As One Online MBA Departs, Another Arrives: MBA News

“We felt that to provide the best program we could to future students, we would need the time and space that can only be afforded by closing the current program in order to look to future offerings within distance learning. The last intake of students accepted to the online MBA was in December 2014 and the application process is now closed,” reads a statement from Royal Holloway School of Management.

A little less than 100 students enrolled in the online MBA each year between 2011 and 2013, according to QS data, under the understanding that they can complete the program in anywhere between two and five years. Honoring this understanding means that the online MBA at Royal Holloway will actually continue running until 2020 and the School of Management says that all its current students are fully aware of the situation:

“We are committed to run the program for up to five more years to ensure all existing students are permitted the full five-year registration period, with the final exam session taking place in May 2020.”

According to the school, there are no anticipated changes regarding the remainder of its offerings at master’s level – a portfolio which includes a specialized master’s program in entrepreneurship and a recently-launched management and organizations MSc. The School of Management at Royal Holloway currently ranks in Europe’s top 60 in the QS Global 200 Business Schools Report 2014/15 for its full-time MBA program; a program which announced changes, some of which had been previously trialed, to its curriculum just last year.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a US business school has announced the launch of its first fully-online MBA program.

The School of Business Administration at the University of Miami – a member of the latest full-time rankings for North America in the Global 200 Business Schools Report – will join the online MBA market this fall, when its new two-year program gets up and running.

The program is the third online master’s degree to be launched by the University of Miami’s School of Business this year, and follows the announcements of programs in finance and accounting:

“The launch of our Online MBA program represents our commitment to developing innovative programs that enable busy professionals to earn a business degree from the University of Miami no matter where they live and work,” said Gene Anderson, dean at the University of Miami’s School of Business, in a press release.