Hello,

I'm a long-time entrepreneur, who is looking for a way to improve my general business knowledge. I am trying to decide whether it's worth it or not to do a full-time MBA program. My dilemma is this: two years a long time to commit to a degree, and it's expensive.

I am considering just hashing together a bunch of classes from the online providers (which are mostly free now.) Darden, MIT Sloan, and Stanford are all offering free online courses - and it looks like I could cover most of the standard business school bases (finance, operations, marketing, supply chain, etc.)

I know that there are other things that make a two-year program worth it, but for somebody like me, wouldn't MOOCs be a good option? (I wouldn't need career services and my network is pretty well-defined already.)

There are some differences. The soft skills are the most obvious.

I'd also suggest you look at online courses that seriously involve tutors, assignments and feedback: the ability to get help with stuff you don't understand is worth paying for. Take a look at http://create.stanford.edu/index.php

I agree with Duncan's point about soft skill development. Maybe it's worth mixing MOOCs with some executive programs that focus on leadership or soft skills?

http://www.nextexecutive.com/topics/leadership
http://www.nextexecutive.com/topics/soft-skills

It might be worth targeting these individually, since they usually can't be developed in a purely online setting.

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll start with a few MOOCs and see how far they get me with the business fundamentals, and if I start seeing a need for more soft skill development, maybe something like this would fit.

Perhaps eventually I will seriously consider short courses like these just for soft skills; but it also might be just as good of an investment to do a part-time MBA program or an online program with residency sessions. Not sure yet.

Good call, an online MBA that includes some on-campus sessions could be a way to go. UNC, IE, and Warwick are good ones to start with. Some, like Warwick, even offer options for consultancy projects, which are valuable for soft skill development.

Definitely a possibility in the future, but a little more than I wanted to invest currently. I think I'll stick with the MOOCs for now and see where that leads me.