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What are the best online MBA programs?
A few years ago, hardly anyone bothered to even rank the digital versions of a school's MBA. But as distance education becomes increasingly popular, several major publications known for their lists of on-campus degree programs have gotten in on the act.
US News & World Reportwhich debuted an online MBA ranking in 2013, now provides numerical ratings for 172 programs; from No. 1 Indiana University to No. 169 University of North Alabama in Florence (four schools tied at 169).
Not to be long, The Financial Times jumped into the ranking game in 2014 with a global list of 15 programs they had IE Business School in Spain at the top, followed by Warwick Business School in Britain, Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School in Boston, the University of Florida and Indiana.
The economist has also ranked online programs in the past, although its last special report on distance education is somewhat dated, having been published in 2010. Rather than providing numerical rankings for each of the 16 programs evaluated, the British magazine chose to rate the programs excellent, good, average or poor. Only two school programs were rated “excellent” at the time: the University of Florida and IE Business School in Spain. A further three schools were rated 'good'. They are the programs at the Thunderbird Global School of Management, Indiana University's Kelley School, and Euro MBA, a consortium of European business schools.
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The problem with all these rankings – along with their often significantly flawed methodologies – is that they are so new that many schools have refused to participate in them. The result: The relatively new lists fail to show the full range of business schools now offering online MBAs, including some of the best.
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Prospective students will also find a large number of sites that purport to rank the best online options, but almost all of them are little more than “link farms” that collect royalties or click pay when someone searches for more information on one of the programs listed. . Any website that ranks online programs but doesn't provide a detailed explanation of the methodology with specific data to back it up for each school is pretty much useless. Be extremely wary of these bogus rankings that often try to conflate for-profit schools with legitimate academic institutions.
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Because so many name-brand universities are online today and their acceptance rates are significantly higher than for full-time MBA programs, there's no reason to settle for a degree from the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, Capella, or any other organization that lacks academic and professional credibility. Prestige may not be cheap, though you'll be able to find some very affordable programs at the highly ranked business school on our list of the best.
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