by If you have $22,000.00USD burning a hole in your pants, you too, can incredibly buy an MBA on Facebook from the London School of Business and Finance. You watch free videos on Facebook to tether you in, and then, when you’re ready, you get officially admitted into the program and take exams and pay up.
The Global MBA app—introduced in October—lets users sample typical business-school courses like corporate finance and organizational behavior through the social-networking site. The free course material includes interactive message boards, a note-taking tool, and video lectures and discussions with insiders from industry giants like Accenture Management Consulting and Deloitte. This may be a good way to market a school, notes an observer from a business-school accrediting organization, but it may not be the best way to deliver courses.
Do we really find value in an MBA via Facebook — or is this just a cute accoutrement worn like a totem around the neck to ward off bogeymen and monsters under the bed — without increasing any intellectual value?
This Facebook MBA is actually a greater outrage against education than the ardent cheapening of a Masters degree from a three-year program, to a two-year program down to the current, ridiculous, one-year level for a “mastery” that now means nothing that now means nothing due to dilution and the lack of due diligence.
Can the 90-day PhD be far behind? Look for it soon coming to MySpace, along with the 140-day MD from Twitter.
If we don’t value a long-term, soaking, learning environment in the awarding of advanced degrees, then what is the point of even providing purchased diplomas that successfully unravel all the other degrees previously earned?
We don’t want Facebook to be our university, just as we didn’t want Microsoft to Own Quicken or Google to become the new Microsoft. Facebook is solely for piddling fun and never for plunging into our academic future.
Sniff! Is sure strange. Probably have a true Facebook MBA from Facebook university soon too.
I think you’re right about that, Anne! The Facebook U. MBA can’t be far behind!
Surely business will want candidates from the best universities? A ‘Facebook’ MBA wouldn’t stand up against an MBA from a real university? Would it?
The danger I see here is if these people work independently, self-employed, unsupervised. I did my six year slog to be able to work in my field and can only be accredited if I have regular supervision and continuing education. If you have $2000 you can do a ‘counselling’ course in 6 months and hang up your shingle. Not accountable to any professional body. These microwave courses are a ridiculous disgrace.
Excellent thoughts, kathe!
The — Rise of Credentialism — is too sweet a honeypot to pass up!
What a sad world we live in to get such “opportunities”. Next, clicking ‘like’ on facebook will get you the MBA.
It will probably be just as easy as that, Gordon!
I am looking forward to the day I can learn to perform open heart surgery on Facebook. How hard can it really be?
Ha!
I’m sure if you have enough MDs in your list of Facebook friends, Keith, you shouldn’t have too much trouble doing the whole thing through Facebook Chat or SMS!