The Future Of The MBA Is Happening Right Now At Indiana Kelley

Kelley On Campus offers an intensive seven-day introduction to the Kelley Direct program, held in person at Indiana University. The introductory week, along with its sequel at the end of the program, are sessions for which faculty create case studies where student teams present live before executive protagonists.

Kelley Direct Online was not only Poets&Quants‘ No. 1 OMBA program in 2021, it was also our Program of the Year that year out of all B-school programs. It continues to be a top-five program according to both P&Q and U.S. News, ranking first in a three-way tie in the latter’s 2022 list, and the reason is simple: innovation.

All Kelley Direct courses feature live class sessions on a weekly basis taught by professors who teach in the school’s in-residence programs, something not every online MBA program — even the elite ones — can boast. Engagement is high, as Kelley’s faculty employ the latest methods to increase and maintain it (more on that below), and because most of the 30 or so students in each class have met before and know each other through attending the required in-person experience dubbed Kelley On Campus on the Bloomington, Indiana, campus, at the start of the program. The introductory week, along with its sequel at the end of the program, are sessions for which faculty create case studies where student teams present live before executive protagonists.

Importantly from the student perspective, Kelley On Campus is also an opportunity to meet, bond, and network with classmates, professors, and potential employers. “Everything was so meticulously planned out where we could all network,” Jackie Pham says. “On campus, they have a very good structure where you can join different groups. I’ve been able to be a part of the Kelley Direct Leadership program, the Kelley Finance and Consulting clubs. And they just have outstanding network opportunities.”

Sandwiched between in-person experiences, the program itself has a rigorous core that includes a signature integrated core curriculum experience; but its biggest differentiator from peer programs may be its expansive set of elective offerings. Beginning in 2019, Kelley Direct grew to 24 elective credit hours from a dozen, so that students now choose fully half the program. This allows them to dive deep into any one of seven majors, from business analytics and digital technology management to finance and marketing, each of which average 10 elective courses. Kelley Direct also boasts more immersive opportunities than most online MBAs, from international experiential projects to client work with Fortune 500 companies.

Altogether, it’s an academically rigorous, well-rounded MBA experience unlike any other — and one that admits should expect to work hard to graduate from.

“We have to be really clear with our students: Online MBA does not mean easier, full-time MBA does not mean more engaging,” Sarah Wanger says. “You have to come into it knowing this is going to be a really intense experience. You’re working full-time and you’re going to school — this is going to be difficult.”

INSIDE THE $10 MILLION JELLISON STUDIOS

Sarah Wanger: “We want them to have the best experience possible, to learn a lot about a lot of different things and come out a really well-rounded MBA.”

Sarah Wanger became Kelley Direct’s director of admission in May 2019, just before the major curricular overhaul in the fall of that year. Then, early in 2020, the school announced a $16 million gift from the Jellison family that would transform the Kelley Direct program’s capacity for course delivery, though it was already an industry leader in that regard. Most of the gift, $10 million, went toward creating state-of-the-art studios and “virtual classrooms,” including the Brian D. Jellison Studio Classroom, shared between students in the Kelley Direct, MS degree, and Kelley Executive Education programs.

The Jellison Classroom is ideal for setting up or for creating, says Greg Fisher, the Larry and Barbara Sharpf professor and an associate professor of entrepreneurship. “In the Kelley program we essentially deliver two types of material, synchronous class sessions, where you are engaging directly with the instructor, and asynchronous material, which is creating. And the Jellison Studios just allow us to create just world-class asynchronous material.”

Fisher and other instructors create new course content through Jellison, four main studios and one self-serve studio that are overseen by a team led by Sarah Smith-Robbins, senior director of emerging technologies, with help from Zach Watt, learning media and video coordinator. Essential to the high quality of the program, Wanger says, is the close collaboration between the production professionals and the faculty. The video team are “amazing at editing down all of these hours and hours of footage to fit what the faculty really need these videos to home in on,” she says. “So there’s lots of back and forth between whoever is the faculty for each individual case. We have different faculty for different cases and the video team, and we typically have two working on each case. So we’ll have both the video team folks go up to do the actual filming of the footage along with one or two faculty members. And so we’ll have a team of either three or four who go to the client, and then post-production is at least two folks who are working on editing at any given time.”

‘WE WANT THEM TO HAVE THE BEST EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE’

A natural evolution in addressing student and industry wants and needs, online MBAs represent the future of the degree in many ways, which is why so many schools, from the top tier down, are launching digital programming or exploring it. Coronavirus accelerated the shift. But B-schools that do not yet have a major online presence are well behind Indiana’s Kelley Direct, which launched in 1999 and which already has thousands of alumni — which is why so many new programs can be seen emulating the work being done in Bloomington: the highest-quality production values, the deep faculty involvement, and, especially, the customizability of the program.

Students want flexibility, and the client gets what the client wants. Sarah Wanger points to the array of majors available in Kelley Direct as an important element of its broad appeal — and adds that the program encourages students rethinking their goals and pivoting to new pathways, of which plenty are on offer.

“When we did the 50% elective coursework, we wanted to make sure that folks had an opportunity to major,” she says. “And funny enough, folks do come into this MBA thinking, ‘I’m pretty sure I’m going to go this route: I’m in finance, I’ll get my major in finance.’ And then they take some marketing courses and they take those operations courses and then they get all excited about business analytics and they end up just dabbling and doing their electives in all sorts of areas.

“And we encourage that. That’s exactly what we are hoping for. So whether or not someone does a major, I think it’s interesting, the marketplace comes into a degree thinking they want something, that ‘I’m going to want to go down this route and go down that direction.’ But the nice thing about the program is that we’re not having them make decisions. We encourage them not to make decisions till they’re at least a year in because we know they’re going to change their mind eight times.

“And we have the flexibility that they can do that and that they can ultimately leave with no major declared and they will just have taken electives in all sorts of different areas, and that is totally fine, too. So it’s funny, to design something with a lot of customization and major options — it’s sexy at the front end, but in the back end what matters is the knowledge that they come up with. It doesn’t matter if they choose a major, it doesn’t matter if they took all of their electives in finance. Really, we want them to have the best experience possible, to learn a lot about a lot of different things and come out a really well-rounded MBA.”

Kelley Direct hosts their online students at two in-person experiences over the course of the program.

‘I FEEL LIKE I’VE DEVELOPED MY NETWORK IN A DIFFERENT WAY’

Cost and Covid concerns may have sparked Jackie Pham’s initial interest in an online MBA, but he was convinced that he’d made the right decision to join Kelley Direct by the flexibility it offered him to make a pivot from finance to consulting — and, interestingly enough, by the networking potential.

Networking, or lack thereof, is the biggest concern for online MBA candidates. How can you meet the “right people” when your class is just a bunch of faces on a screen? At Kelley Direct, few have that problem once they’ve visited campus, Pham says.

“I’ve been extremely impressed with the Kelley Direct MBA so far,” he says. “I’ll be honest with you, my expectations were a lot lower, because I knew what I was getting myself into in an online program. But there’s just so many opportunities to network in the program that it is just extremely impressive. The Kelley On Campus experience was absolutely marvelous.

“The opportunities are there, it’s up to you whether you take advantage of it or not.”

Pham, who has targeted December 2023 to graduate, calls Kelley Connect “the biggest differentiator” with other online MBA programs.

“From 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. we would do case studies, we would work, have lunch together. And during lunch they had networking events. And then after that we would all go out to bars for dinner.

“One of the things is that these online programs, sometimes you don’t get that network. And I definitely see it. I think the biggest differentiator is the Kelley On Campus. I’ve met so many friends. I’ve added over a hundred LinkedIn connections. I’m definitely going to take advantage of all the networking opportunities that Kelley has.

“I feel like I’ve developed my network in a different way. I’ve kind of cast my net far and wide with a bunch of different industries rather than just finance. And honestly, it’s kind of soothing — because you see and hear so many interesting stories. And it gives you an outlook outside of your personal bubble. You can understand what other people do in other careers, and maybe it might spark some kind of interest.”

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