U.S News Online MBA Ranking: Fox, Kelly, Kenan-Flager On Top

Online MBA courses are primarily aimed at those who want to enhance their professional profile without needing to take a sabbatical from work or leave the job for a full time MBA program. U.S. News & World Report has come out with their ranking of the Best Online MBA courses in the United States of America based on various criteria including qualified instructors, financial, technical and vocational support available and how selective the school is in admitting highly qualified applicants.

The Fox School of Business at Temple University, Philadelphia is ranked first, followed by Kelly School of Business at Indiana University and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in the Best Online MBA Programs listing by U.S. News & World Report.

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The 2016 Best Online MBA Programs ranking evaluates schools based solely on data related to their distance education MBA programs, U.S. News said. Non-MBA graduate business degrees, in areas such as finance, marketing and management, have been assessed separately for a different ranking, Best Online Graduate Business Programs.

The ranking has been done using five criteria, Student engagement (28%), Admissions selectivity (25%), Peer reputation (25%), Faculty credentials and training (11%) and Student services & technology (11%).

Programs with overall scores at the bottom 25% were categorized as Rank Not Published. While U.S. News calculated numerical ranks for these schools, it did not publish them.

For the 2016 rankings, seven schools were designated as unranked because they reported having fewer than 10 students enrolled or because their programs were less than a year old at the time of the data collection, it added.

The data was collected by compiling a list of business schools offering MBA programs online and sending statistical questionnaires to the institutions. Respondents were asked if they would be offering an MBA program through Internet-based distance education courses in the 2015-2016 academic year.

Between the start of data collection in August 2015 and the October 2015 closing date, 228 schools said they would be offering online MBAs in accordance with the definition (as laid down by U.S. Department of Education on internet based distance education courses), while the rest either said they would not or chose not to respond.

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In the rankings, Fox gets impressive figures of 95 for faculty credentials and training which measures how well a school prepares qualified instructors to teach remotely. It has a maximum possible value of 100. It gets 80 for student’s services & technology (measures amount of financial, technical and vocational support available), 98 for student engagement (student satisfaction and instructor responsiveness) and 100 for admissions selectivity.

Fox has a rolling application deadline with 92% of students already employed at the time of enrolment. All the online classes are recorded and archived. The total enrolment is 240 with 2015-2016 Tuition fee per credit at $1,245 (for part-time/full time/in-state/out of state).

Second placed in the rankings, Kelly claims that 100% of students are already employed when they first enrol. It offers Kelley Direct that allows students, in addition to the flexibility inherent in an online program, 2-5 years to complete the program. The tuition fee, per credit, is $1,300 (for part-time/full time/in-state/out of state).

Kenan-Flagler in the third rank, has a flexible program of 18-36 months and individual career management plans tailor specifically to professional goals. The tuition fee is per credit $1,510 (for part-time/full time/in-state/out of state).