How Online MBAs Rate The Degree's Impact On Their Careers

How helpful is an online MBA degree to your career?

That’s an important question many prospective students ask as they begin to explore the online MBA market. While it is certainly possible to leverage an online MBA into an entirely new career path, it’s more likely that an online graduate experience will lead to different career outcomes. After all, online MBA students are already employed. They haven’t quit their jobs to pursue a full-time, residential MBA program.

So the most likely rewards of an online MBA will come in more upward job mobility, increased responsibility at work, promotions, and pay raises. And yes, if you do want to leave your company, it would make you a more desirable candidate for future jobs. Earning an online MBA can accelerate your career or even allow you to take your career in an entirely new direction.

SURVEYING ONLINE MBA GRADUATE ON THE IMPACT THEIR ONLINE EDUCATION HAS HAD ON THEIR CAREERS SO FAR

To find out which schools fulfill the expectations of their online MBA students, we surveyed 5,880 alums and received responses from 1,143 graduates for a solid response rate of 19.4% this year.

Business schools are especially adept at helping students advance their career goals through career development staff that gather job openings and putting them before graduates, offering savvy advice on everything from interviewing to resume prep, and one-on-one coaching and mentoring. That’s why we attempt to measure the effectiveness of each school’s career management center, the usefulness of the alumni network in supporting graduates and whether a graduate received either a promotion or a pay raise as a direct result of earning the MBA.

Our questions to graduates really get at the heart of the value of an online MBA degree. While many of the questions are quite specific, we also open the door to allow alums to tell us if the programs from which they graduated allowed them to achieve their primary and secondary goals of getting the degree. These questions recognize that students pursue an online MBA education for different reasons.

THE QUESTIONS AND THE ANSWERS TO OUR ONLINE MBA SURVEY BY SCHOOL

Here are the core career outcome questions we asked of graduates and how they answered: