You’ve gone as far as you possibly can
go at a job that requires further education if you want any chance of moving up the corporate ladder. There are
several schools in your area that offer adult
MBA programs at night, but how do you
find the right one?
“It’s very important that the school that
you pick is an accredited one,” says Kevin
Hughes, Ph.D., MBA program coordinator
at Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
MVNU also has a campus in Sharonville. “It
can make a big difference in the quality of
education available to the students.”
Smart Business talked to Hughes about
how to pick a school and how sometimes
God provides a helping hand in making the
right choice.
What makes a good MBA program?
It’s important to find a program with
national business accreditation such as the
Association of Collegiate Business Schools
and Programs (ACBSP). The accreditation
is what actually holds a good business
school’s feet to the fire concerning the
quality of education. It provides the standards and the benchmarks that the school
should be working toward. It takes a couple of years to earn and it’s a lot of hard
work but it is important.
How does a school earn accreditation?
You first must be regionally accredited by
the Higher Learning Commission and have
business programs that already have graduates. In applying for ACBSP accreditation,
a business school has to go through an
elaborate process of reporting about its
programs, curriculum and faculty, and
make adjustments as required to meet the
high standards of ACBSP. Once a school’s
been accredited, it will be evaluated routinely to ensure quality.
Another component for accreditation is
having a certain percentage of qualified
full-time faculty teaching its business
courses. Meeting this standard is logistically impossible for some of the competition
in the nontraditional MBA market. In fact,
almost all graduate business courses at
MVNU are taught by full-time faculty, most
having earned doctorates.
Can being a Christian-based school help or
hinder recruitment?
At MVNU, we are serious about preparing people to be ethical and moral managers and leaders, people with integrity,
regardless of their faith or religion. That is
our mission as a Christian university. If you
ask people whom they would prefer to
hire, I think most people would prefer
someone with integrity, high moral standards and who exhibits respect for others.
That is the kind of manager, executive and
leader we strive to develop in our MBA program. We aren’t here to just provide
business knowledge, we are here to build
character.
How does teaching ethics in a business class
work?
Many business schools are trying to hit
ethics hard now. A lot of it comes as a
result from high profile stories like the
Enron fiasco. There are many textbooks
about business ethics today, but often they
lack any foundation upon which to decide
what is right or wrong. In our ethics courses, our basic principles for how to act ethically and morally come, ultimately, from
the Bible. For example, a key Biblical principal is the golden rule — ‘do to others as
you would have done to you’ — even if the
other person is your business competitor.
That does not mean you do not compete to
win, but there is a right way and a wrong
way to go about it. In the School of
Business, we strive to keep these principles front and center in all our programs
including the MBA.
Students entering our bachelor of business administration program were surveyed about why they came to a Christian-based school. Most didn’t list a faith-based
foundation as being important to them in
choosing a business program. After graduation from the BBA program, however,
many listed the faith-based focus of the
program and the faculty and staff as very
important in their educational experience.
In fact, many of these BBA students have
returned to attend our MBA program
because they know they can count on a
quality business education in a wholesome
environment that champions ethics,
integrity and character in every aspect of
life.
KEVIN HUGHES, Ph.D., is the MBA coordinator at Mount
Vernon Nazarene University. Reach him at (740) 392-6868 ext.
3323 or [email protected].