The Best Online MBA Schools (AACSB) for 2010 Part Six: MBA In-state Tuition

This category is more important than undergraduate tuition, since we’re talking about MBA tuition, but it’s still relative minor, since a true online school will want to attract candidates from outside their state. So this category counts for 2.14% of the whole set.

In terms of scoring, each school earns up to 100 times the percentage value of the category, so that in total a maximum score of 10,000 is possible. For this category, since there is a range from $3,617 to $81,665 for a year of tuition and fees, schools can earn up to 214 points. Here are the ten lowest MBA in-state tuition rates of our group of schools:

1. Fayetteville State
2. Laval
3. Texas – Pan American
4. Texas - Tyler
5. Georgia Southern
6. Texas A&M - Commerce
7. Southern Arkansas
8. Louisiana - Monroe
9. Mississippi
10. West Georgia

The overall lead is now as follows (until the last category, amounts under a point are rounded):

1st: Texas – El Paso (1,880 points)
2nd: Massachusetts – Amherst (1,875 points)
3rd(tie): Florida State (1,874 points)
Washington State (1,874 points)
5th: Texas – San Antonio (1,873 points)
6th(tie): Nebraska – Lincoln (1,869 points)
Oklahoma State (1,869 points)
8th: Texas – Arlington (1,866 points)
9th: Alabama (1,864 points)
10th(tie): Florida (1,862 points)
North Texas (1,862 points)
12th: Texas – Dallas (1,847 points)
13th: Colorado – Denver (1,846 points)
14th: Florida International (1,830 points)
15th: Arizona State (1,815 points)
16th: Penn State (1,806 points)
17th: Indiana – Bloomington (1,796 points)
18th: Laval (1,775 points)
19th: Texas – Pan American (1,771 points)
20th: Auburn (1,764 points)
21st: Wyoming (1,762 points)
22nd: Durham (1,730 points)
23rd: Temple (1,668 points)
24th: Hong Kong Poly (1,640 points)
25th: Drexel (1,624 points)

The Best Online MBA Schools (AACSB) for 2010 Part Five: Undergraduate In-state Tuition

This category is admittedly pretty minor, which is why it counts for only 0.36% of the total, but it does have meaning. If nothing else, the undergraduate tuition rate often serves as a barometer for the graduate rate, so you need to watch it. This is the weakest category of the fifteen I use, but it still counts.

In terms of scoring, each school earns up to 100 times the percentage value of the category, so that in total a maximum score of 10,000 is possible. For this category, since there is a range from $1,930 to $42,100 for a year of tuition and fees, schools can earn up to 36 points. This is the first category which begins to set schools apart from each other.

Here are the ten lowest undergraduate in-state tuition rates of our group of schools:

1. Laval
2. Kennesaw State
3. Durham
4. Wyoming
5. Fayetteville State
6. Louisiana – Monroe
7. Georgia Southern
8. Florida Gulf Coast
9. Florida International
10. East Carolina

The overall lead is now as follows:

Tied for 1st at 1,684 points:
Florida
Florida International
Florida State

4th: Alabama (1,683 points)

Tied for 5th at 1,682 points:
Arizona State
Colorado – Denver
Nebraska – Lincoln
Oklahoma State
Texas – San Antonio
Washington State

Tied for 11th at 1,681 points:
Texas – Arlington
Texas – El Paso

Tied for 13th at 1,680 points:
Indiana – Bloomington
Massachusetts – Amherst

Tied for 15th at 1,679 points:
North Texas
Texas – Dallas

17th: Penn State (1,675 points)

18th: Laval (1,561 points)

Tied for 19th at 1,560 points:
Durham
Wyoming

Tied for 21st at 1,558 points:
Auburn
Texas – Pan American

23rd: Temple (1,552 points)

24th: Drexel (1,538 points)

25th: Hong Kong Polytechnic (1,527 points)

The Best Online MBA Schools (AACSB) for 2010 Part Four: Degree Levels

This one may not appear important, but a university which offers you an MBA may later be attractive for a doctorate, or additional certification. A school which offers more degree levels is more serious in its mission.

In terms of scoring, each school earns up to 100 times the percentage value of the category, so that in total a maximum score of 10,000 is possible. For this category, since there are four levels to consider, schools can earn 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of 100 times the 14.00 value of the category, or 350, 700, 1050, or 1400 more points.

Twenty-five AACSB schools with online MBA programs offer the full four degree levels. They are, alphabetically (2009 ranking in parentheses):

Alabama
Arizona State
Auburn (1)
Colorado – Denver (4)
Drexel (2)
Durham (25t)
Florida (21)
Florida International
Florida State (22t)
Hong Kong Polytechnic
Indiana – Bloomington
Laval
Nebraska – Lincoln (22t)
North Texas (25t)
Oklahoma State
Penn State
Temple
Massachusetts - Amherst
Texas – Arlington (25t)
Texas – Dallas (11t)
Texas – El Paso
Texas – Pan American
Texas – San Antonio
Washington State
Wyoming (24)

The lead is now a 17-way tie for first, with another 8 teams tied for 18th place:

Tied for 1st at 1,650 points:
Alabama
Arizona State
Colorado – Denver (4)
Florida (21)
Florida International
Florida State (22t)
Indiana – Bloomington
Massachusetts - Amherst
Nebraska – Lincoln (22t)
North Texas (25t)
Oklahoma State
Penn State
Texas – Arlington (25t)
Texas – Dallas (11t)
Texas – El Paso
Texas – San Antonio
Washington State

Tied for 18th place at 1,525 points:
Auburn (1)
Drexel (2)
Durham (25t)
Hong Kong Polytechnic
Laval
Temple
Texas – Pan American
Wyoming (24)

(The reference to 2009 rankings will not be continued again until the final rankings)

The Best Online MBA (AACSB) Schools for 2010 Part Three: AACSB Accreditation Levels

We’ll start simple. The AACSB accredits schools as either Business schools, or as both Business and Accounting schools. The reason it matters, is not only for people who want to focus on Accounting as a concentration or career, but the additional effort by the school reflects, in my opinion, a superior academic standard which should be reflected in the overall MBA curriculum.

In terms of scoring, each school earns up to 100 times the percentage value of the category, so that in total a maximum score of 10,000 is possible. For this category, since there are two levels to consider, accreditation in both Business and Accounting earns 100% of (100 x 2.5) or 250 points. Accreditation in Business only earns half that, or 50% of (100 x 2.5) or 125 points.

Twenty-nine AACSB schools with online MBA programs are accredited in both Business and Accounting, so we start with a 29-school tie for the early lead. They are, alphabetically (2009 ranking in parentheses):

Alabama
Alabama - Birmingham
Arizona State
Colorado – Denver (4)
Florida (21)
Florida International
Florida State (22t)
Georgia Southern
Gonzaga
Indiana – Bloomington
Kennesaw State
Louisiana – Monroe
Massachusetts - Amherst
Mississippi
Nebraska – Lincoln (22t)
North Texas (25t)
Oklahoma State
Penn State
Portland State
Suffolk (18)
Tennessee Tech (5t)
Texas – Arlington (25t)
Texas – Dallas (11t)
Texas – El Paso
Texas – San Antonio
Towson
Washington State
West Georgia
Western Kentucky

The Best AACSB Online MBA Schools for 2010 Part Two: Why Rank?

This is where I explain why I am ranking online MBA programs. First off, I am biased. I hold an MBA from the University of Houston at Victoria, class of 2009 and member of Beta Gamma Sigma. I am fifty years old, which should tell you that I am mature, experienced in my work, and frankly not at all interested in schools that promise more than they deliver. I will also say bluntly that you will not get anything of value from a school that does not start with a serious investment in time, study, and effort. An ‘easy’ MBA is worthless. I chose to earn my MBA online, because as a manager my schedule often requires me to come in early and stay late, and I can’t even guarantee my Saturdays will always be available. Also, I cannot afford to take a couple years off work to go back to school, and as a professional the idea that I should stop working in order to learn theory is ludicrous on its face. So I am a strong advocate of the online MBA, though again I caution the reader not to imagine that it’s easier than face-to-face programs, nor that once you have an MBA you will get everything you want in your career. Earning an MBA is acquiring a tool, and in the process developing your mind and identity as a business professional. Like a gym, a university’s worth depends on how hard you sweat out the work and how much discipline you have.

But not all MBA programs are equally valuable, and that’s also true for online programs. In fact, the bias that many people have against online MBA programs comes from the more well-known online programs, which are poorly accredited and do little to really prepare their students to become leaders and build effective teams. No names, but you know the kind of schools I mean. If you're going to do the work to get an MBA, I mean a real one, then you owe it to yourself to protect your investment by making sure you get a degree that will be a true asset to your career - by coming from a solid university, and by making sure your education truly endows you with the tools to lead and build.


The people at MBA.com put out a survey of MBA candidates which note that there are about “4,750 graduate management programs around the world”. That same survey reported that the most common place for applicants to find out information on MBA programs is from school websites, but frankly when you’re starting out that’s a big field to work through. Published rankings also get a lot of notice, but here’s the problem – the big magazines and mainstream media play up the full-time schools and – sort of – some part-time programs, but discounting the cheapo ads pushing the garbage programs, no one breaks down the qualities of top-tier online MBA programs. In fact, no one even defines what would be the top tier.

Well, no one besides me. I took the time to look up a few things, weigh some numbers, and this year I improved significantly my methodology and the amount of data I gathered. I also tried to find information that you, the reader, could verify for yourself, and reweight to suit your preferences. That MBA.com survey says that 14.9% of all MBA candidates at least consider an online program, so there are a lot of people who deserve relatively easy access to some good numbers to know.

Let’s start with a few key numbers about online MBA programs. As I said, MBA.com reports that there are around 4,750 graduate management programs in the world. But only 593 of them are accredited by the AACSB (Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business), the international accrediting body founded in 1916 specifically for business schools, and which includes every program generally recognized to be worth the cost and effort. Of those 593 schools (up from 580 in 2009), 141 offer online classes at the graduate level (up from 77 in 2009) and 72 schools offer a true online MBA as I define it (up from 50 in 2009). You have a lot of choices.

I define an online MBA as one a candidate can earn without ever setting foot on campus, except for a maximum of three weeks residency. All required classes must be taught online. That’s my starting point, and while there are a number of programs which almost make that standard, if they did not I did not count them.
Next, I wanted to make sure you could get the same information I did, so I used two sources for each school – the AACSB member profile and the schools’ websites. If the information was not available there, I did not include it. The idea is to compare schools on consistent standards.

Next was to find the valid data to count. I settled on fifteen categories of information:

AACSB accreditation types
Degree levels offered
Undergraduate in-state tuition
MBA in-state tuition
Undergraduate out-of-state tuition
MBA out-of-state tuition
Operating budget
Average GMAT score
Minimum GMAT score
Number of MBA concentrations available
Student/Faculty ratio
Number of Students
Budget per student
Minimum program duration
Number of FTE faculty

Obviously, these are not of equal value to the MBA candidate, so next I weighted them according to their importance to the program:


Category Weight
AACSB accreditation types 2.5%
Degree levels offered 14%
Undergraduate in-state tuition 0.36%
MBA in-state tuition 2.14%
Undergraduate out-of-state tuition 0.71%
MBA out-of-state tuition 10%
Operating budget 1.07%
Average GMAT score 18%
Minimum GMAT score 1.79%
Number of MBA concentrations available 24%
Student/Faculty ratio 9%
Number of Students 1.43%
Budget per student 3%
Minimum program duration 4%
Number of FTE faculty 8% Total 100%

The next sixteen posts reveal the results of scoring in each category, and provide a list of the top schools in that category and a running total of the leading schools in points scored. The last post will discuss the overall results, and present the methodology clearly, so you can reweight the data if you would like to do your own scoring.

The Best AACSB Online MBA Schools for 2010 – Part One: Overview

If you’re reading this, you’re either one of my regular readers or you have an interest in the Online MBA process. I ranked accredited schools of the AACSB (Association for the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business) last year in a ‘Top 25’ format, and I am doing so again this year, although this year I have a much more rigorous format and, I believe, a more objective and useful set of criteria and methodology for my ranking. Before I present my results, however, I want to discuss the MBA degree in general and the development of the online MBA program, the reason I am doing rankings of online MBA programs, and to discuss the selected criteria and why I am using it and how I am weighting that data.

The Master of Business Administration degree is a relatively new innovation, created for practical application of business skills and tools. This is an important point, because the online MBA represents an innovation on that degree. But I will come back to that. Because it’s also important to recognize that the MBA is an elite degree. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 85% of Americans graduate high school or earn a GED, about 53% of Americans have some college experience, but only about 28% of Americans earn a college degree, and only about 9% earn a postgraduate degree.

When you consider that advanced degrees include technical, legal, and medical degrees, the number of MBAs out there in the workforce is really quite small. This leads to several conditions:

1. People with MBAs are often considered to have superior business ability and experience. This is a problem if the individual does not actually have such skills or knowledge;

2. Being considered ‘elite’ sometimes goes to a person’s head, and they become arrogant and offensive;

3. People who do not have MBAs often believe that getting an MBA will improve their career prospects

I mention this here, because not everyone can really benefit from earning an MBA. The degree is a tool, and it depends on what you do with it, how well it works for you. Also, in my experience there are four types of people with regard to the MBA:

I. Some people earn an MBA and gain insights into how to make the most effective use of their skills, to maximize advantages and opportunity, and become leaders who transform their companies;

II. Some people get an MBA and become arrogant energy parasites who kill morale and damage their company through incompetence and greed;

III. Some people do not need an MBA to accomplish their potential, and make their success through independent effort;

IV. Some people can make good use of an MBA, but they cannot go to a campus for two or three years to attend morning and afternoon classes.

There is a bias against online degrees in many places, but the reasons for such bias are rapidly becoming invalid. With regard to the MBA, let’s consider why a person seeks that degree. There are five key tools that an MBA candidate should acquire in earning his or her MBA:

[] The candidate’s thinking moves from tactical (my job, my department, my situation) to strategic (the company, the community, the long-term prospects and needs)

[] The candidate develops their leadership ability, and takes charge of problem-solving, initiative to tackle projects and challenges, and finding opportunity

[] The candidate learns to build teams and understand the process and value of team-building, not only for specific projects but also building a network of colleagues for discussion, planning, and evaluation

[] The candidate learns how to identify and communicate effectively with stakeholders of all kinds, to minimize risk and obstacles and to discover opportunity and growth, and to build a community network that builds brand value through good corporate citizenship

[] The candidate learns effective methods to resolve disputes, including analysis of cause and effect, key stakeholders and their concerns, and the key objectives of all concerned parties

You may note that none of those key goals require the candidate to attend a traditional MBA program. There are very different ways to earn an MBA, and each has advantages as well as disadvantages. The traditional MBA pathway includes the full-time and part-time programs, and focuses on face-to-face classroom lectures, discussions, and examinations. The online MBA pathway depends on the virtual classroom and web-based resources. The distinction between each path may be seen in the following points:

1. The traditional path focuses on face-to-face personal interaction, which allows candidates to study as a community and develop teams for study and projects through common behavior traits such as common age, gender, and superficial attraction. Many traditional schools set their candidates up into cohorts, who will take the same classes at the same time and place as their colleagues, creating a direct sense of community. On the other hand, online candidates first perceive their peers through classroom discussion and so develop impressions through the strength of their intellect and use of words and concepts. Also, since online candidates are not forced into artificial communities, they interact with a wider range of candidates from different stages in the program, and the flexibility of online programs brings in more experienced professionals, who can speak to the direct effects of theoretical concepts in the real work world.

2. Traditional MBA candidates see and interact directly with faculty, and can personally visit the professors regularly. Of course, this is an advantage only if the student/faculty ratio is small and the professor keeps his office schedule, something not that common in universities. Also, the online MBA candidate is known to the professor by his or her participation in class discussions, and the quality of his or her work on assignments and projects. The online candidate also had the opportunity to ask a question in real-time discussions without fear of being ignored, because the question appears in the chat text and is not lost to crowd noise or misunderstanding. Over time, the online student also has the advantage of being identified primarily by his or her work, rather than on irrelevant appearances.

3. Traditional MBA candidates can easily form study groups with students they meet in class or on campus. The whole idea of a campus, after all, is to create a place which encourages study and conversation among students. They can also form project teams and establish networks for later collaboration. However, online MBA candidates can also form virtual teams with equal ease, and they may meet online or in person as they choose with greater flexibility. Note also that the use of e-mails and other electronic means of communication creates more durable access, which may continue after graduation from the university and therefore creating greater network value than nominal methods.



4. Traditional MBA candidates have direct access to the professor teaching each class, and may have an advantage from being able to see and react to instructors’ demeanor and personality. However, online candidates do not have to dear being judged on superficial appearance, and can submit questions or ask for guidance in online format, where time constraints are far less pressing.

5. Most major corporations have a bias in favor of traditional face-to-face programs, especially full-time MBA candidates. This gives traditional MBA candidates broader opportunity at job fairs and face-to-face campus interviews. However, the online MBA candidate generally has superior work experience and job-specific skills related to coursework that are less emphasized in traditional programs, such as virtual team-building, teleconferencing, and online project documentation. When the online MBA candidate goes into an interview, he/she will be better equipped to offer immediate application of relevant work skills.


Each method has advantages and disadvantages, but it’s important to recognize that the online MBA program is distinct from the traditional MBA program in its organization, requirements, and results. This is a vital point to understand when deciding your own path to the MBA. While the material covered in online courses is identical to that covered in face-to-face classes, the method by which the candidate learns the material and presents his/her work, and by which the candidate builds contact networks for study and project teams, is distinctly separate from the nominal classroom approach, and the candidate who stands out in the online program must be more mature, disciplined and better-organized than one seeking to shine in more traditional settings. An example of this can be seen in the classroom discussion, a vital forum for an MBA-level curriculum.

Rather than simply read from the text and recite the appropriate maxims and formulae, MBA candidates discuss cases and context, to explore the full scope of relevant issues and to not only answer the question with an effective solution, but learn how to apply the strategic lesson holistically, and also to listen to alternate solutions so that in real life the answer can still be found, even if the individual does not know the answer himself. The problem with the traditional face-to-face classroom, is that it’s too easy for a slacker to coast along, for a braggart to steal credit for someone else’s idea or explanation, and for room noise to make it hard for a student to be heard or understood clearly. In the online classroom, the bad news is that discussion and participation are much more stringently tracked and graded – I have known professors who dropped students from an online class for failing to contribute in substance to discussions. The online class tracks every keystroke of a comment and identifies not only the person making the entry, but the date, time and length. The professor can sort through comments to find the most valid and effective observations and insights, and more than a few candidates in online classes find that the difference between an A and a B in a class depends on the quality of their discussions.