Download Part-time versus Full-time MBA Podcast 10.1 MB 22:10 Min

More Information on this Topic from our Sponsor

Support for MBA Podcaster comes from Doostang. Founded in 2005 at Harvard, Stanford and MIT, Doostang was created with one goal in mind: to successfully advance ambitious professionals in their careers.

Doostang offers its members the opportunity to search thousands of high-quality, highly relevant opportunities, and tools to leverage their inside connection to get hired. Their rapidly-growing community of over half a million of the best and brightest continues to attract in-demand opportunities in finance, consulting, media, technology and more.

MBA Podcaster listeners will receive a special discount on Doostang’s monthly subscription fee by using the code MBAPodcaster. Subscription fees begin at just $9.95 per month to access over 10,000 jobs from top employers such as Morgan Stanley, Bain & Co., Google, MTV, Teach for America and hundreds more.

See job postings and learn more at mbapodcaster.doostang.com

Transcription:

Welcome to MBA Podcaster—the only broadcast source for cutting-edge information and advice on the MBA admission process. This is an exciting time of change with the needs of the students beginning to exert gentle pressure on schools to adapt to them, while innovations in technology are resulting in brilliant new choices. You may be deciding whether to attend business school full-time or part-time, and there are many considerations. We will hear from three experts. Two are college deans representing those points of view, plus a student who recently wrestled with this question. And you may be surprised to learn it is not a cut and dried answer, as we’ll hear from Dr. John Mather of Tepper Business School at Carnegie-Mellon. He largely represents the full-time business school programs. “We now have students switching back and forth so that their MBA-degree pursuit can match their own personal needs.”

And Dr. Mark Rice from Babson Business School represents the part-time programs. “The learning experience, though comparable, is not the same. So, it really does come down to what the student’s objectives are and how well the particular program meets those objectives.”

And Robbie Allen is our student—rigorously pursuing an MBA while working at Cisco Systems. “Fortunately, I came across the program that I’m attending at MIT. They just provided a whole lot of options for working professionals, and that was just really attractive to me.”

We will discuss the merits and drawbacks of both tracks—part-time and full-time pursuit of the MBA degree. And we will also explore, from a cutting-edge perspective, the creative new educational offerings and the trends of the future. Let me fully introduce our guests today. Representing the full-time MBA perspective—Dr. John Mather, Executive Director of MBA Programs at Carnegie-Mellon University Tepper Business School. Representing the part-time MBA perspective—Dr. Mark Rice, Dean of Babson Business School. And our student, Robbie Allen, who is a technical leader at Cisco Systems while at MIT pursuing his joint MBA and Masters of Engineering. There has been a shift in the last few years from the full-time pursuit of the MBA to part-time pursuit. Only 20% of business school students are now enrolled in full-time programs, mostly, because of economic factors. Do you feel that change to part-time represents a loss to students, and they should be encouraged to go full-time? Or, do you feel the benefits of part-time programs outweigh the disadvantages? Let’s begin with Dr. John Mather of Carnegie-Mellon Tepper Business School. What do you think? “Our applications and our—what we call—“applicant pool” for all of our programs have remained somewhat the same. And I think it’s important to know that our MBA program here is the same program throughout all of our three—what I call—“distribution methods”. Everybody comes into the same applicant pool. And then, if they happen to want part-time, they go into the part-time program. If they’re full-time, they go into full-time. If they’re flex mode, they go into flex mode. It’s kind of up to their own personal circumstances what mode they want to obtain the MBA degree from here. We’ve noticed some interesting switching which has never happened before. After the first year, they are all in the same position no matter what program or what form of program they’re taking. We now have students switching back and forth so that their MBA-degree pursuit can match their own personal needs—be it for a job, be it for family, be it for their career goals, whatever.

Dr. Mark Rice of Babson, is that fairly typical? “It turns out that the situation at Babson is very similar to Tepper. That is, all of our students go through a comparable learning experience in terms of quality. They all get the same MBA degree at the end. The market place does not seem to differentiate between the various delivery mechanisms. That said, I would say that the learning experience, though comparable, is not the same. So, it really does come down to what the learning objectives of the student are and how well the particular program meets those objectives.”

This is a good time to pull in our student, Robbie Allen, who is currently in a part-time MBA program at MIT. Robbie, what did you look at when you were considering going full-time or part-time to business school? “For me, there really wasn’t an option for full-time. I’ve been working for the last ten years, and I really wanted to get a Master’s degree. But the only option was really a part-time degree. The opportunity cost is so large—when you’ve been working for a while, and then, you want to go back to school—that going to a full-time program puts you behind in the program quite a bit. I never quite understood why a lot of the graduate programs had a focus on full-time-only options. In fact, about three years ago, I was considering getting a JD. And none of the law programs in the Raleigh, North Carolina area where I’m from have a part-time degree option. So, I had to pretty much rule that out. And then, fortunately, I came across the program that I’m attending at MIT that has a part-time option. And they also have some remote classes that you can take as well. So, part of the year, you can live at your home base if that’s in a different part of the country. And they just provided a whole lot of options for working professionals, and that was just really attractive to me.”

Addressing our deans: Are you able to discern whether there’s a new trend toward a much more creative, open way to pursue the MBA such that students can really pay attention to the balance in their lives? “Yes, this is Mark again from Babson. Clearly, what’s going on in the market place is a significant proliferation of varieties of approaches. This trend is really reflecting the demands of the market place. Different students need different kinds of things related to professional and personal aspects of their lives. And the proliferation of programs is addressing that.”

“This is John from Tepper. I would totally agree with Mark again. We have a part-time program for, obviously, qualified students in our hometown here of Pittsburg. But our other part-time program is flex mode which is distance learning. And our flex-mode program was developed in ’96 in response to companies who wanted their people internally to have this MBA and, therefore, said fix it. So, we developed this flex-mode program. And this is our MBA now—going out to various companies in their locations where their students can now participate on a part-time basis. The program is the same as our regular part-time here in Pittsburg. So, as Mark said, yes, there are some new demands out there. And in this case, the companies did not want students to leave for two years for a full-time and said, ‘Look, it’s the same program as a full-time. You’ll get the full content, the full benefits.’ So, we convert a meeting room on the premises of the company. And that, then, becomes their classroom. I encourage our professors, one season out of the term, to visit the site. So, there’s still an interaction. We give them plenty of time during breaks to come in here to pick up extra courses, but it is a response to a need in the market place. This program is growing. There are more and more companies that are saying we would like to have this top-rank program delivered to our students on premise.”

How do students discover what MBA programs are available across the entire United States, and then figure out which program would best suit them? I would think this research would be absolutely daunting. Robbie? “It is. And, again, as a student looking at this two or three years ago, there actually weren’t very many options. Stamford had a part-time option; MIT, of course, did and a few others. But, over the last couple of years, those options have proliferated quite a bit. I guess—back to the previous point—MIT has this distance option where a lot of students do video conference from their work location. And I’ve actually done that for one of the terms that I’ve been part of the program. I think one of the interesting issues that presents is the fact that the learning is different. Even though it is the same material, unfortunately, the video-conferencing technology has just not improved at a rate that makes it similar to actually being in the classroom. So, while a lot of schools are starting to adopt these remote and distance learning options—at least in my experience—I haven’t really found it to be up to par with actually being on campus, though there’s still going to be a need in the future for those types of options as well.”

“Let me add to that if I could. Not that similar to John’s situation, we’ve been working on a blended approach to MBA’s; particularly, to attack the issue you raise with respect to the older technology and distance learning. The reality is that technology is changing very, very fast and the professors are getting better and better at using it; especially, the early adopters. In the Babson version of this—the Fast-Track MBA—we’ve experimented with the amount of time you need to have face to face in order to build a learning community and the personal relationships, and then, the complementary amount of time that you can do the learning on line—either synchronously or asynchronously. In fact, ironically, I just stepped out from our Fast-Track Capstone Course. Our students come to our site a couple of days every four, five or six weeks for intensive interaction. And then, the remainder of the work is done, either synchronously or asynchronously, on line with virtual teams and all the new technology-enabled kinds of learning that I think are really getting better and better. The interesting thing here is that the market place has changed very dramatically over the last several years. But, also, the sophistication of schools in providing alternative learning approaches has gotten better and better and better over that time as well.”

“I was going to add, too, in terms of Robbie’s comment, the technology is superb. It’s extremely expensive, but every year it changes. But we have, what we call, public site out in the Silicon Valley. We have a west coast campus. And I’ve launched an experiment out there, in the sense that, we have a corporate site out there for a corporation. But I discovered, about three years ago, that people had heard about this and we’re calling me saying, ‘Is there any chance of bringing your program out here?’ So, I created a couple of rooms. So, what I have is a public site out there, and I can take up to 40 students. These are the pretty typical MBA profile—25 to 35. And they’re coming in from all of the companies in Silicon Valley now and creating their own environment. They, then, also spend time here. They participate in case competitions on Saturday. We moved all the case competitions to Saturday. So, they can participate with full-time and the part-time here in Pittsburg. So, it’s challenging us to think, like Mark is saying; it’s really changing out there. We’re responding to it. And in the next decade—the next five years—are going to be really exciting. But it is true—business learning through live, real-time, interactive TV is a real challenge. We’re not talking here about sending them a disc and they look at it on their PC. These are still the same props that are here on campus; doing the same course packets, the same cases, the same grading.”

“I think John makes some interesting points. I see the direction of the remote learning being sort of that virtual or distance classroom, because a lot of my classmates are individuals at a company that has some sort of video conferencing set up or they’re doing video conferencing at home over the Internet. And, just like you mentioned, John, it’s both expensive and it also is changing constantly. My concern isn’t the folks that are sort of in the technology hot beds like Silicon Valley and Boston and those areas. It’s more of somebody that’s in a state—maybe it’s just a single individual—that wants to take part in an executive program, and they don’t have immediate access to one of the big universities. The individual learning is much more difficult than the virtual classroom—the remote classroom—where you can get a lot of people together.”

“Well, actually, as it turns out, that’s one of the big issues—MBA education—anywhere, anytime. How is that going to happen down the road? And, certainly, in the case of Babson, we’ve designed the program so that, realistically, if you’re in either a two-to-three-hour drive or plane ride, the program works. It’s even more extreme right now. We have people flying across the country from the western US for this once-every-four-week kind of face-to-face session. And the rest, as we discussed, is being done synchronously and asynchronously on line. When you look at the cost of the education, truly, the cost of the travel ends up being in the noise. So, we do have people coming from all over the country. In fact, we’ve had people fly in from Europe to participate in this program as well.”

Cost, gentleman, is a major consideration. Full-time students not only have to fund over $40,000 a year for tuition, but they also don’t have the salary to offset expenses. On the other hand, many employers are reimbursing their part-time business school students for their tuition costs. What suggestions do have for students for whom cost is a big factor? And, are there creative ways to pay for a full-time program or a part-time program that would catapult one choice over the other? “I can give you the input from the students’ side. Especially, if you work for a bigger company, a lot are willing to fund higher degrees—at least partially. For example, my employer is going to be paying about 25% of my overall two-year degree. There are actually several classmates of mine that the full degree is being paid for. Now they have to commit for some number of years after they finish the degree, but that’s a significant expense that they don’t necessarily have to incur. That’s definitely one option—to try to get in with a company that’s willing to help you out.”

“That reflects the experience we’ve had, too—that some of the companies pay the entire cost, some pay part of it, and some pay none of it. And the students look at that as one of their sources of financing; that is, their company. Of course, there are others. It is possible to get student loans as well as scholarships in most of the MBA programs. I often have this conversation with perspective students, and I say, ‘Look, you’re only going to do one MBA in your lifetime. And if you’re 25 or 30 or 35 years old, you have a lot of working years ahead of you. And the reality is: It’s an investment in your future.’ And the payoff is just tremendous.”

“All of those are exactly right. Robbie and Mark were talking about the companies. They do vary. We find a lot of differences among our part-time here in Pittsburg and our flex mode across the country in various sites at companies. But there are a lot of loans. We have an entire financial aid service here; especially, those students now that are moving into that public site in the Silicon Valley. Some of them can even go to their companies. They can combine that with loans. They can combine that with scholarships that we have here for them because they’re in the MBA program. But the rationale that Mark talked about, in terms of the return on investment, is really flying. And a lot of students are willing to do that. Students seem to be really committed. They’re focused. They want this degree, and they’re going to go ahead and do it, even if they have to graduate with some debt. But there is a lot of financing out there. And any student should look at scholarship, financial ad, loans, and then, also, corporate sponsorship.”

It seems to me it takes a lot of passion to sustain the interest and to do all this demanding work to get the MBA degree. And I’m wondering. When students put their heart and their time and their money into a program like this, do you think it would be better for them to go full-time or part-time? And, do you feel, at the end of their journey, that students feel rewarded by their choice? “I do think it comes back to fit. So, your question really leads to what the characteristics are for a particular individual that would argue for a full-time program versus some sort of a part-time program. One that’s very easy to come up with is those students who are interested in making a fundamental change of career. They’d better think about a full-time program. And the reason is that they really need to immerse themselves for a two-year period of time. They need the opportunity to do those projects as part of their course work and, then, a summer internship, and to build up an experience base that would convince an employer in a different industry or in a different functional kind of job to hire them. If, on the other hand, what you’re looking for is an improvement in the career track you’re already on, then there’s a lot of power in taking the learning from the classroom and applying it in the work situation in your current employer. And the interaction between the classroom and the world of practice, then, creates a big leveraging effect if you’re going to stay on that same path.”

“It’s extremely important for students to be able to apply what they learn as they’re learning it, because it’s hard to take some of these puristical techniques that you learn—and even in a case setting or a classroom setting—and apply them in such a way that you’ll gain a lot from it. I think Mark was right on. In some situations, perhaps, if you went to a completely different field it would make sense to focus on just that degree program. But when it comes to MBA’s, I think a lot of times it makes a lot of sense for people to be involved in internships; do a part-time program where they’re working and still able to apply what they learn as they are involved with the program.”

“And to extend that, even for those students who go full-time, I would argue very strongly that you do not want to disconnect from the real world and just have, in a sense, a vacation. You don’t want to return to being an undergraduate student. This is a professional program. So, what that really means is that while you’re in a full-time program, you want to be taking advantage of every opportunity to be involved in experiential learning. And, usually, there are plenty of opportunities. There are project courses for credit. There’s a lot of stuff you can do on a not-for-credit basis that keeps you connected to practice. Certainly, the summer internship is an extremely important part of the full-time program. So, I think Robbie’s right on target. For an MBA program, this is not about disconnecting from reality and learning a whole bunch of theoretical stuff from a textbook or from a professor. This is about learning stuff that you can actually put into practice, and part of the learning comes from putting it into practice.”

“I’m just going to add one last point about the full-time/part-time. An MBA is tough no matter what program you’re in. It takes a balance of not only your own personal goals, but if you have a family or other variables, you’ve got to consider that, too. A profile of our part-time students versus or full-time students is really different in terms of their personal responsibilities. And those things really have to play a point, too, in addition to your career goals, in addition to applying what you learn.”

You’ve all made wonderful points. And I’d like to wrap up our MBA-podcasting discussion about full-time versus part-time programs by asking each of you: What is your best hope for MBA programs?

“I think there’s been so much in the press over the last year or so about the fundamental need for innovation in business. And, historically, business programs have trained people to focus primarily on operations. I think the future of the MBA program is to help people to become true leaders. And to me, that means both the skill to be able to manage operational excellence, and also the skill, the insight, the wisdom, the capability to be able to manage both the incremental and breakthrough innovation. And healthy companies require both operational excellence and innovation.”

“Where is the MBA going in the future? I would totally agree with that. Mark and I were just at a conference where there was a major concern about where it’s going. And I think it’s true. It’s teamwork. It’s blending technology and business today—producing people that can operate in both of those and producing individuals that can create trust and respect from both sides of the technology or science and business fundamentals. Thinking and working together—because it’s only through those combinations that we’re going to be able to help society in this country as well as the world. Those are the challenges for our leaders in the future. And it doesn’t have to be business, by the way. We have a number of students that are moving into the non-profit in terms of organization. So, we try not to talk about corporations. I talk about organizations. That can cross a wide spectrum of individuals, teams and the tasks that confront them.”

“I guess where I’d like to see MBA’s going is just to continue to develop part-time options and get away from strictly full-time only—making sure that experience and integrating experiential teaching into the curriculum is just a key aspect moving forward. I’d like video conferencing technology to continue and evolve so that folks that are in states that may not have direct access to some of the top MBA schools can be involved and take advantage of some of those learning. It’s a great option. We just have to focus on making sure there’s flexibility involved so that working professionals can take advantage of it just as somebody coming straight out of an undergrad program.”

Thank you, Dr. John Mather of Carnegie-Mellon Tepper School, Dr. Mark Rice of Babson Business School, and Robbie Allen who’s a technical leader at Cisco Systems while at MIT pursuing his joint MBA and Masters of Engineering. You three have successfully highlighted fascinating differences in the full-time and part-time business school programs and the creative new programs born of students’ needs and cutting-edge technology. So, students considering MBA programs, it’s seems you are best served by knowing your own needs, the pressures, and balance in your life and going after it. It looks like the world is building a better MBA. Thank you for joining our MBA Podcaster, and all the best as you continue your great adventure.