The Four-Plus-One Business Degree Gains Ground

Indiana University's Kelley School of Business

Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business

PROGRAMS PROVIDE HIGH ROI

Students who enroll typically get a 20 percent salary bump after completing the degree, one of the reasons parents encourage their children to do the program.

“It’s not that hard to convince parents to pay for that extra year of tuition,” Boone said. “The students get promoted faster and get more opportunities because they really stand out from their peers.”

That was the case for Ella Douglas, a 2014 graduate of Wake Forest’s MA in Management program, who is now working for Cigna as a client manager. As an anthropology major and double minor in linguistics and classical studies at Wake Forest, she was without a doubt “the stereotypical liberal arts graduate,” she said. When it came time to look for a job her senior year, she found herself stymied. Said Douglas: “It sounds a little clichéd, but I really didn’t know what I had learned to do or where I wanted to go.”

Her father urged her to sign up for the program, and she spent the next year brushing up on her quantitative skills, slowly buying a work wardrobe and engaging in a semester-long consulting project for Nationwide Court Systems. “After one semester of the program, I felt like I could navigate networking and the corporate world,” she said.

AN MBA PIPELINE

Traditionally, one-year master’s programs have been geared towards fields like accounting, which require students to have a certain amount of credit hours in order to qualify for the CPA exam. The latest generation of MIM programs is not geared towards business majors, but rather humanities and liberal arts majors who may be struggling in their job search and need a solid basic business background, said Linda Livingstone, dean of George Washington University’s School of Business and chair of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. They’re also evidence that schools are looking to the future, and perhaps hoping that these programs will tap into a new market of students down the line for their flagship MBA programs, she said.

“I think certainly it is a way for schools to think of building a pipeline for other programs, particularly the MBA,” Livingstone said. “Most of these programs are pretty new, so we don’t have that much of a track record to see how that will evolve. However, we do see schools thinking about how to get students come back and do their MBA.”

For example, at Wake Forest students who’ve done the MA in Management can shave a year off their MBA degree if they return to the school. Since 2006, about 15 students who’ve completed the master’s have come back for their MBA, Boone said.

As the market matures, schools are becoming more creative in how they market and design the programs. The Kelley program is unique because all of the degrees will be offered in a hybrid-blended format, with both online portions and on-campus components. Of the nine programs, seven will be online master’s degrees, delivered with both in-residence and online components. Students can begin coursework for the accelerated master’s program as early as halfway through their senior year, Kesner said.

Kelley also plans to tap into a new market of students outside the university, forming a partnership with the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a top-ranked engineering school in Terre Haute, Indiana. Rose-Hulman students will have access to the same suite of accelerated MIM programs as Indiana University students, Kesner said.

COMPETING FOR THE TOP UNDERGRADS

For some schools, the 4+1 programs are a way to keep the best students on campus, and more importantly away from competitors. The University of Colorado Denver’s Business School started a 4+1 program last year, geared towards top undergraduate business students at the school who want a master’s in information systems.

“Frankly, there’s a lot of competition in the Denver metro area,” said Jahangir Karimi, the school’s director of information systems programs. “We want to keep the best students on campus.”

Those accepted into the program can start coursework as early as their senior year, and can even bypass taking the GMAT, otherwise a requirement for the master’s program.

That was an appealing proposition for Michael Carlisle, an information systems major who said he probably would have put off getting his MS in Information Sciences were it not for the seamless transition to the master’s program.

“There was no need to transfer credits and no need for a long application process,” said Carlisle, who currently works as a help desk analyst at Ciber Inc. and takes classes at night. “I was in no hurry to finish schools, but the fact that I could get the degree done in only one extra year was amazing.”

DON’T MISS: THE ROI OF MAJORING IN BUSINESS

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