Master of Business Administration — Online MBA
Experience the power of an AACSB-accredited online MBA — an MBA driven by the precise industry knowledge and analytic tools you need to lead your organization towards continued growth and success.
The online Master of Business Administration (MBA) program from the University of Delaware's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics aligns directly to your career aspirations by providing a solid foundation in business expertise, and building industry knowledge through concentrated coursework.
You'll confidently solve today's business challenges with innovative decision-making skills, the best analytical tools, and creative thought processes.
The University of Delaware’s MBA program is entirely online — so you can attend class where and when you’d like. And with GMAT and fee waivers available to eligible applicants, and scholarships available to qualified students, the UD MBA is convenient for working adults.
Ranked the #22 online MBA in the country by
U.S. News & World Report, 2018.
Online MBA Customized Curriculum
The online MBA curriculum can be completed in as few as 16 months to maximize the return on your educational investment — giving you the proof-point to help you move into an executive position faster. You can also opt to complete the degree at the pace that is best for you.
Career Focus
The program offers you a choice in five areas of emphasis: business analytics, healthcare, finance, strategic leadership, and international business. You can choose one or more concentrations — whatever best fits your career goals. The UD online MBA even offers a healthcare major for a deeper focus in this rapidly-growing field.
- Business Analytics. Learn to integrate data science, business strategy, and management science to leverage assets, optimize outcomes, and predict future results.
- Finance. If your passion is to build a company's value by optimizing current funds and finding new revenue avenues, concentrate your studies in finance. Experiential coursework in financial management, analysis, and reporting prepare you to lead organizational growth in corporate, investment, and international finance careers.
- Healthcare. If you want to advance in the rapidly-growing field of healthcare, this area of emphasis provides you with a competitive edge. You’ll improve industry and organizational metrics when you learn to operate in today’s health systems, including informatics, e-service, and patient experience. Gain a deeper focus with additional coursework with a healthcare major.
- Strategic Leadership. Strategic leadership goes beyond managing others, encompassing all of the skills and capacities needed to influence others, manage change, set strategic direction, build teams and support networks and navigate the complex analytical and human dimensions inherent in any leadership role.
- International Business. If your career goals include the global marketplace, you’ll want to focus your studies in international business. Critical coursework on financial modeling, marketplace globalization, and building an international network means you’re ready to lead your company anywhere in the world it wants to go.
- Multiple Concentrations. You can combine any two or more concentrations to gain greater flexibility in the job market and stand out as the best MBA candidate in your ideal career. For instance, if you’re interested in a finance career in a global company, you’ll benefit from the detailed knowledge the dual concentration in finance and international business provides.
- Customize Your Degree. You can also tailor your degree by selecting the electives that match your personal career needs.
The Lerner MBA is also offered on campus or in hybrid format. To learn more, visit the MBA on-campus programs.
Online MBA Program Benefits
- Earn your degree in as few as 16 months
- Learn with intensive, 7-week courses
- Entirely online format — learn when and where it's convenient for you
- Gain admission with any undergraduate background
- Learn from PhD-qualified faculty with extensive education and industry experience
- Gain access to a personal career coach and all other available student services
- Scholarships and financial aid may be available
- GMAT and fee waivers are available for qualified applicants
The online MBA curriculum can be completed in as few as 16 months. Online MBA courses sharpen your business skills by offering you a choice to complete your degree with a major, a choice of five concentrations, or a combination of concentrations.
Major/One Concentration: 44 Credits
Dual Concentration: 47 Credits
Triple Concentration: 53 Credits
Core Online MBA Courses
The following courses are required for all degree options:
Financial Reporting and Analysis, 3 Credits
Surveys concepts underlying financial accounting and external reporting. Provides an understanding of accounting methods, standards, and terminology so that students can interpret and evaluate financial statements. Students are encouraged to participate in class and group discussions involving contemporary investment issues and decisions.
Fundamentals of Analytics, 3 Credits
Focuses on data analysis for the purpose of measurement, inference, quality and productivity improvement, and improved managerial decision making. Exploratory data analysis, graphical analysis, descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, and techniques such as regression are covered.
Managing People, Teams and Organizations, 3 Credits
Develops a knowledge base and requisite skills for managing individual, group, and organizational processes through the use of diagnostic models, cases, and/or simulated exercises.
Economic Analysis for Business Policy, 3 Credits
Business-oriented overview of microeconomic and macroeconomic theory. Approximately two-thirds of the course will focus on microeconomics and one-third on macroeconomics.
Operations Management and Management Science, 3 Credits
Topics include decision analysis tools, mathematical programming, operations strategy, process management, and planning and inventory management concepts. Prerequisite: Fundamentals of Analytics
Ethical Issues in Domestic and Global Business Environments, 3 Credits
Topics include ethics in organizations, and problems and challenges dealing with external environment demands including global issues.
Marketing Management, 3 Credits
Management of marketing functions in modern profit and non-profit enterprises. Introduction to the marketing management process. Prerequisites: Financial reporting and Analysis & Economic Analysis for Business Policy
Financial Management, 3 Credits
Provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts of the finance function with an emphasis on the decision-making techniques relevant to financial and nonfinancial managers. Topics include valuation, risk and return, capital budgeting, cost of capital, financial analysis and planning, and working capital management. Prerequisite: Financial reporting and Analysis
Corporate Strategy, 3 Credits
Emphasizes total organization function and performance in a global environment. Examines general management responsibilities for determining objectives and future strategies and seeking commitment for their implementation, integrates functional course concepts to enhance decision making and communication skills through individual and group analyses of specific companies. Prerequisites: Financial Management, Operations Management and Management Science, Leadership and Organizational Behavior, and Marketing Management
Career Workshop: Emotional Intelligence and Critical Thinking, 1 Credit
Centers on decision-making as a critical leadership competency. You will see how decision makers learn to use both the emotional and rational sides of their brains to avoid being overwhelmed by their own emotional and cognitive biases. In this course, we will explore emotional intelligence and critical thinking as techniques for managing these biases to improve our decision-making and performance.
You will identify your default behavioral and decision-making preferences and biases through the use of a powerful self-assessment commonly used in large organizations as part of the recruitment and hiring process. Once you understand your natural preferences, you will examine how they may enable or thwart you in your leadership journey.
Career Workshop: Communicating, Branding and Career Networking, 1 Credit
Learning to communicate, network, and build a personal and leadership brand is useful in any role and in any type of organization, and essential to long-term success. This 1-credit course (12 contact hours total), is part of the required MBA program workshop series, taught in conjunction with BUEC 601 on Emotional Intelligence and Critical Thinking. There are no pre-requisites, apart from formal admission into the MBA program. This course is designed to be delivered as a series of 4, 3-hour workshops offered throughout a full semester of the MBA program.
Degree Options Courses
Prepare for excellence in your industry with your choice of areas of emphasis.
Business Analytics Concentration
The business analytics concentration consists of the following three courses, as well as two courses from other degree options.
Database Design and Implementation, 3 Credits
Introduces the fundamentals of modern database concepts. Covers relational database design and implementation techniques, as well as the current relational database standard - the structured query language (SQL). Explore advanced topics such as big data analytics.
Data Mining for Business Analytics, 3 Credits
Introduces fundamental strategies and methodologies for data mining along with the concepts underlying them, and will provide hands-on experience with a variety of different techniques in a business setting. Students will learn to use data mining tools.
Decision Analytics and Visualization, 3 Credits
Analytics leverages both the proliferation of data and the advancement of computational tools to bring a new level of sophistication to business decision making. As part of developing an analytic mind and skillset, this course teaches students to properly frame decision problems, represent and understand how to manage uncertainty inherent in those problems, manipulate large data sets using modern software to prescribe recommended actions, and to then compel organizational change through data visualizations.
Finance Concentration
The finance concentration consists of the following three courses, as well as two courses from other degree options.
Financial Modeling and Valuation, 3 Credits
Financial modeling techniques to value IPOs, mergers, private equity transactions, and leveraged buyouts. Explore the economic principles supporting these techniques and apply them to various transaction types using real financial data. Focus is on bridging the gap between theory and practice.
Corporate Financial Management, 3 Credits
Examines major policy-making areas in corporate finance and the impact of alternative policies on the value of the firm. Emphasis is placed on strengthening financial decision-making skills. Advanced topics include capital investment policy, financing and capital structure policies, dividend policy, and corporate control. Prerequisite: Financial Management.
Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management, 3 Credits
Examines the role and functioning of securities markets, valuation techniques, and the theory and practice of portfolio management. Topics include portfolio construction and evaluation metrics, relative valuation techniques and an introduction to derivative security pricing. Prerequisite: Financial Management.
Healthcare Concentration or Major
The healthcare concentration consists of the first three courses below, as well as two courses from other degree options. The healthcare major consists of all five courses listed below.
Population Health Informatics, 3 Credits
Integrates knowledge of healthcare information technology and public health data to support and facilitate individual and population health management and improvement. Focuses on the analysis and application of information technologies that support the provision of care including social context, availability of technology, and structure of information along with legal, regulatory, and ethical concerns. Emerging technologies and contemporary issues are highlighted.
E-Service Management in Healthcare, 3 Credits
The rapid pace of technological change as it relates to connectivity and communications is having a significant impact on healthcare service delivery. Due to enhanced mobility and the proliferation of faster service solutions in nearly all sectors of industry, customer expectations have arguably increased at a fundamental level. How can the healthcare industry adapt to this paradigmatic shift and yet provide high level of assurance expected of it in terms of the quality service? By taking this course, students will be able to evaluate, design and articulate e-service solutions in the healthcare industry. Concepts related to technology and e-services will be applied to a healthcare context using academic articles, industry reports and case studies.
Patient Experience and Engagement, 3 Credits
This course engages the healthcare community in critical issues facing the healthcare industry today. Due to CMS (Center for Medicare & Medical Services), HCAHPS and CGCAHPS requirements; as well as intense industry competition, the effectiveness of healthcare delivery is being measured by the quality of related direct and indirect services, including quality of accommodations, communication, and other auxiliary services. Many of these services are not medical in nature, rather they relate directly to patient experience and creating a culture of patient engagement. The goal is to make hospitals and medical practices truly hospitable and prepare current and future healthcare providers, doctors, NPs, nurses, healthcare scientists, students and allied healthcare professionals to deeply connect to the emotional side of patient care and experience. These emotional experiences, especially sensory landscape, effective communicating, and connecting with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures, are critical to patient engagement, patient confidence, and healing. Current hospital staff and future hospital managers need to be better prepared to face the changing healthcare environment and the increased focus on a total patient experience and engagement.
Leadership and Innovation in Population Health, 3 Credits (for Major only)
Examines theories of leadership and models of change and innovation in healthcare. Gain a systems perspective useful in analyzing the leadership and management needs of healthcare organizations. Examine the key drivers affecting contemporary healthcare delivery. Special emphasis will be placed on developing leaders capable of leading innovation and change in healthcare.
Policy and Finance for Healthcare Delivery, 3 Credits (for Major only)
Examines nursing leadership required for population health evaluation and service delivery with a specific focus on policy development and healthcare financing. Gain knowledge needed to position doctor ally-prepared nurses to develop, implement and evaluate policies, programs and financing structures to support innovative methods of decreasing rates of disease and increasing wellness to improve population health.
Strategic Leadership Concentration
The strategic leadership concentration consists of three of the following five courses, as well as two courses from other degree options.
Advanced Topics in Leadership and Teams (required), 3 Credits
Offers an in-depth perspective of leadership and an analysis of teams and teamwork. Emphasizes the practical application of theoretical concepts. Prerequisite: Leadership and Organizational Behavior
Selected Topics in Management and Leadership, 1 – 3 Credits
Examines selected special topics in management and leadership.
Negotiation & Conflict Resolution, 3 Credits
Explores the strategy and psychology of negotiation and conflict resolution, including topics such as effective preparation and understanding the role of communication, emotions, and relationships. Simulated negotiations provide the opportunity to put knowledge into practice and acquire feedback on negotiation and conflict resolution skills throughout the semester.
Leading Across Boundaries, 3 Credits
Leaders in organizations increasingly are called upon to be effective across multiple boundaries, such as different societies and language groups, national cultures, regional subcultures, and levels of economic development. Examines the understanding and develops the ability to create connections and promote collaboration across boundaries.
Managing the Global Enterprise, 3 Credits
Focuses on the development of business strategies and management practices for managing the multinational business organization.
International Business Concentration
The international business concentration consists of the following three courses, as well as two courses from other degree options.
Managing the Global Enterprise, 3 Credits
Focuses on the development of business strategies and management practices for managing the multinational business organization.
Globalization and Business, 3 Credits
Assesses environmental, institutional, industrial, strategic, and organizational features of globalization and business. Considers frameworks that guide managers' understanding of globalization and business, how managers interpret the challenges and opportunities of globalization and the implications of globalization to professional development.
Financial Modeling and Valuation, 3 Credits
Financial modeling techniques to value IPOs, mergers, private equity transactions, and leveraged buyouts. Explore the economic principles supporting these techniques and apply them to various transaction types using real financial data. Focus is on bridging the gap between theory and practice. Prerequisite: Financial Management.
UD also offers an online Master of Science in International Business.
Multiple Concentrations
If you want to pursue one or more of the concentrations listed above, the UD online MBA allows you to take any combination of concentrations. This will deepen your level of customized knowledge and prepare you for your chosen career path.
Customized Degree Option
If you’re interested in a particular selection of electives to match your career goals, the online MBA allows you to select any 5 electives of your choice from the finance, healthcare, strategic leadership, or international business areas.
Admissions Requirements:
The admissions requirements for this program are:
- A bachelor's degree in any academic background from a regionally accredited institution
- GPA of at least 2.8
- 2 years of work experience
- GRE/GMAT scores. An exam waiver is available based on GPA, work, and math education history. An exam waiver may also be available to bachelor's graduates of the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics at UD. Speak to an admissions counselor to see if you qualify for an exam waiver.
Tuition
The tuition for this program is $900 per credit hour. If you choose the general or one concentration degree option (44 credit-hours), total tuition is $39,600. Total tuition increases if you select a double or triple concentration degree option. The double concentration degree option is 47 credits; a total of $42,300.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How long does it take to complete this program?
The online MBA can take as few as 16 months to complete, however, you can complete it at a pace that’s best for you. - When can I begin the program?
The program has six starts throughout the year. Contact an admissions counselor for specific term application deadline and class start dates. - Does this program require any on-site residencies?
No, you will not be required to visit the campus at any time for this program, however, online students are always welcome to visit the campus. - Is this program accredited?
Yes. The online MBA at the University of Delaware is delivered through the Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics, which has been accredited by AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) for more than 50 years. AACSB accreditation is the highest standard of accreditation for business schools in the world, and a distinction fewer than 5% of business schools worldwide have earned. - How do I apply for financial aid?
Submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at https://fafsa.ed.gov/. The University of Delaware’s school code is 001431. Federal financial aid for graduate programs is not determined based on need (as it is at the undergraduate level). Federal Unsubsidized loans are a very common source of funding for our grad students. Graduate students may borrow up to $20,500 per year. - Are there opportunities for career networking and career coaching?
Yes. Online students have full access to Lerner’s Career Services, which focuses only on Lerner students. The goal of the UD MBA is to help students and graduates explore and expand their career opportunities with a variety of opportunities such as personal career assessments, networking events, business leader speaker series, virtual workshops, career fairs, and more. Learn more about Lerner’s career resources here. - Is tutoring available in the program?
Yes. Online students may schedule tutoring sessions as needed for the following two courses: BUAD820 – Fundamentals of Analytics, and ECON503 – Economic Analysis for Business Policy. There is no additional cost for this service. - Will I have the opportunity to collaborate with peers online?
Yes. Coursework in the online MBA program frequently requires collaboration among classmates for case studies, seminars, and other program experiences. Weekly virtual office hours are also available in many classes to speak with the faculty. You can also schedule time for one on one conferences with your faculty as needed.
Fill out the Learn More Here form for more information about the University of Delaware online MBA.