By Sarah Lindenfeld Hall
In 2019, as leaders at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business considered the benefits of building an online MBA program, they accurately predicted the coming surge in interest. In just a few years, the number of virtual MBA programs in the United States has exploded, more than doubling between 2016-17 and 2020-21, according to AACSB International, the business school accreditation agency.
But instead of simply joining the fray when its program launched in 2020, Questrom’s leaders embraced the opportunity to build something different—an accessible and affordable program that reimagines how a graduate business education is delivered.
The innovative model is working. With nearly 2,000 students, the two-year, entirely online program boasts a 95% retention rate. And students are celebrating the results of their hard work. In a survey of Questrom’s online MBA students, about 70% of respondents said the degree helped them secure a job promotion or pay increase.
That success comes with a program that’s built around a specific type of student—experienced professionals ready to sharpen the skills they already have. With Questrom, students dive into an integrated curriculum that draws from the expertise of their diverse classmates and helps them bolster the workforce skills needed to navigate today’s global marketplace.
“They come to us because they need a package of upskilling,” says Paul Carlile, Questrom’s senior associate dean for innovation. “And a lot of the testimonies we hear back is…I got the promotion I could not have gotten.”
Here are three features of Questrom’s online MBA that make it a disruptor in business education.
1. Modular Approach
MBA programs typically rely on siloed instruction; each class focuses on a single subject such as accounting or marketing. Not until graduates step into the real world would they truly integrate those subjects to solve business problems, Carlile says.
Questrom’s online program uses an integrated approach, combining different academic disciplines into six 14-week modules. The modules are built around a single question, Carlile says: “What are the key problems business leaders are going to be focusing on in the next decade?” And they cover topics as varied as ethics, risk and economics.
Advances in data collection and analytics, for example, are explored in the “Managing Performance With Data” module with lessons in corporate finance, managerial accounting and microeconomics. Challenges in conducting business globally are covered in the “Leveraging Global Opportunities” module, which examines marketing, supply chains and strategy.
Most modules end with a challenge-based capstone project, so students can bring together all of their knowledge to address a particular business problem. “The capstone is that place where they are doing the full integration of the experience,” Carlile says.
2. Peer-To-Peer Network
Questrom leaders were intentional about building an accessible and affordable program. It’s exclusively online, open to anybody across the globe. And, at $24,000, it’s less than half the cost of a traditional MBA, which runs about $62,000 on average, according to the Education Data Initiative, making Questrom affordable to a broader range of students.
That diverse student base, with an average age of 36, supports another key pillar of the Questrom online MBA—peer-to-peer networking. A typical week for online MBA students at Questrom includes faculty instruction but also live case study discussions, student affinity group meetups and other opportunities for classmate collaboration.
With their rich experiences and perspectives, students are “teaching each other things that the faculty could never dream of,” Carlile says.
And those peer-to-peer discussions matter to experienced students, in particular, who understand the perks of business connections. Their weekly work with classmates isn’t just about the grade, Carlile says. “It’s potentially a professional network that [they] can build and benefit from.”
3. Focus On Work Skills
In a global marketplace that requires business executives to work across functions and locations, two workforce skills are increasingly important—the ability to work together as a team, or “teaming,” and communication. Both are woven into nearly every part of Questrom’s online education—from the curriculum to peer-to-peer conversations.
“Teaming for us is the dynamic context of managing across differences,” Carlile says. And that ability to work in teams, along with strong communication skills, is of prime interest to professionals like those pursuing a Questrom online MBA.
“It’s not the career switcher,” says Carlile of the typical Questrom online student. ”It’s really about their career—how do I move my career within my same company or same industry?”
Building on those workplace skills of teaming and communication, they leave with the knowledge and credentials to take the lead, whether it’s having nuanced conversations with the finance department or making tough tradeoffs with colleagues over budget priorities.
More Disruption Ahead
Carlile is now working on disrupting graduate education in other subjects at Boston University. And, at Questrom, he’s building on the success of the online MBA by adding lifelong learning content that relies on the same practices as the graduate degree. The first installment, which will focus on digital marketing, launches this summer. A course on strategy implementation will be available early next year.
BU leadership’s aim is to add new programs that give online MBA graduates and others new options as their careers—and the market’s needs—grow and change, Carlile says. “Our hope is that that install base [of Questrom students] becomes a way to warm-start lifelong learning.”
