One-Year MBA Programs Gain More Traction
热2已有 871 次阅读 2013-09-22 12:20It’s no secret that an MBA is one of the most expensive gifts you could ever give yourself. Once you add in the lost income from quitting your job, the interest payments on student loans, and the ever-rising tuition and fees, the total cost of the degree can approach $350,000.
So at a time when applications to most two-year MBA programs have been down, it’s probably not all that surprising that there’s renewed and growing interest in one-year programs. As Kate Smith, admissions director for Kellogg, puts it: “The value proposition of the one year is great so there is high demand for it.”
While overall MBA applications to Kellogg were down 7% last year, one-year applicants bucked the trend. They rose by 6% last year and are up 24% since 2009. So this year, Kellogg has enrolled a record 100 students, up from 86 last year. Smith says the school plans to expand the class by 20% to 30% next year, bringing enrollment to as high as 130 students.
KELLOGG EXPECTS TO DOUBLE THE SIZE OF ITS ONE-YEAR PROGRAM IN THREE YEARS
As the highest ranked U.S. school with a one-year MBA program, Kellogg believes it has an unusual opportunity to achieve significant MBA growth. Within three years, the school plans to double the size of its one-year program to some 200 students.
Besides Kellogg, there are only two other top 20 U.S. schools with one-year options: Cornell University’s Johnson School of Business, which requires candidates to already have an advanced degree, and Emory University’s Goizueta School, which like Kellogg requires applicants to have an undergraduate business degree or a quant background (see
And those schools are also reporting increased interest in the one-year alternative.
Viraj Mehta completed Johnson’s accelerated MBA this year, between his third and fourth years at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Medicine, where he’s studying to be an eye surgeon.
“It’s a great way to round out my skill set and give me a better idea of how the business of medicine actually works,” he says. “Eventually it will help put me in a position where I can make large-scale changes for the healthcare system.”
KELLOGG ONE-YEAR MBAS SAVE MORE THAN $115,000 OVER THE SCHOOL’S TWO-YEAR MBAS
The benefits of one-year programs are obvious: Getting the same degree in half the time brings considerable savings in tuition and fees, room and board, and the lost opportunity cost of not having a job for two years. Once you include lost income and interest charges on student debt, the one-year program at Kellogg would save a student roughly $115,614 (see table at left). The total cost of Kellogg’s one-year program is $207,008 versus $322,622 for the two-year program. These estimates do not include scholarship money from Kellogg (where the average scholarship grant is $15,254 per academic year) or corporate sponsorship from a previous employer.
And despite the shortened academic experience, MBA employers tend to award one-year grads the same starting salaries they pay MBAs of two-year programs. In fact, several schools report that their one-year MBAs make slightly more than graduates of their traditional programs, largely the result of differences in work experience. At Kellogg, for example, one-year students are on average five months older with six months more work experience. So the return-on-investment of the one-year degree is much faster.
“People doing the two-year program are looking to have a college experience,” says Shena Simmons, who completed her accelerated MBA at Goizueta in May.
The downside? Career switchers tend to be at a disadvantage because they lose the benefit of a summer internship–which has increasingly become a prerequisite to a job offer. In careers such as consulting and investment banking, companies largely recruit students from internships, so there’s very little hiring of one-year students into those careers, says Randy Allen, associate dean for international and corporate relations at Cornell’s Johnson School.
ONE-YEAR STUDENTS HAVE TO MAKE SOME SACRIFICES FOR THOSE SAVINGS
One-year students also lose out on the intense bonding experience of a two-year program, many of which require cohorts of students to go through the first year core together.
Still, other prominent schools with accelerated MBA programs include Babson, the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz School of Business, and the University of Florida (see table of the best 12-month programs). And one-year MBAs have long been common in Europe, where INSEAD, IMD, IE Business School, and Copenhagen Business School are among dozens of options.
They also are gaining in popularity in other parts of the world. In Australia, for example, the Melbourne Business School recently replaced its 16-month program with a 12-month version after observing signs of Australian students favoring part-time over full-time study.
ONE YEAR PROGRAMS GAIN POPULARITY IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD
At Melbourne, the condensed time frame students have to digest the MBA curriculum is much like any other one-year program. More radical is the school’s overhauling of students’ daily schedules. Borrowing from the modern workplace, Melbourne’s new program rejects the traditional university model of a few lectures amid vast tracts of unallocated time and assigns students to an 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. “workday” in collaborative teams and with professors on the school’s premises every weekday. So much for outdated notions that graduate study is in part a time for mind clearing and reflection. Most other one-year programs aren’t nearly as regimented.
While the optimal one-year student is not trying to make a career change, some still try to pursue that route. Consider Sandra Reimen who is among a minority who chose Pittsburgh’s Katz program looking to switch careers. With 10 years under her belt at ANC Bank, most recently as vice president of retail operations, before starting Katz in July 2011, she was thinking of using her finance background as a merchant planner in the fashion industry.
That had been part of her long-term plan to gain experience before launching her own luxury designer handbag business. She received so much support from the MBA program, however, that she decided to plunge into her entrepreneurial venture early. Katz’ entrepreneurship professor is a venture capitalist who helped Reimen by introducing her to contacts at United Parcel Service, whose international shipping operation will be key to her business which imports the hand bags from four factories in Colombia. “Everything I needed to help me get started I found through the university,” she says.
Reimen launched her business in May after unexpectedly getting her first celebrity endorsement at an entertainment awards show in Los Angeles. “I thought it would be more of a hobby to start,” she says. “I was in the process of talking with a [fashion] company and had been verbally offered a job, but I called off the interview process a week ago” after seeing orders for her $500 to $700 handbags pour in on her website.
ONE YEAR PROGRAMS CAN BE JUST AS COMPETITIVE AND MORE INTENSE THAN A TWO-YEAR MBA
Thomas Keller, director of admissions, recruiting & enrollment at Katz, says the one-year program is very competitive–and very tough. One-year students at Katz come with five years of work experience on average, versus three years for those admitted to the two-year program. They carry a heavy course load of 18 credit hours in the program’s first semester which begins in July. Students can potentially take as many credits in the spring semester, too, so “having a strong academic background and a strong quantitative background are important,” Keller adds.
Given the importance that MBA students attach to alumni networks, it’s reassuring for one-year students to know that once they complete the core requirements they will be integrated into classes with two-year students.
Goizueta emphasizes that come fall, one-year students, after an intensive summer of core courses, join second-year students in the two-year program, becoming one class that graduates together.
AN EMORY ONE-YEAR GRAD SAYS THERE WAS NO LOSS OF ALUMNI CONNECTIONS
Brandon Beeken, a 2011 Goizueta graduate, says you don’t sacrifice those alumni connections by getting your degree in half the time. He says that most of his leads doing enterprise sales for WayIn, a startup tech firm, come from Emory alumni, especially for companies in the Atlanta area.
In lieu of internships, accelerated programs often require students to take a course that assigns them to work in teams on live projects for companies.
Steve Clareen, who graduated from Johnson in 2008, liked his experience on an international compliance project for specific drugs at Novartis so much that as a business unit manager in Synthes’ Trauma division, he has sponsored two projects for Johnson students.
Goizueta MBA candidates can also get targeted business experience by doing a Directed Studies course, where students look for a faculty member with research interests that match their own and create a project proposal that must get approved by the faculty member. One-third of Goizueta’s one-year MBA students took advantage of Directed Study last year, says Dortch.
以上博文摘自http://poetsandquants.com/2012/07/10/one-year-mba-programs-gain-more-traction/
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