Tepper School to Expand FlexMBA Program

by Stacy Blackman Consulting, Dec 30, 2013

Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business has been on quite a roll lately. In early November, the school took Bloomberg Businessweek's top spot for best part-time MBA program; a week later, alumnusDavid Tepper, namesake of the universitys business school, announced he would donate $67 million to create a major new academic hub to further strengthen collaboration among CMUs schools and colleges.

It's been almost exactly one year since Tepper announced it would launch a hybrid MBA format in fall 2013 known as FlexMBA, a 32-week program combining in-person sessions, online classes and self-paced learning.Robert Monroe, director of Teppers online MBA program, sat down recently with business school news website Poets & Quants and revealed the program has outperformed all expectations.

The first cohort this fall had 29 students, and Monroe tells P&Q he expects the school will double in size next year due to high interest in the program. Along with UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School and Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, Tepper is one of the few elite business schools that has introduced an online MBA option---so far.

Teppers FlexMBA, priced at $118,080 for the 32-month program, is the most expensive in the market, the article notes. But Monroe asserts that you get what you pay for.

The reason its expensive is it is the same MBA, says Monroe. We are moving to a model fairly rapidly where students can move between the different delivery alternatives, including full-time onsite and part-time. We made a very specific decision that we were not going to lower our standards for the program. We will not admit anybody who we dont make it successfully through the program without any concern.

The interview in P&Q covers a lot of ground, from the ways in which the school has worked to create a tight-knit community among the FlexMBA participants, to Tepper's "anti-MOOC" stance, to Monroe's projections regarding other top business school's eventual entrance into the online MBA marketplace. You can read the whole article here.

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