SMART MOVE.

• Author: Saylor, Teri
• Position: HIGHER ED: CONTINUING EDUCATION

MBA programs statewide were forced completely online by the COVID-19 pandemic. They aren't looking back, much to the approval of students and businesses.

Many executive education programs have included online learning components for years. But the importance of attending virtual classes recently skyrocketed.

The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped how we learn, live, work and play. Most of these changes can be traced back to stay-at-home orders, which kept people apart to slow the communicable virus's spread. Many daily functions, from shopping to work, went virtual. A high-speed internet connection and smartphone, tablet or computer are all you need to participate.

Virtual classrooms make learning more accessible. That was a big reason why UNC Wilmington's Cameron School of Business decided to pivot its MBA program to online learning even before the pandemic arrived in early 2020. "We were lucky that we had already launched our online MBA program before COVID hit," says Nivine Richie, Wilmington's associate dean for graduate and international programs and a professor of finance. "We had decided how we were going to set it up and what the teaching model would look like, so we weren't forced to build the plane while it was flying."

With courses and technology in place, Richie says all that remained was moving Wilmington's face-to-face MBA program to the virtual world. It has been a popular decision. She says the school's hybrid and face-to-face programs have ended because students are choosing the convenience of remote study. The program's enrollment was 623 this year, up from 152 in 2019. Fortune.com ranked it the country's third fastest-growing online MBA program in May.

UNC Pembroke's MBA program is seeing similar success. The school's two-decades-old traditional MBA program started an online-virtual hybrid option in 2017. Jeff Bolles, interim MBA director and lecturer at Pembroke's Thomas School of Business, says about 135 students were enrolled. Two years later, the university phased out the face-to-face component and took the program exclusively online.

Pembroke struck a partnership with Academic Partners, which helps universities develop online education, in 2019. It led to an accelerated MBA program, allowing students to earn a degree quickly by compressing the 36-credit hour program into seven weeks, making it less expensive and more efficient than traditional programs. "Many of our students work while going to school, and they, along with...