Anatomy Of An MBA Makeover: UConn’s Flex & OMBA Programs

The success of any MBA program makeover is in how quickly the new program establishes itself. By this measure, the restructuring at the University of Connecticut School of Business has been fantastically — perhaps even unprecedentedly — successful.

UConn shuttered its traditional two-year MBA in 2021 and redirected its resources into two 42-credit programs: a new 100% Online MBA and a part-time Flex MBA, the latter a hybrid program available in Hartford, Stamford, and online.

The results of this dramatic redesign have been amazing. In 2024, UConn matriculated over 100 OMBA students, marking a 14% increase from the previous fall. The Flex program, meanwhile, has experienced 34% growth since 2023. In total, UConn now has 727 total active MBA students — 226 online and 501 in the Flex — compared to fewer than 100 in its last year of the full-time MBA.

‘A BIG CHALLENGE — OR AN OPPORTUNITY’

Together the UConn OMBA and Flex MBA have experienced 40% growth in students from the Northeast in one year, making the tandem among the largest public-school programs in New England.

“A big part of it is just flexibility,” Vishal Narayan, academic co-director of MBA programs, tells Poets&Quants in discussing the reasoning behind UConn’s decision to overhaul its MBA offerings. The school also offers an Executive MBA.

“Gone are the days when we can say, well, you take four courses in the fall, four courses in the spring and two courses over summer. And so students want to be able to take a couple of courses in one semester, maybe four courses the next semester, and then if they are applying for say a digital marketing position, they want to take electives around that position earlier. So they want a lot of flexibility in terms of what courses to take at what point in time.

“And so a big challenge — or an opportunity — for us is, how can we make the program a lot more flexible? And so now we have these two or three different ways that students can do MBAs. Prospective students have asked me and I say if you’re looking at a top-40 program by U.S. News and Fortune, we’re the most flexible program that you’ll find.”

SPILLING THE BORDERS OF CONNECTICUT

Students in both the OMBA and Flex programs at UConn have the flexibility to complete their degree at their own pace, within two years if desired but on a longer trajectory if needed. Both programs are customizable, flexible, affordable, taught by top faculty, and feature in-demand courses on current business trends — from emotional intelligence to artificial intelligence.

For students in the Flex program, Stamford offers convenient access to New York City, ideal for students seeking opportunities in one of the world’s largest business hubs, while those in Hartford will study in Connecticut’s business center, rich with networking opportunities and connections with key industries in the state. “If you still care about being in the classroom, in-person instruction, we have two campuses which are large cities in Connecticut,” Narayan, a marketing professor at UConn, says. “This is our traditional infrastructure, and so we offer classes at all times in these campuses.

“On the other end, there’s the online cohort where if you want that cohort experience, you can be a part of four, eight or 60-odd — or maybe larger — cohort of students. You’ll get to know each other really well, you can network with them and so you build those bonds.

“And then in the middle there’s a lot of students who want a little bit of both. They want the online experience, but they also want to be able to sometimes take a couple of classes in person. And so they want to be able to customize in ways that they’d like. And so we also have this option where no matter which program you join, we give you the option of taking both in-person and online classes for the most part.”

OMBA students currently hail from multiple states outside Connecticut, from Florida to Texas to California, as well as from Canada, Ghana, Hong Kong, Jamaica, Korea, Pakistan, Nigeria, India, and Italy — a key part of the school’s growth strategy in launching the redesign, says Redona Methasani, academic co-director of MBA programs.

“We are hoping to reach outside of the state of Connecticut, so I think that growth is important to us and we’ve kind of factored that into the redesign,” she says. “Our courses are asynchronous and synchronous. And for the synchronous portion of our courses, we’ve sort of done it in a flipped classroom experience, where students have opportunities to read the material that they need to read, and then they’re showing up for just an hour-and-a-half lesson with a faculty member to a flipped classroom thing rather than ‘Here are the concepts.’ They’re coming in ready to engage and fully immerse themselves in the material rather than get some background knowledge first. And so that I think works for these working professionals, especially in different time zones, too.”

A PROGRAM DETERMINED TO BE ON THE CUTTING EDGE

UConn’s OMBA students enjoy a unique level of choice: They can be part of a cohort and have a collaborative experience, or they can study independently for maximum flexibility. The program is “fully customizable,” Methasani says. “We have nine core courses and five electives, and so our students can choose anything they want, everything from general business electives to nine concentrations that we offer.”

In both programs, says Methasani, a management and entrepreneurship professor at UConn, the emphasis has been, and will continue to be, on remaining cutting-edge — in content as well as format. Additionally, both are taught by top-tier faculty who are experts in their fields, and both are affordable: 42 credits at around $1,100 per credit.

“A big initiative within our core structure is making sure that we’re offering up-to-date and current courses, and so we launched what we call MBA Now courses,” Methasani says. “They’re up-to-date, cutting-edge courses that are talking about what’s going on today in the business world — everything from AI and its impact on managers to emotional intelligence, because we not only need to focus on the artificial, but we need the emotional side of things too, to sustainability and all of that. So a key focus here has been on making sure that our courses are interesting and relevant and timely.”

Outcomes have not been overlooked. The makeover of UConn’s MBA program included a redesigned career team that does everything from support students through the application process to help them negotiate terms once they’ve secured jobs. The Office of Graduate Career & Professional Development provides access to industry-specific career coaches who specialize in such areas as Technology & Data, Healthcare & Insurance, Marketing & Communications, Nonprofit, Government & Social Impact, Management, Consulting & Entrepreneurship, and Finance & Real Estate. Graduates are employed by leading companies across diverse industries: from Amazon to Bank of America, CitiBank, Collins Aerospace, CVS, Deloitte, KPMG, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Pratt and Whitney, Microsoft, Schneider Electric, The Hartford, Travelers Insurance, and more.

‘GROWING FASTER THAN THE MARKET’

The redesign of its flagship MBA was a major event for the University of Connecticut School of Business, Vishal Narayan says. It was prompted by a paradigm shift sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We’ve historically had locational advantages,” he says. “As a school, if someone in Connecticut wants to do an MBA, they will almost surely think of UConn. That world has sort of shifted where, especially after Covid where students can get an online MBA from anywhere, they don’t need to reside inside the state of Connecticut. And so that was one area that we wanted to focus on and say, ‘Hey, those traditional sort of advantages we had just in terms of the physical infrastructure is probably not the most important thing going forward and especially during Covid.’

“The other thing that we did was we did a lot of benchmarking: We talked to a lot of employers and a lot of alums and students, and so we heard some themes. One is time to completion is increasingly important. We had this massive MBA, which students would take three years, six years sometimes, to complete. And that was not desirable — for either them or for their employers. And so we wanted to come up with ways to sort of compress that without compromising on the rigor of the program.

“Almost all our students have full-time jobs, so it’s not as though all of them are seeking jobs. They want to do better where they’re at currently, so they want to rise within the organizations and maybe within the industry. So that’s a big difference from some of the large full-time MBA programs. And that sure puts pressure on us as teachers where you have to teach stuff that they can use in their jobs the next week. It’s not as if they’ll use it some of their time or they’re preparing for a job interview. It’s about actual skill acquisition. And if it doesn’t work — they’ll tell you — we can’t use it in our jobs.”

Gratifyingly for Narayan and Methasani and the team behind the redesign, UConn is seeing growth in both its programs, rather than one at the cost of the other.

“A lot of people seem to think online will grow faster and the in-person programs across the country will probably shrink,” Narayan says. “We’re seeing growth in both programs. Ideally we’d want to see both grow and so that’s what we’re seeing, so it’s not as though the whole world is moving online.

“Now we have had some data come in and so all indications are positive. Student satisfaction is high. All our programs are growing. We think they’re growing faster than our competitors. We think that we’re growing faster than the market.”

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