A revised evening MBA program offering greater flexibility and courses will be available to students at the Fisher College of Business beginning summer quarter.
The part-time MBA was developed based on suggestions from students in the evening track, constituent groups and faculty members, said Michelle Jacobson, director of graduate business programs.
The purpose of the revisions was to enhance the part-time curriculum so it is parallel to the full-time program, Jacobson said. The college wanted to make sure the curriculum for evening students was similar to those of top universities throughout the country.
“We wanted to make sure that it was comparable to other nationally-ranked MBA programs,” Jacobson said.
Major changes in the revised program include a summer start date and a two-to four-year increase in the length of time given to complete the degree and elimination of prerequisite courses.
Under the current program, part-time students begin in the fall and must have all course work completed within two years after completing prerequisites. If circumstances cause students to get off track from the course sequence, they must take a year off and start again the following year.
The revised program will allow students up to four years to complete the degree, and more course options will allow them to take time off.
Prerequisite courses have been eliminated so part-time students would be able to immediately begin taking graduate level course work and avoid taking the courses that, depending on the students background, could take a year to complete. Students will still have the option to take them as electives, Jacobson said.
The prerequisites were originally intended to ensure that students who had not taken undergraduate business courses would be prepared for the graduate level course work in the MBA program.
Since the student profiles for both part-time and full-time MBA programs are similar, the college has decided to use the same factors that determine full-time admission to evaluate part-time students’ ability to complete graduate level course work, such as GMAT scores, undergraduate grade point average and work experience, Jacobson said.
The amount of credits needed to complete the part-time MBA has increased to 76, which includes 40 hours of required core courses and 36 hours of electives. The enrollment has increased to 160 students to account for the increase in courses.
Jacobson believes the part-time program will provide more options for students who cannot pursue an MBA full time.
“The part-time program will be more flexible, certainly, within a structured environment by offering more choices to the evening MBA student,” Jacobson said.
