Online MBA Forum

# posted by Mary @ 2:50 PM  

I can see what you mean about online courses having a higher drop out rate. However, I’d like to gently suggest two further reasons, not just support, that might influence this.

If you take a year out to do, say, an MBA or other higher degree, well, if you don’t do the degree then you know that you’ve wasted a year. You’ve gone off to school, bought your "I’ll be an MBA" pencil case, taken a sabbatical from work and paid all those fees and charges. Getting there and then dropping out is a fairly major decision.

If you do an MBA as a part-time student, or online, then the emotional, physical and monetary investments you’ve made are smaller. While the sunk cost fallacy is indeed a fallacy it is true that human beings react to it, so the decision to drop out is easier to make in the second situation.

There’s also the fact that a lot of "student support" is in fact peer pressure. Everyone at some point thinks that an MBA or other higher degree program is boring, tedious, or has doubts about its value. They’re not going to let you drop out and get away from that, not if they can help it!