Growth in ‘Distance Learning’ Brings MBA Study Closer to More Employees

Thanks to the Internet, the number of employees chasing MBAs and other business degrees via “distance learning” is enjoying phenomenal growth.

Many of these students are business professionals who have come to dead ends in their careers and who need an MBA or other credential to advance but who cannot take time off from work to study full time.

“At least half” of the estimated 1 million distance learners today are getting business-related degrees, said Vicky Phillips, a Waterbury, Vt.-based authority on the subject. She is the chief executive of Geteducated.com, an educational consulting firm.

In 1990, distance learning “was barely a blip on the screen,” with about 100,000 students enrolled in all courses of study, Phillips said. Since then, she reckons, the field has experienced a 1,000% enrollment jump, much of it since 1996 through the Internet.

At least 195 accredited graduate schools now offer degrees or career credentials to students who never have to appear on a campus, yet whose course work is just as demanding and whose degree is just as valuable as those of students who do.

Sixty-five of these schools offer an MBA, and many others offer specialized business degrees in hospital, environmental or human resources management, Phillips said.

“Adult students are abandoning the traditional ivy halls [and are] going to class in their homes via surface mail, videotape, fax and modem,” Phillips writes in “The Best Distance Learning Graduate Schools” (Random House). “What’s different for adults considering graduate or professional school in this decade is that many of them will not go to the campus; instead the campus will come to them.”

U.S. colleges and universities offering business degrees electronically include Antioch, Auburn, Duke, Maryland, Purdue, Colorado State, University of Colorado, University of Phoenix, Southeastern University, Syracuse University and Stephens.

The ambitious can even tackle the curriculum at the prestigious University of London, which began offering correspondence courses in 1850 to benefit the Crown’s colonial civil servants.

Distance learners need to be aware, though, that it will take them two or three times as long to get an MBA than if they were pursuing their studies full time, Phillips said. Full-time MBA students usually take 18 to 24 months to earn the degree.

Printed textbooks and guides containing course assignments commonly are sent to distance learners by mail, and the students typically mail completed work back for grading. But students can also get assignments through the Internet and participate in “chat room” discussions with instructors and other students. Exams must be taken in person, however.

“Because the Internet is truly interactive,” Phillips said, people who thought distance learning would be a solitary pursuit “are surprised to find it’s a very human experience.”

Adding an MBA to one’s resume can result in a salary boost of $20,000 to $25,000 a year, Phillips said, and many employers will help their workers defray the cost.

A survey Phillips made of 75 Fortune 500 companies in 1996 found that more than 80% provided tuition reimbursement for business-related education.

The cost of earning an MBA varies widely, from $82,000 at Duke University to $4,950 at Andrew Jackson University in Birmingham, Ala.

Phillips added, however, that degree seekers should be wary of the numerous degree mills that will confer a worthless sheepskin on anyone who will pay the roughly $2,000 for the privilege.

Phillips predicted that the number of legitimate distance learning programs will accelerate during the next three to five years. “The market has not hit maturity by any means,” she said.

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Sherwood Ross is a freelance writer who covers workplace topics for Reuters. He can be reached at sherwood@mato.com.