FAQ

The UAS MBA is practical, relevant, and accessible for Alaskans.

• The UAS MBA degree is a practical performance-oriented degree. It is designed to develop the kind of skills required to actually DO business.

• The UAS MBA program is relevant. A focus on Alaskan industries is built into every course. Case studies and examples in each course relate to industries such as
  • health care services
  • retailing & wholesaling
  • tourism & hospitality
  • financial services
  • logistics services
  • oil field and mining support services
  • professional services (doctors, lawyers, architects, accountants, etc.)
    
• The UAS MBA program is accessible. As a wholly online degree, participants only need access to the Internet.

In any format, classroom-based teaching or online courses, it is widely recognized that very large class size inhibits interaction across the whole class. A substantial part of the value in the MBA comes from interacting with colleagues who are thinking about how to apply the class material to their own organizations. Thus, if interaction breaks down, the whole class suffers. Research shows that performance in smaller classes is better online, and participants themselves are less satisfied and feel that they learn less with large classes. Many business educators with experience teaching web-base classes feel that optimal class size ranges from 20 to 30.

Why does quality decline if class size gets too large? In the online environment, discussion and interaction is mostly in the form of written documents. Suppose each participant writes and posts about 75 lines of written material (roughly 2 single spaced pages) about the weekly assignment. This amounts to 1875 lines per week to read in a cohort of 25 participants. If each participant posts about 5 times during the weekly discussion, at about 5 lines per response, this adds another 625 lines to read. In practice, this is a conservative estimate, because many participants like to get much more involved in discussion – it is useful for many of them to talk about issues they face in their own jobs.

Reading about 2500 lines of text per week takes a little time. If the class gets too large, the quality and speed of the feedback from the instructor declines substantially. The format may be computerized and on the web, but instructors cannot work online 24/7. And, remember, MBA participants are not computers, either. If the task of keeping up with class discussion gets too huge, most participants simply won’t have time to do it. Much of the value in any MBA program comes from interacting with classmates who can add insight about specific real-world application of the concepts. So large classes damage the quality participants receive from each other, too.

No. The likelihood that applicants will stay in the program with their cohort mates is one of the considerations in the admission decision.

As we noted in other places on this website, the cohort model facilitates strong relationships and information exchange among participants. This is disrupted if people drop in and out and don’t move through the classes with their cohort mates. The value of the program declines a little for all participants if very many participants don’t stay with the cohort.

We also want to keep completion rates high. An MBA program is a lot of work, and we do n’t want people to waste their investment by dropping out. There is some research showing that cohort models have higher program completion rates, on average, than programs where people can just drop in and out of the program at any time.

Why? Given all the pressures of job and family, it’s easy to get discouraged now and then about staying with a graduate program. The strong social network developed in a cohort program helps participants overcome occasional feelings of “oh, I just can’t do it.” We don’t admit people we think might not be able to do it – if you are admitted, you can do it. But once in a while it’s easy to think you can’t if you feel all alone with the pressures. The cohort is a great support group. Certainly, many graduates from cohort-style programs nationwide cite the cohort as one of the best features of their programs.

UAS defines one credit as approximately 3 hours of work per week over a normal semester, i.e., about 9 hours of work per week over the whole semester for a three credit course. This is pretty much the standard in the USA. Universities which hand out credits for substantially less work often find it difficult to get or keep accreditation. Graduate work also requires a substantially higher level of performance than the undergraduate degree – it is not just more of the same old stuff you did as an undergraduate. Managers who go to the higher levels of the company have to be a lot sharper than the lower levels.

Most of the UAS MBA courses are in condensed 7 week format, half a semester, which means that they require about 18 hours of work per week, on average. Of course, sometimes a participant might have more background in a specific topic, so that they can understand the material much more quickly. Sometimes the background is a little weak, and it takes more time.

The main point is that most people find it difficult to pick up any graduate degree in their “spare time.” Participants will probably need to schedule 15 – 20 hours a week for two years to do well in the MBA program.

MBAs everywhere are a lot of work. You should look up what other MBA participants worldwide have said about workloads and realistically assess your own available time. Here are some internet search results from 30 January, 2006:

“ridiculous workload” “mba program” even got 1 hit. Here’s what this Canadian MBA student said about it:

“Luckily my trusty MBA for Dummies handbook prepared me to expect a ridiculous workload. 1st year MBAs quickly learned to live and breathe stress, work, stress, and more work.”
Reflection of a first-year MBA, MBA Society News (Windsor University), April 2004, p. 2

Of course, maybe you are the exception and won’t need to spend much time on your classes. There are a few people out there who think it’s easy. Here are the search results:

From the frequencies, you can figure the odds that you will think an MBA is easy vs. a lot of work.

While condensed format courses aren’t for everyone, research suggests that the majority of business students prefer them. The tendency to prefer one-at-a-time condensed courses is even a little stronger among working students, who have to balance classes with work and family obligations. Focused learning is an advantage in such circumstances. In the studies, students report preferring the opportunity to cover one issue in depth, without having to prioritize which class is more important and downgrade attention to some classes. They appreciate that the format forces focus on the core issues of the course, rather than trying to present everything as is sometimes the case in semester long courses.

Of course, student preferences wouldn’t be very good justification if participants learned less than in regular semester-long courses. Condensed format courses have become very common in MBA courses, and there is extensive research showing that learning is in intensive courses is either equal to or sometimes slightly better than traditional semester-long courses.

Nevertheless, there are tradeoffs. In a condensed course, there is a little less time to reflect and digest. This is rarely a problem if students already have good background and experience, so that the main issue is application rather than learning completely new concepts. The format works well for most MBA courses and has become very common worldwide. However, our experience and student feedback shows that a few topics do require some careful skills development which takes a little more time than possible in the 7-week condensed format. We have found that this has mainly been an issue in finance and business research, which is why these two courses are in the longer 14-week format and run parallel.