Auburn’s low cost proposition? According to Stan Harris, associate dean for graduate and international programs at Auburn’s Harbert College of Business, it starts with a commitment to managing costs. “We’ve always been relatively inexpensive – by design,” says Harris. In fact, this mindset stretches across the entire business program. U.S. News and World Report recently ranked Auburn’s business program at #2 for “Best Financial Value,” with students graduating with an average debt of $8,500.

Auburn incorporates some key differences that allow online students to stretch their dollar further. At Auburn you won’t find your father’s canned lectures or “PowerPoint Karaoke.” Here, lectures are live captured in a real classroom each year, often with a different professor. In other words, students aren’t watching four year-old classes; they’re observing classes within hours of being conducted.

Auburn also relies on state-of-the-art video equipment and microphones to record lectures. In fact, the routing system is so sophisticated that all seat mikes go off when a student speaks. “We’re trying to give online students the experience that they’re sitting in the back of the classroom…watching it live,” says Harris.

Students can access lectures through their laptop, SmartPhone, or tablet using the Canvas learning platform. Here, students can access course materials and homework and communicate with classmates via discussion boards and chat rooms. In fact, Harris observes that online students often have parallel discussions on Canvas as on-site students have in class. Online students and faculty stay in touch via email and phone. And Auburn even has the ability to stream live classes if requested in advance.

Naturally, this model helps Auburn keep costs low. By using the same faculty and lectures for both on campus and online students, Auburn can use the same material for two sets of students using their existing infrastructure. But the strategy also delivers a richer educational experience too.

For starters, online students step into a classroom where “it’s like it happened just now,” Harris says. “We can talk about whatever happened in The Wall Street Journal today and they can see it that night. They’re immediately up-to-date.” In fact, online students often contact faculty to suggest discussion topics for the next class. The real value, according to Harris, is that online MBAs “get the experience of hearing what others have to say about an issue. It’s not just the professor’s perspective. They hear what their (on campus) peers think and how the professor reacts.”

Online students also benefit from flexibility. With professionals carrying heavy workloads and travel schedules, students can take as few as one class a semester. Harris also refers to Auburn’s online program as “asynchronous.” By that, he means that, unlike some programs, students don’t need to be in front of their computers at a specific time. As a result, working professionals can watch lectures when it is convenient for them….and that’s usually not during school hours.

Bottom line: These students can continue working full-time while earning an MBA. “They don’t have to give as much up,” says Harris. “You can see your son or daughter play a soccer game. You don’t have to give up your career. You can move if company wants you to…You can make investments in your family and community. That’s a hard proposition to beat…and [it’s] hard to put a number on that.”

To read more about the best online MBA programs, check out PoetsandQuants.com:

AMERICA’S TOP ONLINE MBA PROGRAMS or THE ONLINE MBA COMES OF AGE