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Distance learning MBA programs have opened some of the country’s top business schools to graduate students in unlikely places.
U.S. Army Capt. Evan Bailey works long hours at the highest military command in Afghanistan and then logs on at night for MBA classes at Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz., nearly 8,000 miles away.
“I have to sacrifice certain things, mainly sleep,” Bailey writes in an e-mail from the Joint Task Force headquarters in Bagram, Afghanistan. “After working 12 to 15 hours immersed in military operations, a couple of hours of coursework becomes my release.”
Bailey, 26, has worked hard to progress quickly in the Army since he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2004. This means he moves frequently around the world, and traditional MBA programs do not fit his schedule.
That’s why he opted for the Global MBA On-Demand program at Thunderbird.
“Thunderbird was hands down my first choice,” he writes. “Finding a distance learning MBA that is accredited in the top international rankings, has a focus on international business and is respected for the quality of its graduates is not all that easy. But once I found Thunderbird, the choice was settled.”
He says face-to-face instruction offers certain advantages that are difficult to simulate online, but the Thunderbird program comes close.
“The connection between me and my classmates is astonishing, considering we only spend a couple of weeks together throughout the entire program,” he writes. “Common goals and the desire to take on the world is a great basis for friendships that will last for years to come.”
Thunderbird executive Kip Harrell, who became president of the global MBA Career Services Council on June 26, says employers looking for MBA talent have turned to distance learning programs to find quality students such as Bailey.
“Employers are battling for talent like never before,” he says. “Despite the downturn in the financial services sector, the requests for new MBAs keeps growing year by year. It’s growing so fast that employers are looking at some of the nontraditional programs for their talent.”
The Economist Intelligence Unit backs up this assessment.
“The idea that distance learning programs are in some way the ‘poor relation’ of the MBA, particularly compared with full-time programs, is no longer tenable,” according to an EIU report released earlier this year. “Most distance learning programs have now achieved equal standing with, and have the same academic rigor as, other delivery methods.”
Brandon Frazee saw this rigor as a Thunderbird On-Demand student in Iraq, where he worked as a civilian contractor.
Frazee, 35, says desert windstorms often interfered with the satellite Internet connection in Hit, where he helped supervise construction of a $25 million Iraqi army base with Ohio-based TolTest.
Frazee says the limited Internet access created heavy traffic when the signal reached his base about 90 miles west of Baghdad, so he had to be resourceful. This usually meant waking up at 3 a.m. to connect with his Thunderbird professors.
Frazee says he intended to enroll in Thunderbird’s full-time MBA program before TolTest offered him the job in Iraq. He says the online option allowed him to take the job and still earn a Thunderbird degree.
“I couldn’t have done it any other way,” he says.
Frazee finished his Iraq project in November 2007 and now works as a land development and construction consultant in Scottsdale, Ariz. He is scheduled to finish his distance learning program in May 2009.
Frazee first served in Iraq as a field artillery officer with the U.S. Marine Corps. He completed a six-month tour in 2004 as an adviser to an Iraqi infantry battalion and then returned as a reservist from August 2005 to April 2006.
Frazee served at military bases in Japan and all over the United States before leaving active duty as a major. He says he developed a global mindset in the military that made Thunderbird a good fit for him.
“The world’s getting nothing but smaller and flatter,” he says.
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