Why Pay When You Can Get The MBA For Free?

ILLINOIS BELIVES THERE ARE MANY ‘STUDENT LEARNER’ SEGMENTS

Again, students only pay if they want a certificate for completing a course (at a cost of $79 that is evenly split between Illinois and Coursera) or a sequence of courses for college credit ($1,000 per course or $3,000 for the specialization) or the actual MBA degree (which will end up costing roughly $20,000).

“At a broad level,” says Echambadi, “we believe that there are many student learner segments in the market. Among other things, there are the (a) ‘credit/credential seekers’ who value content but also require the credit/degree for pragmatic reasons of signaling to the marketplace, (b) there are the ‘need the knowledge but do not need external validation’ segment, and (c) ‘need the competencies but do not need a degree’ segment.

“So we distinguished between ‘basic’ content and ‘augmented’ content. Basic content provides you with all of the information but augmented content is much more than information. It is engaging content because a student engages with the subject matter expert and fellow students in deeply meaningful ways. Basic content is free on the Coursera platform but augmented content is provided at an affordable price on our platform. And we let students self-select what they want. We welcome this. This is a novel aspect of our model.”

‘WE DO NOT NEED TO MONETIZE EVERY ASPECT OF OUR CONTENT’

Whether would-be students will find that “augmented” model worth twenty grand is another matter. In any case, Echambadi doesn’t seem all that concerned about it. “At the end, we decided that we do not need to monetize every aspect of our content,” he tells Poets&Quants. “There are advantages to the provision of free content. The MOOC approach is excellent for extending our brand and bringing value back to campus and to alumni.

“Coursera connects us, overnight, with hundreds of thousands–perhaps millions–of highly talented individuals that it is to our great benefit to be connected to. All of this global access is considered by many of our top faculty to be a boon to their research. They are already getting ideas and access that they wouldn’t otherwise have. This helps us retain top faculty, and it also makes them more influential in the business world, which benefits alumni. Most importantly, this model truly aligns with our land grant mission enables us the opportunity to expand access to education, which is a University of Illinois core value.”

Those who take an online MBA will largely do so based on flexibility and cost. After all, you can do the work on an airplane, from a hotel room, or your den. You don’t have to quit your job, and you don’t have to completely disappear from family and friends. That is a wonderful alternative to not getting one of the most valuable degrees on the planet.

But an online MBA is not and can never completely substitute for the MBA experience. The latter offers meaningful and life-changing engagement with classmates who will become life-long friends. The latter provides numerous leadership experiences through on-campus clubs and organizations that will be invaluable to your professional development. And the latter obviously sets you up for both internship and job opportunities that will rarely, if ever, be available to online students. It also firmly places you into an alumni network that can help you get a job, a customer, an investor, or a partner.

And there is, after all, the issue of having the discipline to take an entire MBA curriculum for free. When you have skin in the game, the anecdotal evidence and research shows, you tend to stick with it. When you don’t, you often drop out. That’s why the completion rate on free MOOC courses is under 5%, but significantly rises when learners agree to pay the $49 or more for a certificate that verifies they have taken the course. Ultimately, Illinois may be counting on the fact that relatively few learners will have the discipline to take advantage of what they can literally get for nothing.

DON’T MISS: BREAKTHROUGH: A TOP 50 MBA FOR $20,000 or THE MOOC REVOLUTION: HOW TO EARN THE EQUIVALENT OF AN ELITE MBA FOR FREE

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