A Wall Street Journal reporter denigrates Part Time MBAs in 2005. I disagree. (Reproduced from 2011.)
The Key Difference
I served as a business school teaching assistant across part time and full time programs for 4 years, and I know of one major difference between the two programs: the federal government prohibits a much larger proportion of the FT cohort from working full time because they've entered the country on F-1 visas. Since foreign students are prohibited from FT work, and required to take a FT courseload, they naturally cluster in the FT program.
Whether that's desirable depends on what you want out of the MBA program. If you want to develop an international business, consider going FT. If you want to network with a larger proportion of students already midstream in their careers, with an overall stronger command of English, consider going PT.
Now let's consider the reporter's arguments:
John Lanning, 3M Recruiter
"Full-time students have made earning the M.B.A. their job and are immersed 12 to 16 hours a day. Such full immersion provides significant growth and development."
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Lanning has it backwards. First, PT and FT programs require similar amounts of credit hours (based on accreditation standards). The difference is that FT students generally get Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off, whereas PT students suffer through extremely long weekdays doing actual work at an actual workplace, then spend weeknights and the weekend in class or on group projects. Therefore, PT students are much more immersed than FT students during the academic year (and FT students can only hope to match their intensity by seeking out internships or working on their own projects).
Furthermore, any FT student who studies 12 to 16 hours a day achieves nothing besides being remarkably inefficient.
Lori Massad, Marakon Associates and Stern
"[I prefer hiring FT graduates because they work in teams.]"
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Massad's comment in the article is as provincial as it is longwinded. The underlying assumption (from her teaching at Stern) is that PT students do not get teamwork experience. Is her assumption true? Perhaps only at Stern.
The "accelerated" version of my local university’s PT program is taught in the same cohort and group project fashion as the full time program. Her comment has no relation to reality here.
Executive MBAs
"In most corporate recruiters' hierarchy, the full-time degree would be on top, followed by the executive M.B.A., then the part-time program."
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"EMBA" programs cost an additional $20,000 and feature catered meals and reserved study rooms on the top floor of the business school. I preferred the Korean place across the street.
One “good” thing about EMBA programs is that they tend to age discriminate. So if you are an older student preferring a similar skew to your MBA network, these programs may be more appropriate.
Internet Learning
"In the Journal survey, recruiters reserved their most savage comments for increasingly popular online M.B.A. degrees [...] They also complain that there's too little personal contact to develop critical communication and teamwork skills."
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No. Many teams span the globe. Working with one guy in Beijing, another in LA, and a third in Toronto, with the instructor in DC, that’s a marketable experience. Despite what "they" think, it is possible to motivate, coordinate, and lead across time and space, and the value of those skills will only increase over time. Internet offerings are a strength of the PT program, not a weakness.
