Many Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree programs share common courses. Many schools often offer MBA specializations and concentrations, helping degree candidates pursue specific career paths.
However, the online MBA program from Northern Kentucky University (NKU) takes an unusual approach to degree specialization. Students can choose two areas of programmatic emphasis out of 11 innovative options. Or, they can “mix and match” courses from any area of focus.
This flexibility allows degree candidates to customize their MBA according to their interests or career goals. Or, students can focus on a broad array of business functions and skill development. This combination of specialization, customization and the versatility gained from a breadth of study is unique in modern business education.
How Is NKU’s MBA Program Organized?
All students complete eight “essentials” courses totaling 16 credit hours. These courses focus on core business subjects like accounting, finance, marketing, strategic management, legal issues and information systems. This foundation of business studies provides degree candidates with the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in managerial roles in any functional area of a business.
Students also complete 12 credit hours’ worth of courses from 11 emphasis area course stacks. Some stacks focus on traditional business specializations like marketing, human resources, finance and leadership. Others explore more modern or niche areas of study like data analytics, innovation through competitive intelligence, global supply chain management and healthcare commercialization.
Finally, all students complete an essentials review course and an MBA capstone, reinforcing and synthesizing what they have learned throughout the degree program.
What Are the Benefits of Such a Customizable Degree?
Customizing MBA studies to such a high level can help graduates find successful career paths in numerous ways. Some jobs require very specialized, advanced knowledge and skills. Having earned an MBA with a specialization related to that job area demonstrates a job applicant has developed the necessary knowledge and skills.
Students who complete two emphasis area stacks in NKU’s online MBA program effectively graduate with dual specialization. This can make them very employable for job roles that require particular combinations of skills and knowledge. In this way, students can customize their MBA to target specific, in-demand job positions in high-growth fields, leveraging their education for ideal careers.
For instance, according to analysis from TopMBA of TransparentCareer research, “30 percent of jobs aimed at MBAs in 2020 belonged to the tech industry.” Data analytics, business analytics and business intelligence are huge components of tech-driven businesses. Therefore, these are also the main topics students study in NKU’s data analytics course stack.
Now, consider that a “greater need for responsible leaders” was chief among the top business education trends for 2021. The Princeton Review also singles out increased management and leadership opportunities as the most important benefits of earning an MBA.
Considering these factors, an NKU MBA student could take both the data analytics course stack and the leadership course stack. This combination of specialized study could position graduates to take advantage of the current demand for leaders in the tech-driven business world.
Furthermore, students who select courses from a variety of stacks could tailor their education to be even more specific or broader in scope. For example, an aspiring entrepreneur student might want to start an analytics-based fintech (financial technology) company. The student could combine courses from the finance stack, data analytics stack, leadership stack and legal studies stack to help them succeed in their specific entrepreneurial venture.
When combined with every NKU MBA student’s foundational courses, this entrepreneurial set of interdisciplinary studies would be uniquely broad while still focused on a specific purpose. This breadth of study is common for entrepreneurs, as they take on a variety of responsibilities in the startup process.
But the movement toward more interdisciplinary studies in business education is valuable to employers in many sectors, notes BusinessBecause. A broad, multidisciplinary MBA program can give students a combination of general business acumen and technical, critical-thinking and leadership skills.
A great degree of what MBA students learn is transferable to various professional roles and industries. HigherGrad highlights how these transferable skills benefit MBA holders in terms of job security and versatility, meaning MBA grads can explore a variety of careers in different fields. This potential improves a professional’s career resiliency and options amidst disruptions of all sorts.
NKU’s online MBA design gives students the freedom to design educational and career paths of their choosing. All the while, students develop broadly applicable skills in an array of business management subjects, affording them a great deal of career versatility. This can be crucial to success in today’s constantly changing and evolving business world.
Learn more about Northern Kentucky University’s online Master of Business Administration program.
