eBusiness Weekly
Coronavirus led to an extraordinary and almost overnight shift to online learning at MBA programmes. Because of the overwhelming impact on business school education, this year Bloomberg Businessweek chose not to rank MBA programmes. Instead, we surveyed 3 532 first- and second-year students from 95 schools around the world to understand what was working in the now-online programmes — and where students felt shortchanged.
Half of all students would be willing to see at least 20 percent of their coursework go online in exchange for some level of tuition discount. Students at more expensive schools were less likely to say that their online education was worth the tuition.
The survey, conducted from May to early August, included top-ranked schools like Stanford, Dartmouth, Harvard, IMD, Insead, and Ceibs — and a full range of schools from the Businessweek 2019-20 MBA ranking. Since this isn’t a ranking, and the pandemic hit schools in different ways at different times, we decided not to publish data on individual programmes.
One of the more surprising results was that 49 percent of MBA students said they’d accept some permanent shift to online coursework if it came with tuition cuts. Students were able to submit open-ended comments with their survey to describe their experience. Many students mentioned the value of saving precious in-person class time for deep, analytical discussions while the more routine learning of core material could be shifted online.
“Hybrid instruction is nothing new — those in higher ed have been talking about ‘flipped’ classrooms for years — but the abrupt shift to online education should underscore how easily one-way lectures can be delivered online. Schools should consider using this hybrid approach permanently, saving in-person instruction for higher-value interactive approaches.”
That said, 90 percent of survey takers would not want to see more than a 40 percent shift to online. And 42 percent of students said they wanted only traditional, in-person teaching. A student at an Ivy League B-school declared his opposition to any shift online.
“Charging full tuition for Zoom-only classes is complete highway robbery”
Students were asked what portion of their coursework — in increments of 20 percent—should go permanently online and what tuition reduction would be fair as a result of this shift.
Students from top-ranked schools objected most to any permanent shift to virtual learning, according to an analysis that broke the 95 schools in our survey into three groups based on their 2019-20 Businessweek ranking.
At schools ranked globally Nos. 1-25, 33 percent wouldn’t accept any change. That drops to 24 percent at schools ranked 26-75 and 17 percent at schools ranked 76 and below.
However, according to Doug Shackelford, dean of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, the formula isn’t as simple as assuming more online education equals lower tuition. Rather, quality is the determining factor on price, much like any other product.
“What I haven’t figured out how to do,” he said, “is how to give you a low-cost, low-tuition, high-quality experience,” whether online or in person.
“I’d love to say, ‘Look, we’re going to cut our tuition in half, or maybe by one third or a quarter,’” but Shackelford insisted the reality is that “great faculty, great experiences, great student support, great services, great career placement people, all these sorts of things — they’re high-cost inputs, whatever the delivery.”
Kenan-Flagler’s pricing model appears to reflect this philosophy. The current tuition for out-of-state students completing the traditional two-year, in-person MBA is US$132 540, while students enrolled in its decade-old online MBA programme pay almost as much — US$125 589.
Surprisingly, almost 1 in 10 would favour at least a 20 percent shift online with no tuition discount, and about 7 percent of students even said at least 80 percent of their classwork should shift permanently online, as long as there were tuition cuts.
Kayla Smith, a dual MD/MBA candidate at Howard University, was among those favouring a large shift. She said in a phone interview that virtual classes eliminated her commute to campus and improved class efficiency.
“A lot of things like announcements and settling down the classroom” can waste class time. “With online it’s mostly easier to transition right to the point.”
Despite a software licensing hiccup on her school’s part that interfered with completing a year-end project for her management class, overall she felt she learned as much online as she would have in person.
In fact, Smith (28) who plans to open a community-based practice once she completes the second half of her MD program, would support having some of her medical classes taught online—where feasible.
“Years 3 and 4 are in the hospital. Online can’t replace a clinical.”
Why not then 100 percent virtual? Even knowing what she knows now, Smith would still have enrolled in Howard’s traditional MBA program as opposed to its online offering for the common reason many other students cited — networking.
“I like going on campus, communicating with my peers, and collaborating on group projects.”
A strictly online education, she added, can limit career prospects.
“It’s more holistic when you get to go on campus in person and engage face-to-face with different directors of different job opportunities.”
Still, students saw many benefits of online learning. One in eight respondents to our survey said they’d like to see some form of asynchronous learning — recorded lectures or other class content available for viewing either before or after in-person instruction — persist after the pandemic.
According to one student, this feature helped with the more difficult classes in the curriculum, on “topics that may be more complex to understand in a live environment.” Another noted its potential as a study aid.
“I found it very helpful to return to old lectures when studying for exams,” said a student at a school in the South.
Even though 74 percent of students responded either “very negatively” or “somewhat negatively” when asked how the pandemic affected their educational experience, they still awarded high marks to their professors for their remote-teaching efforts.
In a phone interview, Joseph Zuckerman, class of 2021 at Maryland’s Smith School of Business, who plans to pursue a career in marketing, lauded his professors’ ability to quickly make the switch to online.
“They did incredible work given the short timeline to prepare to change curriculums that they’ve been delivering for so many years.”
He commended his instructors’ use of technology to deliver the coursework, which he found most effective for smaller classes.
“I was really impressed with the way they used the features of Zoom: breakout rooms to simulate team activity and gallery view to mimic in-class atmosphere like the ability to raise your hand to get called on.”
Less tech-savvy professors, however, may have been caught off guard. In a phone interview, Greg Burns (28) and a second-year student at NYU’s Stern School of Business, noted some professors’ inexperience delivering content on a video-conference.
“My marketing professor was uncomfortable the first two weeks on Zoom. It’s unfortunate because he’s one of the best professors I had.”
Yet as classes resumed this fall, Burns, a New York City transplant who intends to pursue a career in real estate development, observed a significant improvement in professor preparation on account of their use of teaching assistants. — Wires.
