This post will be very long and in-depth.  It will also not be particularly interesting to most of my regular readers.  But it is something I wish I had access to when I was doing research on going to school, and that’s essentially why I’m posting it here and now.  That, and I want to drive more Google traffic to my site. 

During the Summer of 2007, I found myself frustrated.  I was unhappy in my job, which I had only held for four months.  I was looking for additional work, but was unable to get my foot in the door anywhere.  I had sent out hundreds of resumes, but had only been contaced by multi-level marketing scams.  I consider myself a pretty talented individual (and so humble, too!), but I wasn’t credentialed.  I had a BFA in Music Dance Theatre, and a scattered and random work history that was a direct result of the nomadic life of an actor.  I quickly realized that, while I could be very successful in the business world, I was going to need some more training and a few extra letters after my name to get my start, so I decided that it was time to return to school and get my MBA.

I also knew that I simply did not have the time, money, or desire to quit my job and go back to a regular brick and mortar institution.  Even in-person evening and weekend classes wouldn’t be a good fit for me.  I needed to find an online program that would provide me with the information I needed to progress in my job and, at the same time, allow me the flexibility to do my schoolwork on my own schedule. There are a plethora of online schools out there–some good, some little more than unaccredited degree mills.  Some were affiliated with regular brick and mortar universities, while others were for-profit ventures.  Some online programs required several on-campus visits during the year in addition to the online course work.  Finding one, and more importantly, the right one, was of paramount importance to me.

In the end, I settled upon one of three choices: Walden University, Capella University, and University of Phoenix.  All three were nationally accredited, were well-known, and while they are not on the same level as, say, Harvard Business School, all three seemed to have a fairly decent reputation.  UoP was the first school that I ruled out.  They were the most expensive, and they relied entirely on digital texts.  I had no intention of reading two years worth of business articles and textbooks on a computer screen.  I already spent 15 hours a day in front of computers, I wasn’t going to curl up with a laptop and a .PDF about Fiscal Policy in Indonesian textile manufactories.  The choice then came down to Capella and Walden.  Capella had a lower overall rating in the online review sites than did Walden, and the folks I interacted with at Capella acted more like sales people than enrollment advisors.  It just put me off a bit.  And again, it was more expensive especially because, at the time, tuition did not include the price of books.

In the end, I went with Walden.  I felt that their program was the most solid, the enrollment advisors didn’t come across as slick-tongued salesmen, it was the least expensive, and books were included in the price.  On top of that, I was able to get a 25% discount on tuition because my father was currently enrolled in the MBA program for Finance. What follows is a review of a Walden University MBA education based on my personal experiences and opinions.  Your mileage may vary.  And if it does, please say so in the comments.

Enrollment

The enrollment process was fairly easy.  An online form, a few faxes, an admissions essay, a couple of phone conversations with my enrollment advisor, and I was accepted in the program starting on September 2, 2007.  I had known early on that I wanted to specialize in Project Management, and was able to get some decent information about the coursework.  I had a solid GPA (3.45) from a major brick and mortar university, and several years of work experience, so getting accepted wasn’t an issue.  I honestly don’t know what percentage of people that apply are accepted or not.  I would imagine that, being a for-profit venture, Walden takes a much higher percentage of applicants than does a regular school.  Overall, I felt that perhaps the admission requirements weren’t stringent enough as it was obvious that several of my classmates had no business being in an MBA program at all.  These students were quickly weeded out after the first few classes however, but more on that later.

Walden didn’t require any testing like the GMAT for admission.  They did discuss the ability to “test out” of certain courses based on my work experience, but I felt that, being so new to the world of business, I would be better served by taking the entire program from the beginning to the end.

Financial Aid

All things considered, getting financial aid through Walden was no more or less difficult than it was when I attended BYU as an undergrad.  It’s the same set of hoops: FAFSA, Promissory Notes, etc.  Walden does its loans through Sallie Mae, while BYU did most of its loans through Nelnet.  My loans have not gone into repayment yet, so I have no insight into how it is to work with Sallie Mae.

Student loan funds for the school year are divided up into three segments, one for each trimester.  The loans for that trimester are dispersed to the school two weeks after the start of the semester.  Those funds are used to pay off tuition and fees, and then any excess amount will be dispersed to the student another 14 days after that.  I think it’s a little silly for the school to hold onto that money for so long, but the wait wasn’t onerous.  I took out the full amount of loans available to me, although they were not needed for tuition. 

The Classes

The classes at Walden are a combination of your standard MBA fare: Marketing, IT Management, Global Business, Accounting, Finance, etc.  Keeping in mind that I have very little in way of comparison between the classes as offered by Walden and similar courses offered at other Universities, I felt that overall, these classes ranged from mediocre to pretty good.  Rarely were they stellar, and with only two exceptions, none were terrible. 

In addition to the standard business-type classes offered, there are a few courses which pander directly to Walden’s overwrought (and over-repeated) desire to create a group of what they call “Scholar-Practitioners”.  The first two courses of the program are designed to give an overview of the program and train students on how to use the Internet and the course system as established by Walden.  These intro classes were, for me, an epic waste of both time and money.  One was little more than a beginner’s level course on how to use email, the Internet, and how to send attachments.  For someone who has been using the Internet since 1993, the class was useless. 

The second intro course, which ran concurrent to the internet skills class, was an even more effective at flushing money down the toilet.  The entire eight week course was spent reading the Walden University mission statement, vision statement, educational goals, academic integrity policies, pledging allegiance to the Walden spirit, and electronically holding hands and while skipping through wildflower meadows and singing Kumbaya. The class was little more than a giant pep rally. It felt like a brainwashing seminar ensuring that all students believed in and could recite, from memory, the mantras and incantations of a business program that has been overtaken by a bunch of a new-age education professors who had spent few too many of their formative years in the 60s.  I wouldn’t have minded these first two courses so much if they had been a two or three week introduction, and had been free.  But as they were “for credit,” took eight weeks, and were charged at full price, I was exceptionally resentful that we spent our time talking about garbage like that and not actually working on learning real business principles.

The next batch of classes were the “soft sciences” of the business world: human resources, leadership, etc.  They were interesting, and the reading was often very informative, but it felt a little strange being graded on such abstract principles.  Overall, I felt as though the grading in these early classes was too lenient, as the quality of writing and discourse among students was less-than-stellar. 

After that, we began to move into the slightly more quantifiable skills: business strategy, global business, marketing, etc.  The hard sciences followed: IT Management, Accounting, Finance.

Then, after 16 months of general MBA courses, you FINALLY are able to begin working on your specialization classes—in my case, project management.   For each specialization, there are two courses, each lasting eight week.  That’s right.  Of a 22-month program, only four months were spent on specialization.  (And you wonder why I resented having to take the pep rally classes at the beginning of my program.)  Had I been allowed to focus more on my Project Management Courses, I feel that I would have left the program with a much more valuable education.

The final course in the MBA program is the capstone course.  It is during this course that you complete your program project ( a sort of “thesis” for your time in the program, which will be discussed later), and in which you do a whole-business simulation called Capsim.

The classes in the Walden MBA were a mixed bag.  Some were exceptionally helpful and informational.  Others were epic in their ability to waste time.  I don’t believe that this phenomenon is unique to Walden, however.  Many who have completed MBAs in traditional brick and mortar schools feel as though they have experienced the same thing.  That being said, Walden’s emphasis on hand-holding, community building, and ego stroking hindered the potential that many of these classes had.  Walden’s School of Education is one of its largest, and you can see that school’s influence on the educational methods employed in the School of Business.  You can feel a lot of those touchy-feely roots coming out in the method of instruction and the overall ecosystem of the school.  I wanted less of that type of content, and far more of the actual business acumen for which I chose to attend the school in the first place.

How the Classes Work

This is the question that I am asked more than any other.  Many people simply don’t understand how it is possible to get a honest, complete education without in-person classroom instruction.  While I will admit there are a few times during the course of my program that I wished I could raise my hand and ask for clarification, I actually felt as though my ability to work at my own pace allowed me to take the time to learn what I most needed to know.  As a result, I could spend far less time on those things which came naturally or I deemed unimportant.  Being able to set my own pace was one of my favorite things about the program.  If I were going on vacation, I could work ahead.  If I had something come up at work, I could wait until the last minute to read the assignment.  Overall, it worked very well for me, but I’m good at self-pacing.  If you’re a procrastinator, you might want to reconsider an online program entirely.

Each course in the program is eight weeks long.  When you log into the classroom you are given an announcement board, the course syllabus, grading rubrics, a discussion forum to ask the instructor questions, and another to discuss with classmates about whatever.  Then each week is given its own set of sub pages: Resources, Discussion, and Application.  You are given a list of resources (articles, pages in the course text, videos, PowerPoint presentations, links, etc.) that you will be required to review and utilize in the week’s work.  For each week you are also given one or more forums for class discussion.  Here you post your responses to the discussion question posed and respond to your classmates’ posts in turn.  Each week you are also given an “Application.”  Often this is a paper, group project, presentation, or other task that must be turned in sometime during the week.

Most weeks proceed as follows.  On Day 1 (Monday) you gather the list of resources and begin reading, studying, researching.  By Day 3 (Wednesday), you are required to write a post in the discussion forum about the week’s topic, and referencing the week’s resource list.  Between days 3 and 5, you are to return to the forum and reply to several of your classmate’s posts with questions, comments, discussion topics, etc. Oftentimes, you will be given more than one discussion topic.  In such cases, the first DQ (Discussion Question) will be due on Days 3-5, and the second will be due on Days 4-6.  In addition to the group discussions, your assigned application for the week is usually due on Day 7 (Sunday). 

There is also a discussion forum which is set aside specifically for use in group projects and is visible only to members of your assigned group and the professor. 

The weekly breakdown usually goes something like this:

• Week 1 – Intro to topic and abstract discussion questions.  Assignment is usually fairly simple.
• Week 2 – Beginning of a resource avalanche – Discussion questions get more specific.  Group project starts
• Week 3 – Resource avalanche continues – DQ – Group Project deliverable is due for application.  Usually a draft.
• Week 4 – Resource avalanche winds down – DQ – Group Project continued
• Week 5 – Fewer Resources – 2 Discussion Questions – Group Project Final Deliverable
• Week 6 – Fewer Resources – 1 Discussion Question – Most complex application assignments usually due now
• Week 7 – Very few (if any) new resources – DQ – Program Project Assignment Due
• Week 8 – No New Resources – DQ (usually a wrap-up, summary type post where you discuss what you’ve learned) – The “Blueprint for Personal Growth” or BPPG

This formula varies very little between classes.  Sometimes you will have a group project that will last a little longer, sometimes a shorter one.  Sometimes your applications might be submissions to a simulation, sometimes they will be four page papers which are submitted to the instructor via the class dropbox.  They vary, but not significantly.

The other issue tends to be that these classes appear to be designed by committee, and appear not to be very tweakable by the individual professors.  This can exceptionally frustrating.  Education by committee is never the most efficient way of doing things, never results in the best possible educational experience, and ties the professors’ hands when they get a group of students who don’t necessarily learn in the same way.  It makes for a very uniform education, but it also hinders the teachers from really owning their lesson plans.  (I imagine that it also saves the company a fair bit of money because they know that they will be able to buy books in bulk at a discounted rate.)  It also causes problems because the classroom templates aren’t always kept up to date as the curriculum changes so links are broken, page numbers are incorrect, and documents are outdated.

As you can see from the way the courses are laid out, this is a program for those who are a) good a learning on their own, b) motivated to complete their assignments on time without prodding, and c) are smart enough to figure out difficult concepts without having to discuss the matter face to face with a professor.  For the most part, I preferred this method of learning to sitting in a classroom listening to a teach who is very smart but has the presentation skills of a salted slug.  The only major exception to this was during my accounting class, when I really needed to see the math drawn out logically on a white board with someone explaining the whats and whys.

Classmates

The quality of the classmates at Walden varied far more widely than I imagine they would in a traditional brick and mortar school.  Being an online university, as well as an executive program, I found that the demographics of the student body were widely varied.  I had classmates from across the United States, including several who had moved to the US from different countries.  (One of my classmates was even from Mongolia).  The diversity did allow for additional perspectives that perhaps one wouldn’t get otherwise. This is especially true since all of my classmates were working professionals in different industries and different stages of their lives.  There were young single folks, retired folks, middle-aged men and women with kids.  There were engineers, nurses, factory workers, a lot of military retirees, non-profit employees, etc.

However, despite the diversity of the student body, I found many of the students to be lacking in a certain level of base ability.  As mentioned previously, I believe that the admittance standards for Walden’s MBA program were simply too lax.  Nearly every class was replete with classmates who didn’t know how to write in complete sentences, spell, or make a cogent point in any of their writings.  Their analytical thinking and logic skills were, in many cases, non-existent.  This made meaningful classroom discussion next to impossible.  A GREAT majority of the students, for their discussion topics, posted simply-worded and regurgitated recaps of the surface points of the articles.  There was no synthesis of ideas, no well-researched or well-reasoned opinion forming.  Many of the students simply were not at MBA level, in my opinion.  In a discussion of debt and finance, one student responded to a long, well-researched point with the single sentence, “Taxes are the reason some people are poor.”  These students were often quite effective at murdering meaningful discussion.

This was especially evident in the early phases of the program.  It became blatantly apparent early on  in the coursework who was capable and who was not.  I found myself in the same classes with many of the same people, and I began to keep a metal tally of who I could work with, and who I would do my best to avoid.    If I was assigned to a group rather than being able to pick my own, I regularly “offered” (i.e., demanded) to be the person in charge of writing and/or editing the group’s final deliverable.  The lack of writing and editing skills in most of my classmates was staggering. 

Most of these less-than-ready students were weeded out over time.  By the end of my final several courses, the level of discourse had raised significantly, and I found that I was learning more and gaining more insight from my classmates.  I feel that, had Walden done a better job of screening its applicants, the classes found earlier in the program would have been significantly more effective.  However, as Walden is a for-profit company, there is very little incentive for the university to tighten down its admittance requirements.  The more students that they allow in, the more money they’ll make…even if they drop out early.  Meanwhile, those students who stick it out have to suffer through some frustration early courses.

The Teachers

Like most universities, including the major brick and mortar private school I attended for my undergrad, the teachers are hit or miss.  At BYU there were teachers to avoid, and teachers whose classes you tried to attend.  At Walden, the same situation takes place.  There are some professors who are quite good, and there are others who are truly terrible.  Unfortunately, when it comes to picking your teacher at Walden, you get no say.  You are automatically assigned to a section of the next class.  I never had to contact the university to request a change of section, so I have no idea if that’s possible.  I had a couple of teachers that, had I been assigned to their classes for a second time, I would have requested a change of section, but that did not occur.  I did have one teacher twice, but he was a good teacher, so I was glad to have him again.

As far as I could tell, every single one of my professors, save for one, had a PhD.  Some had their credentials for major universities.  One of my professors was a very prolifically published author, and head of a business department at a large state school.  He did a class or two at Walden in addition to his teaching load at the University.  Many of the professors, however, had PhD credentials through online universities, such as Walden.  The publish or perish mindset that is so prevalent in traditional academia seems to be largely absent in the online university experience, so many of the professors didn’t have significant research or authoring credits to their names.

However, it is a bit misleading to call Walden’s professors “teachers.”  Doing so would imply that these men and women are actually supposed to be doing any teaching.  This is a very false assumption.  The format of the classes as explained above leaves no real room for the professor to do any direct teaching.  Rather, the professor acts as a forum moderator.  He will watch the forums, respond to questions (sometimes) with varying levels of assistance, and will grade papers.  That’s it.  Certain professors try to be more involved in the discussion topics, and will provide additional sample papers, answer questions fully and clearly, and will even participate by providing new insights from their experience either in education or in the workforce.

A great majority of my teachers were pretty good.  There were a couple that were excellent.  I had two, however, who were not good.

One teacher had a major family medical emergency in the middle of the class, and simply disappeared for several weeks.  No notices were posted, no information passed along.  The class simply ran itself for three weeks with no feedback, no grades, no participation at all from the professor.  I eventually had to contact the university to complain and that’s when I discovered that this teacher was dealing with some other issues.  While I appreciate the difficult of a situation like that, simply disappearing is inappropriate and completely unprofessional.  If this had been a real university, someone would have been brought in to cover the class.  This was one of my specialization classes, and it was extremely important to me that I understand it, and not getting answers to questions for weeks at a time with no explanation is not what I expect for the amount of money I paid for the class.

My worst professor, however, is the single worst teacher I’ve had in my entire life.  It was in my accounting class—a topic that is difficult to understand in the best of circumstances.  In an online environment, it’s all the more difficult.  The students would ask the professor questions, and he would simply tell the student what page in the textbook he or she could find the answer…despite the fact that the student said they didn’t understand the textbook.  I actually sent this professor a question, and asked if it would be possible to discuss the issue on a phone call.  He responded to my question by saying, “Walden used to have conference calls where we could ask questions, but they stopped doing that.”  No answer, no offer of assistance, no phone call.  If I hadn’t had a father who had graduated from the same program several months earlier, I don’t know that I would have ever gotten through this particular class.  He behaved the same way with all of the students.  He wasn’t only worthless as a teacher, he was even worthless as a moderator.

These two teachers were the exception, however, and not the rule.  Generally, the teachers tried to do the best they could within the constraints of the classroom structure that Walden has set up for them.  The professor’s inability to cater their classroom to the learning needs of the students means that they are often stuck acting as babysitters and classroom aides than actual professors.  Considering the amount of education that many of these individuals have gone through, I imagine it has to be relatively frustrating to do no actual teaching.

The Texts

One of the nicest things about Walden, in comparison to many of the other online schools that I evaluated is that they use real books, not digital texts, and that the price of those books is included in the price of the program.  The books and other resources simply arrive via UPS about five to seven days prior to the start of a new semester.  (Digital texts would be good to use if the school provided students with a Kindle, but they don’t, and the prospect of reading 150 pages a week of a textbook on my computer screen makes my eyes hurt just thinking about it. 

In the first week, you often rely heavily on a Walden-produced DVD which includes several introductory videos by paid actors who stand in front of a green screen and read from a teleprompter.  The videos are decently produced but largely lacking in any valuable information.  They are often along the lines of “during this course, you’re going to learn” blah, blah blah.  I don’t really need a talking head telling me what I’m going to learn.  I’d just as soon start learning it.  After the first couple of courses, I stopped referring to these DVDs altogether.  The DVDs often contain video clips of interviews with various business leaders, etc.  Eventually I stopped watching those as well because I found that they didn’t provide significant value either.

The DVD is playable in a regular standalone DVD player, but it also serves as a DVD-ROM.  The computer-accessible portion of the DVD will often contain PowerPoint or PDF presentations with media (audio or video) embedded in them.  As often happen in real life (unfortunately) the media clip will be of a professor who will often read the slide to you as though you were illiterate.  (Semi-related rant: when will people who user PowerPoint begin to realize that you should never simply read the slide out loud?  If you’re not going to explain above and beyond the slide, then send out an email.  This is a lesson the presenters for Walden could have learned well.) The presentation value of these materials is pretty lackluster–not to mention the fact that Walden regularly breaks copyright laws by using unlicensed and watermarked clip art from sites like iStockPhoto in their presentations—ironic considering how much time they spend in the rah-rah classes talking about ethics, copyright, and plagiarism.

In addition to the DVD and the PDF/PowerPoint decks, most courses utilize a course textbook.  Many of these texts are published, recognized books which would be used at any major university.  In particular, the textbooks for accounting, project management, and IT Management were very useful.  Several of the assigned books are special, reduced editions of the full book which are specially printed for Laureate Education, Inc (Walden’s parent company), which makes reselling them practically impossible.  I had no instances of using books written by my professors, which is not surprising considering the lack of focus on Walden Professors publishing in the academic world.  Occasionally, the soft sciences classes utilized self-help books or those fuzzy, feel good books you’d find in the business section of the local Barnes and Noble.  Some of them are worthwhile, many are not.  A few books, like Keith Ferazzi’s “Never Eat Alone” or Margaret J. Wheatley’s atrocious “Finding our Way” were so bad that they made me hostile every time I sat down to force myself to swallow their tripe.  Ferrazzi advocates a merging of the work/life relationships that justifies spending every waking hour of your life working…a theory I disagree with wholeheartedly.  Wheatley’s book is so gag-inducingly, horrifyingly awful that I can’t even begin to describe how bad it is.

Lastly, nearly every class relies heavily on peer-reviewed articles published in recognized academic journals.  The Walden Library has access to tens of thousands of journals and databases, so finding what you need is often quite easy and convenient.  It is from these articles that most of the truly valuable learning takes place in the program.  The chosen articles are from some of the most important names in the academic business field, and pull from some of the leading publication such as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Management, etc. 

The Homework

Let me just get this out of the way right up front.  If you don’t like to write, or are not good at writing, do not even consider getting your degree through Walden.  Because of the structure of the classes as described above, nearly everything that you do for your entire program will be centered around writing.  You must write discussion posts, responses to your classmates, short essays, longer papers, a massive program project, etc., etc., etc.  My Microsoft Word got more of a workout during the last 22 month than it ever has before, and probably never will again unless I start writing a novel for NaNoWriMo.  One of the saving graces for me in this program was that I like writing.  I write fast, I write pretty well, if I say so myself, and I am able to quickly synthesize the ideas in my reading into a coherent and seemingly well-considered post.

Most of the time, homework breaks down along the lines described above under the layout of the courses.  You write one or more discussion topics each week.  Mine usually totaled a full page or page and a half of text in Word, but it was pretty apparent that my posts were easily the longest in most of my courses.  Many students got away with doing a couple of paragraphs or a sentence or two.  (Personally, I found the level of many of these discussion posts to be inadequate, but apparently, the professors didn’t mind.)  Even in my last course, one particular student generally posted discussion topics of only one or two sentences.  It’s pretty hard to write a response to a classmate whose discussion of a complex topic results in two poorly formed sentences. 

I’ll discuss working in group more later, but suffice it to say that most of the group work centered around writing as well.

For some of the math-based courses, such as Accounting and Finance, there is writing as well, but they generally involved far more problem solving.  You will often need to use Excel to do calculations, which you will then paste into word and submit.  But for the rest of the classes, it’s all about the writing.

Simulations

One of the most enjoyable parts of the entire Walden educational experience were those classes in which we got to use online business simulators to apply the principles we’d learned in class to a “real life” scenario.  During the course of my program, I participated in three simulations: one for Marketing, one for Project Management, and one in the final course which was a capstone experience covering R&D, Marketing, Production/Operations, Finance, and overall Business Strategy.  These simulators were quite fun.  They reminded me a lot of the old Lemonade Stand game for the Apple IIe, but significantly more advanced.  I could easily say that I learned the most from the simulation experiences, and found a great deal of applicability in their practice.

Specialty Classes

Walden’s MBA program allows for specializations in addition to the general MBA courses.  There are several: Human Resources, IT Management, Marketing, Finance, Accounting, Project Management, Entrepreneurship, etc.  Of the 12 courses required for graduation from the program, only two of the courses are toward the specialization.  My Project Management courses were some of my favorite courses in my program because I felt like I was finally getting an opportunity to work on the stuff that really interested me.  Plus, by the time we had gotten to that point in the program, most of my classmates who weren’t prepared for being in a strenuous MBA program had moved on to different specializations or dropped out of the University. 

Overall, I wish that a greater amount of time had been spent working on the classes directly related to my specialty, and that the classes had been spread throughout the program, rather than just crammed in at the end.  I found several of the general classes to be significantly less beneficial than those leading toward my specialization.

Additionally, I wish that Walden would have structured their specialization classes to lead students toward achieving their certifications.  For instance, it would have been fairly simple to rework the project management classes so that, at the end of your time in the specialization classes, you would be prepared to take the test to get your certifications from PMI and/or ASAPM. 

Working in Groups

I hate working in groups.  I always have.  I find that I get my work done faster, better, and with far less annoyance or frustration than I do with a group.  Walden does not agree with me, however.  In some of the early classes, students are indoctrinated on the importance of working in groups.  In the real world, group work is important, and so at least a small portion of every class is dedicated to working in groups.  Usually, the members of the class are assigned to a group of four or five students.  The students have the ability to send messages back and forth in the group’s discussion forum, and have access to the in-class chat feature as well. 

In theory, I agree that learning the skills of group interaction is important.  In practical application, Walden’s group methodology left a great deal to be desired.  First, Walden, hosting students from around the country/world, makes very little concession for where students live and the time differences involved.  I live in the Seattle area on the west coast.  Most of my classmates were on the east coast, three hours ahead of me.  I normally don’t get home from work until 6PM, at which time I have to get something to eat and take the dog out for a walk.  By the time I’m ready to start working on my homework, it’s 7:30 Pacific Time, but 10:30 Eastern time, and most of my group mates were in bed or winding down their days.  Were our schooling a job, we would be able to make the time to get on the phone or chat online, but since most of us had jobs already, those had to take precedence.   So, instead, we used our group forum to hold “discussions.”  This was severely less effective.  What usually ended up happening is that each person would get on and post their own thoughts, then someone would volunteer to combine them into a single document (which was usually disjointed and aimless) and submit it for the group.

This not only did not teach us real life group interaction skills, it helped to highlight the overwhelming incompetence or lack of commitment of some of the students.  Many group members would include posts that weren’t even related to the topic at hand.  If they would post at all.  Many group members’ writing skills were so poor that I felt I had to act as the compiler and/or editor before submitting the paper.  I had to work had to ensure that my hands were the last ones on the school work before it was submitted because otherwise, the quality of the work would be so poor as to be embarrassing. 

I truly do understand why Walden wants to include group work in its curriculum.  Unfortunately, the reality of working in a group in a online environment such as this is that it is not particularly easy to accomplish well.  As a result, group work was something of a joke among students.  Those of us who wanted desperately to learn found ourselves doing the absolute minimum in the groups because overall the experience was so frustrating and negative.

Program Project

One of the wisest things that the designers of this MBA program did was to create the MBA Program Project.  As Walden’s program is an executive MBA program, there is very little emphasis on true research.  There is no thesis to write or defend, as a fully researched and defended thesis would be fairly useless in the workaday business world.  Instead, students spend nearly their entire program writing their Program Project. 

For your project, the student has one of two options:  He can write a fully fleshed-out business plan for a new business enterprise, or he can write a business plan/analysis of an already existing business.  Most students opt to write a plan for a new business because a) it is easier since you don’t have to do the in-depth analysis of a company’s financial records and b) you can adjust your strategy to be the kind of business that you would like to run.  During my tenure at the University, I came across the whole gamut of original business plans: mobile video gaming company, tanning salons, personal shoppers, insurance companies, Target, electrical engineering firms, day care, masonry, etc.  My own project was for a business that records backing tracks for theaters that don’t use live orchestras.  It was roughly based on the business that I started with a friend several years ago, but adapted based on my experiences and far more in-depth than we ever went.

The way that the Project was incorporated into the program was relatively impressive as well.  For each class, the seventh week’s application was dedicated to the program project.  You took the information you learned in that particular class and used that information to write a new section of your program project.  The brilliance of this idea is that you are able to write each section of your business plan while that information is fresh in your mind.  Once each new section was written, you would post the updated section in the class discussion forum for the week to get feedback from your classmates, and you would turn the updated paper into the teacher, along with a copy of your document from the previous course so the professor could see what/how much you added.

In the final course, the first few weeks are dedicated entirely to the final updates and edits to your plan.  You are put in  groups and asked to peer review the papers of all your group’s members.  You review your paper and make sure it is cohesive and well written, then you turn in the final paper by the third week of the last class. 

My final paper was nearly 80 pages, included a full business plan, a set of five-year pro forma financial statements, marketing segmentation and strategy, financing, legal, ethical, and HR concerns, etc.  I felt as though, in addition to the simulations, this was perhaps the most valuable thing I did at Walden.  It allowed for the synthesis of the course concepts and resulted in a product that I am very proud of.  It’s a good business plan.  I would feel comfortable taking my plan into a bank in order to try to obtain funding…assuming that I was interested in actually running this particular business again.  It also gave me a great deal of insight into some of the issues that I needed to consider when I did actually start my new business, Open Book Audio.

I got 100% on every iteration of my program project from the beginning of my time at Walden.  The final version also got a 100%.  When I get home from vacation, I will like a PDF version so you can see what was done.  (Keep in mind that you absolutely will not want to plagiarize my work.  Walden will kick you out—they are very strict on plagiarism.  And considering that everything you turn in is already in digital format, it makes it relatively simple to check.)

Blueprint for Personal Growth

If the Program Project lays at one end of the usefulness spectrum, the Blueprint for Personal Growth (BPPG) lies at the other. The eighth week of each course is set aside for writing several new pages in your BPPG.  The BPPG is a self-reflection paper where you discuss what you’ve learned, how you plan on applying it to your daily life, and how ethics plans into what you’ve learned.  It’s the sort of new age, touchy-feely, self-absorbed claptrap that educators come up with to make them feel as though they’re teaching you something when you’re not actually learning anything new or gaining any new insight.  I considered these BPPG to be a massive time suck.  Most of the time, I BS’ed my way through four or five pages of self-reflective drivel.  In addition to being pointless, the per-course BPPG criteria were poorly explained and the grading applied to them was never constant.  Some professors would dock points for not including references while the questions were things like, “Why is the ethical management of technology important to you in your life.”  How am I supposed to source that?  Use myself as a reference?  Other professors wouldn’t dock any points at all for lack of references.

The creators of the program had this mistaken idea that the students would want to use the BPPG as proof of the educational progress that they had made, and as a sample of our abilities as a direct result of our education.  They suggested that we make backups of our BPPG, including hard copies.  I, for one, can guarantee that my BPPG will never see the light of day again.  It was 22 months of lame diatribe, pounded out on a keyboard as quickly as humanly possible.  It contains absolutely no real value for me, and I would sooner poop on my resume than send my completed BPPG to a prospective employer.

The Library

A great number of the documents that you use as resources for your schooling come directly from the Walden University.  For the business program, you will spend most of your time in the Business Source Premiere database.  This online database utilizes the EBSCO search engine.  A large number of documents are available as .PDF or text files.  The database can email you the documents and can even provide you with a correctly formatted APA citation for use in your reference pages.  The library is fairly simple to use, and I never had difficulties with finding the articles that I was assigned, though some of my classmates did.  (If you’re not well versed on search protocol for academic libraries, it can take a little getting used to.)

The library also has a document delivery service, for those items which aren’t available as full text through the databases.  Unfortunately, my experience with Walden was that it would have taken so long to get the articles that, by the time I would have received them, the assignment would be several days or weeks late.  When your assignments are weekly rather than long-term, having documents delivered to you is simply not feasible.  So, you are limited only to documents that you can get in full text from the online databases, or that you can get from local or nearby college libraries. 

Overall Evaluation – The Value of a Walden MBA

While I was in school, I talked about my MBA a lot.  Partly because it was consuming such a large portion of my time, partly because I wanted to make sure everybody remembered I was getting my MBA (and would therefore be learning valuable new things which would help to facilitate a promotion and/or raise when I was finished), and partly to reinforce in everyone’s mind how much work was involved in achieving my degree.  Often, when I would bring up my MBA experience, people would ask me, “Where are you going?”  When I would explain that I was getting my degree through Walden, and that it was an online-only program, some people would seem interested, some dismissive, some apathetic.  Despite what the recruiters at Walden or any other online-only school not associated with a Brick and Mortar University may tell you, there still is a bit of a stigma attached to going to a for-profit, online-only school.  That stigma is fast diminishing, but it is still there to a certain extent. 

Whether or not that stigma is deserved is another question altogether.  Walden is a regionally and nationally accredited school.  It has passed certification by several different certification organizations.  Yes, it is a for-profit venture, but it is still a real school.  It isn’t a degree mill.  It also isn’t easy.  For 22 straight months, I spent between 10 and 20 hours a week reading resources, writing papers, responding to discussion posts, and running simulations.  Certain aspects of the education were quite simple for me.  Others were extremely difficult.  Learning complex accounting and finance principles from a textbook without the benefit of classrooms or attentive teachers is extremely difficult.  If I had not had access to a family member who had completed the same program seven month earlier than me, than I would have had a much harder time of it. 

An MBA from Walden University is not, nor will it ever be, comparable to an MBA from Harvard Business School.  It seems unlikely that someone will graduate from Walden with an MBA and go immediately from waiting tables to working at a huge wall-street brokerage making a $500,000 salary and multi-million dollar bonuses (although almost nobody is doing that in this economy).  This is an executive MBA program, meant specifically for people who are already working.  The skills and knowledge that make up this program are honed more specifically for people who are already in the workplace—people who want to get a raise or a promotion, who find to find a better job, or make something more of their lives.  In that respect, Walden is more valuable for the knowledge it imparts than its credential.  Yes, having an MBA on a resume looks impressive, regardless of what school granted it.  But an MBA from Walden will not be the same as an MBA from the top-ranked business schools in the country.

A Walden MBA is also not really suited for academic use.  Following the completion of my Walden MBA, I would not feel comfortable jumping into a PhD program in business at a brick and mortar school.  Nor, I believe, would a PhD from Walden be good enough to help land a teaching position at most brick and mortar business schools.  The audience and purpose of an education through a vehicle like Walden is just too different.

Does my Walden MBA have value?  Absolutely.  On completion of my program, I received a nearly 20% raise and a promotion.  I was also interviewing at the time, and was called into interviews during this very difficult economy due to my MBA.  I understand and can speak the language of business now.  I thought I understood what was going on before, but I always had a difficult time explaining myself or justifying my business decisions because I couldn’t speak the same language everyone else was speaking.  That has been the greatest value to me.  The skills I’ve acquired have come in handy all along as I was finishing classes.  The act of reanimating my brain, of working out my learning muscles, has also been of exceptional value, as it has helped me to keep sharp and learn new skills on the job as well.

I have also found a great deal of value in the hard work of it all.  When I clicked my submit on my final paper, I nearly cried because it was like such a weight was instantly relieved.  I worked really hard during the last two years, and my schooling ruled my life.  I had no time for friends, for cooking, for cleaning.  It was work and school, work and school.  So anyone who things that a degree from Walden is a walk in the park is completely wrong.  It’s hard work, and I learned a lot.

I am under no delusion that a resume credential for Walden is the end all and bee all of educational pursuits.  That being said, immediately upon graduation, I am instantly at the average starting salary for an MBA graduate.  Not bad, considering I’ve only been in the business world for two years.  And my placement on the salary scale is, I think, a pretty good indication of the value of a Walden MBA.  It’s valuable, but not the most valuable.  It’s a prestigious credential, but not the most prestigious.  It’s a good education, but not the best education.  It’s better than average, but not by a whole lot.

Am I glad that I went to Walden?  Absolutely.  Would I do it again?  Well, I have no intention of EVER going back to school for another degree as long as I live, but if I had known then what I know now, yes, I probably would have gone through the Walden MBA process again.  It allowed me to work a demanding job, to work on my own time, and spend my focus on those topics which were most valuable and important for me.  Overall, I would consider Walden a good experience that could be improved, and my degree a very good, hard-earned degree which has helped me transition into the world of business much more smoothly.