11 YEARS, 6,000 GRADUATES, 1 70 COUNTRIES: THE BBS MBA GOES FULLY ON-LINE

摘要

In October 1990 Heriot-Watt University's Graduate Business School launched the first truly distance learning (DL) MBA on to the global market, a programme that removed the ubiquitous requirement for face-to-face teaching or tutoring . Eleven years later some 29,000 students in 170 countries have begun studies on the programme, with over 6,000 resulting graduates having completed the course. At the present time there are approximately 8,000 active students. Students must pass in 9 modules to gain an MBA: our marketing materials show that the price of a module is approximately □ 1,000 euros. Simple arithmetic will show that the turnover of the programme is of the order □ 10 million euros per annum. As from April 2001 we now claim to have the first fully on-line MBA programme totally available over the Internet, but with one exception ― assessment is still by the traditional method of written examination. This paper will: 1. Look at the factors that allowed the MBA to reach the market; 2. Ask if the model can be repeated; 3. Emphasis the successes in content production and on-line delivery.