Nurses pursuing online degrees can quickly implement newly learned care techniques to the workplace.
Graduate school was always part of the puzzle for Jefferson Macias, a supply chain manager for Intel in Tucson, Ariz., but finding an MBA program that meshed with his roles as a manager and father meant thinking outside of the brick-and-mortar box.
While a part-time master's program would allow him to keep working—a priority for Macias—it also limited his options to schools near home. A traditional part-time program also would mean spending nights and weekends in a classroom instead of with his family. So Macias shifted his attention to an online MBA.
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"I wasn't entirely sold on it," he says. "But then I started seeing just a large amount of schools coming onto the scene, and that's what started to really get me interested." Macias signed on to start Washington State University's online MBA program in the fall of 2010 and graduated in December 2012.
Hundreds of colleges and universities now offer graduate programs entirely or partly online, including such established public and private institutions as the University of Southern California and New York's Columbia University. For-profit schools such as the University of Phoenix and DeVry University also factor into the mix of choices.
In some cases, students can earn a degree without setting foot on a physical campus; other programs blend virtual instruction with in-person residencies that range from weekend seminars to several weeks abroad.
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Choosing the best path—public or private, for-profit or nonprofit, blended or 100 percent online—requires significant research, and prospective students should consider a variety of factors before settling on a program. Chief among them, experts say: accreditation.
"I learned that it was essentially the gold standard of business education," says Macias of the stamp of approval by AACSB International–The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. "It really focused me in on a few key programs."
While business students may be able to move up the ranks with an MBA from an unaccredited school, employers may be wary of the merits of the degree. Professions that require state licensure, such as nursing, teaching, or counseling, often do not recognize degrees from programs that lack accreditation.
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Most colleges tout the program's accreditation on their website, but students should do some legwork to ensure the credentials are legitimate. Students can verify the accreditation of any graduate school using the College Navigator tool on the Department of Education's website.
Academic reputation was also a key component of the decision making process for Felipe Millon, who earned an MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.
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