An Online MBA Program Grows in Gotham

An Online MBA Program Grows in Gotham - New York City's Pace University is looking to cyberspace to snare a new crop of students. Other regional schools will be watching.

Can offering an MBA online degree save a regional business school from a one way ticket to Palookaville? New York's Pace University is about to find out. On Jan. 8, Pace's Lubin School of Business will introduce its e.MBA@Pace program, which will incorporate 10 campus visits with intensive course instruction over the Web. Many regional universities will be watching its fate closely, as the top-rated business schools start to shovel big money into online MBA programs.

With so many brand-name schools taking the lead in long-distance learning, Pace -- which draws almost all of its students from the metropolitan New York City area -- decided last March that it better start reaching out, too. The school hopes to enroll 25 to 30 students in its first year and will consider expanding in the future. "We have a terrific reputation in the New York area. This will be a way of extending our reach," says James Parker, program director of the online MBA. Adds Pace management professor John Dory: "To not [offer an online MBA], we ran the risk for enrollment problems for the school."

The big B-schools aren't hesitating. Duke University, which launched its Global Executive online MBA in 1996, has been expanding its course offerings to accommodate 400 online students by August of 2001. And if you think Duke wouldn't be a threat to Pace, consider this: Duke says that of its 170 current online students, the second-largest group comes from New York, after Silicon Valley, of course. Following suit is the University of North Carolina, which will begin offering an online MBA program in the fall of 2000. And if that isn't enough to send shivers through Pace's Manhattan and Westchester County campuses, a handful of top-ranked universities are now supporting private educational efforts by companies such as UNext.com, which aimes to eventually offer degree business programs online.

MORE OUTREACH. The Pace MBA program will cost about $50,000 for two years, slightly less than the average of $57,205 for Business Week's 20 leading EMBA programs. Parker is hoping the Pace effort will "attract students that wouldn't have considered or even have heard of [Pace]."

But expanding Pace's reach beyond its base of 1,350 part-time MBA students and 650 full-time MBA students will be no easy task. When its initial round of applications arrived on Dec. 1, the school found itself with an experienced pool of candidates -- not from California, Europe, or Asia -- but from New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, and New York City. That's the same pool from which the school now draws most of its students. And it suggests that Pace will have to do more outreach.

Partnering with larger schools to offer online MBAs may be the next step, says Michael Moe, director of global growth research for Merrill Lynch who analyzes distance education markets and innovation. He says in a few years, schools such as Pace will have a hard time creating E-learning programs unless they get help from the big shots. "[Small, regional schools] need something else aside from being early," he says. "It might be cost. Or it might be offering a very tailored program. [But] if you go forward two years from today, they'll need more than being online to be competitive."

TEAM TEACHING. Until that day arrives, Pace is confident that it has a twist to attract execs. When the e.MBA@Pace students are on campus, the six faculty in charge of course instruction will teach each class as a team. That's to ensure that each topic gets input from as many disciplines as possible, whether it be marketing or global economics. And professors will be required to log on daily to answer student questions posed via e-mail.

Dory says the program is also a good opportunity for Pace to restore some luster to its reputation "as a cutting-edge school." If the program can vault the small university into the cyberage, win over more local MBA students who are too busy to take full-time classes, and appeal to long-distance learners, Pace may be onto something.

Source: www.businessweek.com