As one of the earlier schools to enter the online MBA market, the Naveen Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas boasts an impressive catalog of high-quality online courses.
One MBA, Two Options
At Jindal, there isn’t a distinction between the online MBA and the traditional, on-campus MBA.
“We do not believe that a student should be tied to an online or an on-campus program,” Monica Powell, senior associate dean and dean of graduate programs at the UT Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management, says. “That is why we have one MBA program, and any of our students can take any course online or on campus.”
The Jindal MBA curriculum includes nearly 100 online courses with 15 available MBA concentrations available.
Jindal MBA students are encouraged to move at their own pace through the curriculum. Additionally, Jindal faculty teach both online and on-campus courses, giving students the same level of access.
In general, the typical OMBA student completes the 53 credit-hour program in four years.
And while the Jindal MBA curriculum is already plenty robust, the school is constantly trying to improve its online learning experience.
“We are making every effort to benchmark the best online programs in the world to ensure that what we deliver in the classroom exceeds the expectations of our students and our employers,” Powell says. “We are currently upgrading our online courses to include more videos and more student involvement and interaction.”
A Single Mom Makes It Work With Online Classes
Farah Waheed, who received her MBA from UT Dallas in the spring of 2017, considers the school her “second home.” It’s where she earned her bachelor’s degree in accounting information management, her master’s in accounting, and her MBA with a focus on organizational behavior. “I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend this great school,” she tells P&Q.
Waheed got a fast-track master’s in 2011 right after finishing undergrad, but even then “I felt like I wasn’t done with school, so I enrolled myself in the MBA program.” Working for an accounting firm at the time, things went well with the degree initially, she says, until her career began to interfere with her studies. Plus, she was single mom — the main reason she chose to take online classes despite living in Dallas. “As I moved up into my career as an internal auditor, it was hard to keep up with more than one course per semester,” she says. “That said, I had to still manage that one course and its requirements of completion, which was a struggle, being a single mom and all.”
Waheed needed five years to complete her degree, but “in the end it all worked out.” She now works as an internal auditor for an aerospace and defense company, and she says the MBA has made a big impact on her life. “It has certainly made a difference having higher education,” she says. “It shows employers that you are a committed person and you have worked hard to achieve your goals.
“I would certainly recommend this to others and I hope my son one day attends UT Dallas as well. I am not a student anymore but you never know, I may come back for another degree in the future.
Location Benefits
The Jindal School of Management is located in Dallas, Texas, the sixth-largest city in the US.
The city is home to 23 Fortune 500 and 43 Fortune 1000 companies. Dallas also placed fifth in a 2019 Milken Institute report on best performing cities in the US in terms of job growth, wage and salary growth, and high-tech GDP growth and other factors.
With major high-performing DFW employers in energy, finance, healthcare, high-tech industry, logistics, professional services, telecommunications in the region, Jindal OMBAs have access to a plethora of employment opportunities.
Additionally, OMBAs at Jindal have access to the same career resources, such as career workshops and career coaching, as on-campus students
Some popular employers for Jindal OMBAs include AT&T, Ericsson, Fidelity, IBM, JP Morgan Chase, PepsiCo, Raytheon, 7-Eleven and Texas Instruments.
“Because we are located in one of the most dynamic and collaborative cities in the United States, our students have access to the best employers in America,” Powell says. “Those employers value the education we deliver, and our values match those of our metro-area employers. We create business environments where individuals work together to make opportunity for all. We expect the same excellence and commitment from our online students as we do all other students.”
