AACSB Data and Research Blog

Who Goes Where to Study Abroad? (Part II, Levels)

By Colin Nelson

As I mentioned in my last post, this time I will be discussing the data from AACSB’s Collaborations Survey on student exchanges reported by our member schools, in the context of the educational level of the students who choose to study abroad. As before, in this context, studying abroad refers to a year or semester spent abroad at a school other than the one at which the student is actually enrolled, rather than being an "internationally mobile student," who undertakes an entire degree program in a country other than their home.

Figure 1. Outbound Exchange Students from Reporting Schools, by Level

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Source: AACSB Collaborations Survey 2011-12.

Something I find interesting about the numbers of exchange students from the reporting schools is the extreme lopsidedness in the proportion of undergraduate vs. graduate students from schools in Northern America. Nearly 83 percent of outbound exchange students from Northern American reporting schools were undergraduates. By contrast, undergraduates constituted only about 56 percent of the total number of outbound exchange students from reporting schools in the regions with the next highest percentage, namely Asia and Oceania. Indeed, the proportion of undergraduates may be even lower in Oceania (and Europe) given the sizeable number of exchange students from those regions whose level was not reported.

Figure 2. Inbound Exchange Students Hosted at Reporting Schools, by Level 

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Source: AACSB Collaborations Survey 2011-12.

Admittedly, given the limited data from Africa and Oceania, as well as the fact that the educational level of the majority of hosted students in the latter was not reported, it's difficult to make any valid statements about those regions. Hopefully, greater participation in the Collaborations Survey in future years from those regions will enable us to do that.

Among the regions with better representation, however, once again Northern American reporting schools appear to have much more focus on exchange students at the undergraduate level than do reporting schools from anywhere else. So why is it that business students from Northern American schools appear to study abroad as undergraduates so much more frequently than as graduate students? It is true that Study Abroad/Student Exchange partnership agreements reported by Northern American schools were nearly twice as likely to include an undergraduate component as to include a master's component. However, the same was true of those reported by Asian schools. Clearly then, while the predilection for that type of agreement may have something to do with the uneven proportions we've observed, it is not the only factor.

Who Goes Where to Study Abroad? (Part I, Regions)

By Colin Nelson

In AACSB’s Collaborations Survey, we collect information on many different types of partnerships and activities that our members pursue with partner institutions around the world. An increasingly large number of schools have reported such activity over the years, and the sheer number of collaborations between them has grown by leaps and bounds. One thing that is more difficult to track, however, is the amount of use that a given partnership agreement sees.

By far the most commonly reported type of collaboration is Study Abroad/Student Exchange, which is the sole activity type of 63.7% of all reported collaborations (and one of multiple types involved in another 23.6% of all reported collaborations). Fortunately, the survey does capture the number of students a reporting school sends and receives in a given survey year, by region and by level, so we can, at least to a degree, judge the level of intensity for this type of activity:

Figure 1. Regions Visited by Students of Reporting Schools

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Source: AACSB Collaborations Survey 2011-12.

Figure 2. Home Regions of Students Hosted by Reporting Schools

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Source: AACSB Collaborations Survey 2011-12.

Clearly, schools in Europe are the most common study abroad destination for students of AACSB members from any region (save Africa, and that not by much). Likewise, by and large AACSB members host more students from Europe than anywhere else (where the home region is specified). The exceptions to this observation are Asia, where intra-regional mobility is more common, and Africa, where again the lack of more than a single reporting school likely skews the results. Please note as well that in this context, studying abroad refers to a year or semester abroad at a school other than the one at which the student is actually enrolled, rather than being an "internationally mobile student," who undertakes an entire degree program in a country other than their home.

These observations make sense for two reasons. First, the European community has long had transnational education programs in place such as Alfa, Edulink, Erasmus Mundus, and Tempus, which help to enable such interactions between schools in various world regions. As a result, European students are more likely than those of any other region to engage in study abroad.

Secondly, over half of all reported Study Abroad/Student Exchange partnerships were reported by European schools:

Table 1. Regional Percentages of Total Reported Study Abroad/Student Exchange Partnerships

Region	Percent of Total
Africa	0.3%
Asia	14.1%
Europe	51.0%
Latin America and the Caribbean	5.1%
Northern America	26.0%
Oceania	3.6%

Source: AACSB Collaborations Survey 2011-12. May not sum to 100% due to rounding.

Watch for my next post, where I'll talk about educational levels in this context.

 

Do Female-Led B-Schools Render Higher Female Enrollment?

By Hanna Drozdowski

From the AACSB Data and Research Blog team, Happy International Women’s Day to all the women who take on the many roles—deans, faculty, administrators, students—at AACSB member schools and management education worldwide! In honor of this special day, the AACSB Data and Research Blog team thought a post showing some of AACSB’s gender data would be appropriate to share with our readers.

 
Increasing female representation, especially in leadership positions, at business schools has long been a challenge that many schools have been working hard to overcome.  In the past five years, we have seen some improvement in the female representation among dean (or equivalent) positions at AACSB business schools; however, there is still room for more! Salary Survey data in the table below shows a snapshot of female representation in the dean (or equivalent) position in 2012-2013 and five years prior, in 2007-2008. Although an increase from 17% female representation to 18.5% is not very large, we are still seeing some growth in the actual number of female deans serving at AACSB member schools.

 

*AACSB Salary Survey Data

AACSB’s 2006-2007 and 2011-2012 Deans Surveys showed similar changes with female representation growth, from 17% in 2006-2007 to 18% five years later.

A past article in The Wall Street Journal, “More B-Schools Choose Women as Deans” included mention of the following:

 “having women in leadership positions can make a mark on a school's student body, a crucial asset as institutions look to close the gender gap among that population as well…The presence of women deans, just like the presence of women executives in the corporate world, ‘helps [students] to see the kind of things they can do and where they can go,’ says Linda Livingstone, dean of Pepperdine University's Graziadio School of Business and Management.”

 

Linda Livingstone’s quotation in the article made me wonder if AACSB data shows that business schools led by female deans are more inclined to attracting female students. Take a look at the enrollment data below:

*2011-2012 BSQ Data

Based on these numbers, it doesn’t seem that female deanship makes a significant difference in female enrollment. But what we can infer is that female enrollment, especially at the MBA and EMBA levels, is still rather low; but appears closer to 50/50 at the Specialized Master’s level.

Encouraging females to pursue business education and leadership positions has been an important agenda item for many schools, as well as other various educational institutions and associations. More work needs to be done in this space, but I do predict that in the next five years our data will show more equal representations among females and males.

 

Experiential Invention in the Undergraduate Curricula

By Elliot Davis

Recently, I have been assisting with preliminary research involved in the preparation for an event in April: the Redesigning Undergraduate Curriculum Symposium (RUC). Much like its predecessor, Redesigning the MBA: A Curriculum Development Symposium, RUC aims to provide its participants with an understanding of the changing undergraduate business degree landscape and the ensuing challenges and opportunities, along with implementation strategies and best practices. Throughout our initial research phase, I was struck by the inventiveness of many of the experiential programs and centers we had the opportunity to learn about.  

The experiential programs we learned about can be categorized into several distinctive buckets, including service learning, cultural immersion, business planning/new venture creation, simulation, and internship/live case. A small sampling of these programs is listed in the table below. The majority of these experiential courses aim to equip students with the skills that are increasingly becoming an important factor in the work place. Their goal: to make their graduates even more competitive in the job market, and provide opportunities to refine critical skills such as leadership, communication, thinking and reasoning skills, and global awareness.

Business Plan/ New Venture Creation	Rady School of Management's Innovation to Market James Madison University's COB 300 Babson's Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship World Bachelor in Business (WBB)
Simulation	Tepper School of Business' Management Game Haas School of Business' Leading Strategy and Implementation
Service Learning	Wharton's Management 100 Haas School of Business' Leading Strategy and Implementation
Cultural Immersion	Villanova University's Global Citizens Program Yonsei University's Creative Leadership Curriculum
Internship/Live Case	Trulaske College of Business' BA 4500 Yonsei University's Creative Leadership Curriculum

Often, undergraduate programs combine experiences in two or more categories, as is the case at the University of California, Berkley's Haas School of Business, which embraces both simulation and service learning in its undergraduate curriculum. The Center for Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH) coordinates an integrative capstone experience for seniors called Leading Strategy and Implementation. This experience has two distinctly different yet interconnected components. Students first engage in a simulation where they are teamed into an account management group. Students make a series of business decisions and submit a report on their proceedings to the faculty. Subsequently, a selection of these students take the follow-up course, where they redo the simulation but as the CEO of their team. The wrinkle? Their team is made up of five local, at-risk high school students from the Bay area. The high school students make their own decisions under the supervision of the facilitating Haas undergraduate, who acts as both boss and mentor. This experience is designed to serve the community while providing hands-on leadership and team building opportunities for the participating Haas senior.

Yonsei University's Creative Leadership Curriculum focuses on a series of six programs designed to instill students with the school's three core values: creativity, global perspective, and integrity. Through this curriculum, Yonsei delivers a blend of cultural immersion and live case to its students through uGET (undergraduate Global Experience Team-project). uGET involves significant field work with students receiving sponsorships from overseas companies. The students travel to their designated company overseas for four to eight weeks, perform research and analysis, and then complete a report and presentation for their sponsoring company.

One other particularly unique program which adopts the cultural immersion category for experiential learning, still in its infancy but with very ambitious goals, involves a partnership between three universities (The University of Southern California, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Bocconi University in Italy) where students will study on at least three different continents and subsequently earn three bachelor's degrees, one from each of the participating institutions. This program, called the World Bachelor in Business (WBB), will admit its first cohort in Fall 2013. The WBB's worldwide approach aims to broaden its students’ global awareness through immersion in three divergent cultures.

The internship experience still remains one of the fundamental ways for undergraduates to gain real-world experience before graduating into the work force. Many schools noted that their students continue to engage in internship programs to supplement their academic experience. In particular, the Trulaske College of Business' BA 4500 requires an internship experience. BA 4500 is the final component in the college's Professional Development Program (PDP), a requisite for graduation. The PDP offers seminars from top level executives, skill-building workshops, and a professional development course focused on business communication and presentation.

As evidenced, the variety in undergraduate experiential coursework abounds, fueling our desire for rewarding dialogue over the future of the undergraduate curriculum. RUC aims to explore this topic of experiential learning, including the dissection of several innovative programs, but will also encapsulate a much wider range of emerging undergraduate curricular trends, including topics such as the development of critical thinking skills, the integration of the business disciplines, and various pedagogical advancements. 

Growth in Accessibility of AACSB-Accredited Online Degrees

By Colin Nelson

Much has been said regarding management education offered online, including in the archives of our own blog. While it is certainly very much up for debate whether MOOCs will all take over instruction of basic classes, or if virtual campuses will come to replace brick-and-mortar, the one thing that no one can deny is that online education is increasing in popularity and availability:

Figure 1. Number of AACSB-Accredited Schools Reporting Fully Online Programs

Note: This table includes data from a controlled set of 480 accredited schools that responded to the AACSB Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) in all five years. Please note that each school may have more than one fully online program at each given level.

480 AACSB-accredited schools, representing 34 countries and territories worldwide, participated in each of the last five annual BSQ surveys. Figure 1 (above) shows the numbers of these schools that reported offering one or more of their degree programs, at any level, in a fully online delivery format has grown by nearly 43% over the past five years. Obviously, much of that growth comes at the MBA level, while the gains in numbers of bachelor’s and specialized master’s programs offered fully online were more modest.

One notable exception to this trend is online doctoral programs. As of this writing, no AACSB-accredited school has ever reported a fully online doctoral program on the BSQ. There are, however, AACSB-accredited schools offering blended/hybrid or distance-learning doctoral programs, so who’s to say what the future may bring?

Interestingly, the regional breakdown of which schools offer their programs in the fully online format is far from even. Although schools in Northern America made up approximately 87% of the controlled set represented here, they consistently made up more than 95% of those who reported offering fully online MBA or specialist master’s programs, and 100% of those offering fully online bachelor’s programs. By contrast, there are as yet no African or Asian respondents that report fully online programs at any level, and there were none in Oceania prior to the 2010-11 survey year.

This regional concentration is at least partly a function of greater historical participation in the BSQ in Northern America. However, since the regional concentration of schools offering fully online programs remains several percentage points higher than the regional concentration of BSQ participants in all years, participation is clearly not the only contributing factor.

Given the origins of the Internet itself in the region, for example, schools in Northern America have also had the most time and opportunity to develop the virtual infrastructure necessary to make offering fully online programs feasible. Additionally, since fully online education makes geographical location largely a moot point from the perspective of potential students, the location of the offering institution probably matters less than it would for other modes of delivery.

Now, it very well may also be that schools in regions other than Northern America are underreporting their programs, or are simply underrepresented in the BSQ thus far. The number of BSQ participants outside Northern America has grown steadily over the past five years, however, and is up 45% in 2011-12 versus 2007-08. This will be a trend worth continuing to watch, particularly as our global participation grows larger and larger.

Different Levels of Student Mobility

By Hanna Drozdowski

Students no longer feel the need to stay in their home country to pursue higher education. AACSB-accredited schools are appearing in all regions of the world, now spanning nearly 50 countries and territories, providing students with more opportunities to pursue top quality business education in almost every region of the world! My colleague, Colin Nelson, and I recently took a look into the differences in student mobility among different regions at different program levels, based on the results from the most recent Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) data. The table below shows that there are significant differences among different regions, and at different academic levels: 

What about these data are most interesting to you? I immediately noticed the significant difference among undergraduate and doctoral students outside the host country in the Northern American region. The data illustrate a similar pattern in the European region, including a majority of students at the doctoral level studying outside their country of origin. However, the opposite trend is seen in Western Asia & North Africa, where we see the highest proportion of students outside the host country at the undergraduate level, and the lowest at the doctoral level.

However, motivations for student mobility differ among regions, as well as among students. Some students choose to study abroad in pursuit for a higher quality education; others may believe the international experience will enhance their resume making them more attractive to recruiters. In the European region, the presence of longstanding intergovernmental programs such as ERASMUS and the implementation of the Bologna Process clearly make a positive impact on the ability and inclination of students to pursue higher education across national borders.

Regionally, the percentage of internationally mobile graduate students enrolled at AACSB member schools is significantly lower in Latin America & the Caribbean, in Eastern, South-Eastern, & Southern Asia, and in Western Asia & Northern Africa, vs. in Europe and in Oceania. Northern America has a notably high majority of internationally mobile students at the doctoral level, while Oceania even has a majority at the masters-specialist level. Could these trends be a reflection of where mobile students think the better quality programs are, at those respective levels? Do internationally mobile doctoral students see Northern America and Europe as the hub for business doctoral research, while students seeking a specialized master’s program see the best offerings in the countries of Oceania?

There are a number of possible reasons for these distributions that the data alone can only suggest, not prove. However, it will be interesting to see how these distributions will change, particularly in emerging economies, where the presence of AACSB membership among business schools continues to grow.

 

Business Schools Cannot Live by Tuition Alone

By Colin Nelson

Much has been written in recent months about the affordability of higher education. Data from AACSB’s annual Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) indicate that the cost of tuition has indeed risen over the past five years, though it has not done so in a uniform fashion across geographic regions:

Figure 1. Mean Undergraduate Tuition & Fees for Local Students (Single Year) at AACSB-Accredited Schools, in USD

 
Source: AACSB International Business School Questionnaire (BSQ).

The data in Figure 1 represent the mean cost for a single year of undergraduate study across a controlled set of AACSB-accredited schools in each region that reported undergraduate tuition data in all five of the most recent BSQs. Several schools in countries (or in certain select states/provinces within those countries) that legally prohibit higher education institutions from charging undergraduate tuition to domestic (or EU) nationals were removed from this analysis.

While the average tuition at accredited schools has gone up in all regions over the past five years, the rates of rise in the Americas were much faster than those of the Asia-Pacific (i.e., Asia + Oceania) and European regions. Single-year undergraduate tuition costs rose fastest in Latin America and the Caribbean, with a 30.4 percent increase over the five-year period, while those in the Asia-Pacific region rose most slowly at only 9.9 percent. The costs at European schools also rose more slowly, at 18.5 percent, while Northern American schools showed a 23.2 percent increase.

Interestingly, increases in tuition costs at the graduate level paint a very different regional picture than at the undergraduate level:

Figure 2. Mean Full-Time MBA Tuition & Fees for Local Students (Full Program) at AACSB-Accredited Schools, in USD

Source: AACSB International Business School Questionnaire (BSQ).

Again, the data for Figure 2 come from a controlled set of AACSB-accredited schools in each region that reported full-time MBA tuition data in all five of the most recent BSQs. Please note that tuition costs reported for full-time MBA programs are given for the entire program, rather than for a single year, as at the undergraduate level.

At the MBA level, mean tuition costs for accredited schools in the Americas and the Asia-Pacific regions remain relatively close over time, as compared to the mean MBA tuition cost in Europe, though they do show evidence of beginning to spread out in the latter years of the survey. The significantly higher mean MBA tuition cost in Europe makes sense, though, given that almost all of the countries where undergraduate tuition fees are banned by law are in Europe; thus it may well be that European schools seek to make this up at the graduate level. However, the rate of rise in MBA program tuition over the five years depicted here was actually the lowest in Europe, at only 21.4 percent, and only marginally higher in Latin America (at 22.8 percent), whereas at schools in both the Asia-Pacific and Northern American regions the rate was approximately 33 percent.

If it is true that the opportunity cost of higher education has risen as high as it can, tuition-wise, then business schools should expect to see more pushback from students on future tuition hikes. Where declining state support has been the norm in many countries around the world, business schools would be wise to begin looking to emphasize sources of revenue other than tuition increases to offset the loss.

Indeed, such actions may already be underway. According to our analysis of BSQ financial data from those schools that reported their sources of funds in the most recent BSQ (2011-12), on average over 11 percent of the funding reported for schools in Asia and Europe came from non-degree management education offerings, compared to less than three percent on average from schools in Northern America. This may suggest, at least in part, why the rise in tuition rates is somewhat smaller in Europe and Asia than in Northern America.

Enrollment Trends at AACSB-Accredited Schools

by Jessica Brown

We all know that enrollments are big news in higher education, but how can you be sure that the numbers you see are actually comparable? For this post, we limited our data to only AACSB- accredited schools that participated in the Business School Questionnaire in every year from 2007-2008 to 2011-2012. These 482 schools provided data in all years, so comparing across the set can give us a better view of how the larger enrollment trends actually play out in our accredited schools.

Overall, the total enrollment reported across these schools has not shown large changes, but has continued a slow growth. However, upon closer inspection, the education level distribution of those enrolled students has been changing. In 2007-2008, 78.2% of students in this data set were enrolled in undergraduate programs, but by 2011, that number had decreased to 76.2%.  Over the same time span, the undergraduate enrollment count decreased by 1.2% from 877,698 to 865,339. Doctoral enrollment has maintained at approximately 1.0% of total enrollments across this time period. 

Taking a closer look at the master’s level, enrollments at this set of schools have increased 10.3% over the past five years (All Masters - 233,505 to 257,595 enrolled). As a percentage of total enrollment, all master’s enrollments account for between 20.8 to 23.1%. The positive direction of growth as a proportion of the total enrollments may be attributed to economic reasons, increased marketing, or even students choosing to stay in an academic setting for more time.

Increasing master’s level enrollment is a good thing, but the next logical question is whether the increases appear for both master’s generalist (MBA equivalent) and master’s specialist program types. In both cases, the answer is yes. At the master’s generalist level, there was a 3.1% increase in the number of students enrolled since 2007-2008. For the specialized master’s programs, the increase was more dramatic, with the number of students enrolled increased 26.7% from 71,159 to 90,189. While the proportional increases are less dramatic, at the generalist level, enrollments were 14.5% of the overall in 2007-2008, and by 2011-2012 had increased slightly to 14.7%. At the specialized level, the change was from 6.3% to 7.9%.

 Even with a small drop in Master’s Generalist enrollments in 2011-2012, this controlled data set shows increasing enrollments at the master’s level both in numbers and as an overall percentage of total business school enrollments over this five-year time span. If this trend continues, it could have longer term effects on business school choices for faculty hiring, program offerings, and course scheduling as administrators work to bring the most opportunities to their students.

Videoconferencing Sweeps the Business School Landscape

By Elliot Davis

Considering how to make better use of today's videoconferencing technology in the classroom? You're not alone. Of the nearly 40 schools with new or renovated facilities in 2012 (as listed in our business school facilities list), more than 70 percent report that the facilities support videoconferencing technology. Videoconferencing can open the door for cross campus collaboration, virtual field trips, and guest speakers at a fraction of the cost of travel.

Examples of the variety of uses of videoconference technology abound. In 2011, the Wharton School upgraded its conference rooms by installing a 103 inch plasma display with integrated Polycom and Tandberg support (both videoconferencing providers). The Kenan-Flagler Business School also introduced a TelePresence suite last year in its Rizzo Conference Center. The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University opened its own lecture hall in early 2010 outfitted with videoconferencing technology.

The American University of Sharjah (AUS) opened two auditoriums outfitted with high definition projectors and videoconferencing functionality. According to the news release pertaining to the auditoriums at AUS, the newly installed technology has largely been successful due to its ease of use. It no longer takes a trained technician to set-up a videoconference. In fact, in 2009, Georgetown spent $82.5 million USD on a new building for their business school, equipped with videoconferencing technology stations, designed for individual student use. The usage of this technology extends beyond the formalized lecture hall setting and can be taken advantage of on a much smaller scale.

Baylor is providing its students with smaller scale videoconferencing options, similar to Georgetown, with a slight twist. Baylor uses a mobilized cart unit equipped with Cisco Telepresence C20 and laptop inputs, to allow students to effectively establish a videoconference anywhere on campus with the appropriate outlets. Also at Baylor, a boardroom environment is simulated in their Financial Markets Center using a videoconferencing suite. According to Baylor, the technology in the center accounted for nearly half of the $900,000 USD spent to create the facility. The center serves multiple purposes for students, as it offers a setting ideal for financial research (with its dedicated stock ticker board), videoconferencing, and realistic board meeting simulations.

INSEAD is using videoconferencing to help students land jobs. According to a 2010 post by Sandra Schwarzer, Director of Career Services, on INSEAD's MBA Experience blog, videoconferencing accounts for a healthy percentage of on campus interviewing. INSEAD's Career Services staff organize roughly 5,000 interviews in a given year, and approximately 800 of the first round interviews are conducted through videoconference. Schwarzer notes that students on other campuses or those on exchange at other universities can also participate, thanks to the videoconferencing technology.

Videoconferencing can be used in a variety of different ways, as evidenced by the preceding examples. Some universities are morphing large auditoriums into functional videoconferencing centers, while others are shrinking its scale to the individual, and highly mobile, level. As new technologies continue to emerge and videoconferencing becomes more intuitive and advanced, it will be interesting to track how videoconferencing is further incorporated into the evolving business school landscape.

Online; Distance; Hybrid; MOOC – What do They All Mean?

By Hanna Drozdowski

New, less “traditional” modes of delivery in higher education, particularly online, have been attracting quite a bit of attention lately. Although some may argue that this is just another fad in higher education that the media has latched onto, I personally would have to support Stanford University’s President, John Hennessy’s, stance that  online delivery will play a big part in the next “tsunami” in higher education. 

Research and Knowledge Services staff have noticed  an increase in inquires related to online learning, e.g., questions on which online programs are AACSB-accredited; are there any accredited online doctoral programs; or does AACSB data support  the trends discussed in the media? Joe Mondello’s previous blog post shows that in fact online delivery has definitely increased in the last decade within our membership, a trend that will most likely continue. Furthermore, a recent survey on online education published by The Learning House, Inc and Aslanian Market Research, titled, “Online College Students 2012,” identifies business administration and management to be the most popular area of study for both undergraduate and graduate level online programs.

Dean Jim Dean of UNC-Kenan Flagler recently shared with AACSB his experiences and insights with online learning and the MBA@UNC program; and more and more top business schools are starting to offer MBA programs online, such as Graziado School of Business and Management, and many others as listed on the BestBizSchools website. On top of that, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have been generating a lot of buzz causing many to speculate how this phenomenon can revolutionize higher learning (see below for additional reading on MOOCs).

With the proliferation of these different terms and labels for online and non-traditional delivery, I think it is important to gain better understanding of what each of these mean and how they differ from one another. From my observations, delivery of higher education seems to fall into one of the following four general methods:

1. Face-to-face
2. Online
3. Hybrid (combination of online and face-to-face)
4. Broadcast

However, AACSB’s Business School Questionnaire (BSQ) provides survey respondents with a more detailed set of options to choose from, specifically:

• Integrated (incorporates both undergraduate and graduate coursework in a program, resulting in the issuance of a master’s level graduate degree)
• Full-time
• Part-time
• Evenings and Weekends
• Distance Education 
  • A program that can be “completed in full by students enrolled only in courses taught via distance education, including online, defined as any learning system where teaching behaviors are separated from learning behaviors. The learner works alone or in a group, guided by study material arranged by the instructor in a location apart from the students.” Can include programs in which instruction is delivered via distance education, but testing occurs in a face-to-face platform.
• Online
  • A program that can be “completed in full by students enrolled only in courses taught online. Include programs in which some limited residency is required for orientation or testing.” (Programs that are online automatically fulfill the “distance education” option as well)
• Off-Campus
  • A program that can be “completed in full by students enrolled only in courses taught at locations other than the main business school campus. This includes custom degree programs for corporations that are delivered at their facilities.”
• Partner
• A program that “involves a formal partnership with another unit on campus, institution or organization to deliver courses required to earn the degree.” (Does not include bachelor's degree programs, where general education coursework is normally provided outside of the business program.)

Within the “less-traditional realm” of education delivery, a level of diversity and certain exceptions exist, for instance all online programs are considered to be distance education, but not all distance education programs are considered to be online. For many of the online programs being offered, schools will usually categorize the programs as being either synchronous or asynchronous. In a synchronous online class, the students and the teacher or instructor are online at the same time, and lectures or discussions occur at a specific time and day. On the other hand, in an asynchronous class, students receive lectures, class materials, assignments, etc. ahead of time and must either contribute to the class in a specific timeframe, or whenever they choose.

To some of you this may already be common knowledge, and you already have considerable experience with online learning. Yet, even with the abundance of information arising on this topic, some confusion remains as to what constitutes an online degree. The Dean of Kenan-Flagler Business School says during the most recent ENL broadcast, “We’re really in the very front end of all of this…years from now we will look back on what we are doing now and think of it as very basic.” If you have participated in, taught, or launched an online-type program at your institution, I welcome you to leave a comment!

 Additional Resources on MOOCs:

• “What is a MOOC?” David Cormier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eW3gMGqcZQc&feature=youtu.be
• “What It’s Like to Teach a MOOC (and What the Heck is a MOOC?)” The Atlantic: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-its-like-to-teach-a-mooc-and-what-the-hecks-a-mooc/260000/
• “Universities Reshaping Education on the Web” The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortium-of-colleges-takes-online-education-to-new-level.html?pagewanted=all
• “Online Higher Education for the Masses” University World News: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20120525135513146