California Miramar University

A Master’s of Business Administration, or MBA, is considered one of the best post-graduate degrees to obtain. Many see it as a valuable tool for learning advanced real-world business skills, as well as a way to earn more money. Depending on your chosen profession, though, the value of an MBA or online MBA varies.

Businesses know that a job candidate with an MBA has experience as well as upper-level skills. For some MBA candidates, their starting salary may be nearly double than that of a candidate with only an undergraduate degree. And while industries such as consulting and finance have typically sought out MBA graduates, more diversified employers are now looking for employees with higher education levels.

As the world’s needs change, so does the demand for MBAs. In the past, financial services and investment banking have been an MBA’s best options. Today, services in technology, energy, and health care have grown. They now need business leaders who can come up with cost-effective solutions. As a result, MBAs now have more room to explore interests beyond finance when using their degrees.

Some MBAs have higher degrees in law or medicine. In fact, some schools offer concurrent and online MBA programs that allow candidates to work on JDs and MBAs simultaneously. This can lead to a very lucrative career in corporate law.

While more employers value MBA degrees, salary levels still differ by industry. Consulting employees earn the highest median salary of MBA graduates, at $105,000. Industries close to consulting in earning potential include finance/accounting, technology, health care, and manufacturing. Nonprofit and government work is on the lower end, at around $70,000 as a median salary.

Remember that these are only averages, and that other factors can greatly affect your starting salary. Work experience and business contacts are huge, and are two great tools to have in your arsenal when applying for new jobs or trying to obtain a higher salary within your current company.

In addition, recognize that different industries offer varied growth opportunity. Careers in health care, for instance, may not lead to large growth, while a consulting career may lead to high-paying executive positions. Stock options and bonuses may also add to your earnings.

In the past few decades, the number of professionals earning their MBA has skyrocketed. However, in the long run, getting an MBA can prove crucial to your career and can be the difference between a five and six figure income.

Online education is a growing trend that removes the need for students to meet face-to-face with teachers in a classroom setting. Classes may include traditional educational components, such as discussions and lectures, which are supplemented with videos and other virtual communication methods. The many variations of online education, including the growing number of online MBA programs, are one of the strong suits of this emerging method of teaching and learning.

Online classes are often self-directed, requiring students to have a strong work ethic and ability to budget their time wisely. Students requiring constant supervision may struggle to keep up with coursework and fall behind. Other online learners complain of a disconnect between classmates and instructors. Good communication skills are an essential component to online education and students without this skill may have trouble receiving the feedback they need from instructors.

Students that do have these traits will excel in their online education. Nontraditional students, once discouraged by the difficulty of scheduling traditional classes, will find plenty of opportunities to complete their education while working or taking care of their family. Online courses are not constricted by time or location and can easily be adapted to fit any schedule. Online students are also not limited by the availability of local schools. Programs that once could only be completed in a new city are available in the student’s own living room. Additionally, different types of programs can supplement one’s current career at their own leisure, like an online leadership degree, making it more than just a purely educational experience. This flexibility in scheduling and location gives students more educational options than ever before.

Online education also enables students to maintain their schedules and “go to class” when they want to. Professionals can keep their jobs, earn a salary and rise through the ranks of a company while still completing a graduate degree online. Who wants to go to night class after spending all day in an office anyway? Those with family or household duties can study for and complete their degrees online while still maintaining other responsibilities. The self-directed nature of online education gives students the ability to create their own schedules and study where they want, when they want.

The benefits of online learning have significantly changed the face of traditional education by offering students more options in terms of scheduling, location and program availability. No longer limited by the constraints of a traditional classroom, students can take charge of their education in ways that were not possible before..

This is the first video of 3 we will be posting over the next few weeks from marketing guru Sherri Petro. This week is all about SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This analysis enables you to decide what type of strategy you want to employ for your business.

Once you take a step back and really analyze these four cornerstones of your business strategy, you can weigh all possibilities and consequences and then make an informed, sound decision.

The course is taught by Sherri Petro, M.B.A. Ms. Petro is the President of VPI Strategies, a San Diego based marketing consulting firm, where she focuses on research, strategy and communications. Her mission is to assist organizations in becoming more sustainable by breaking down barriers, creating understanding and making connections. Ms. Petro is a nationally renowned expert on generational motivation and its impacts in the workplace. Ms. Petro is an Adjunct Professor at California Miramar University and a 2010 Outstanding Professor of the Year award recipient.

Transcript of the Lesson

So what is SWOT analysis? It’s really the most traditional approach to taking a look at your organization. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, it’s a historical technique. What is a strength; what is a weakness; what is an opportunity; what’s a threat? A strength – internal; weakness – internal; opportunity, major favorable situation – external; and threat, major unfavorable situation – externally.

So remember when you’re thinking SWOT, SW: Strengths, Weaknesses – internal; Opportunities and Threats – external.

This one analysis allows you, once you take a look at the attributes, skills, pieces of your organization, to choose whether you want an aggressive strategy, a turn around strategy, a defensive strategy or a lets just get rid of it strategy. But there are some limitations of SWOT. It’s a moment in time. It does not talk about dynamism. And one of the things I’ve seen over the years of doing strategic planning is we pay attention to our strengths and not necessarily consider exactly what’s happening in the external environment. It would be what I would call hand or head in the sand strategic planning. We can over emphasize one part and not pay attention to another.

In some organizations we tend to get quite defensive. We’ll be looking at all of those weaknesses, not paying attention to the strengths, thinking that they are strengths, we can just keep them on the back burner instead of realizing that those strengths actually contributed so much to the organization and that you need to have a strategy to make sure those strengths don’t weaken. And another thing to consider, strength’s not necessarily a source of competitive advantage. A strength might not be something unique.

Transcribed by GMR Transcription

Last year saw San Diego pull out of its economic torpor. Tourism was up, as were payrolls; especially at the end of the year. What will 2012 bring? Here are some projections for San Diego in 2012:

The Chargers will find and solidify plans for their new home.

Year after year for the past several years, the Chargers have sought an upgrade to their playing field in order to please fans more. Unfortunately, although they have explored several options in Oceanside and Chula Vista, a final decision has yet to be made. For Chargers fans, there has been some disquietude as outside investors continue to pursue purchasing the Chargers in order to take them away from San Diego. Fortunately, 2012 will bring a final decision on the stadium; and whatever work is necessary will begin shortly thereafter.

The Navy will continue to try and repackage its downtown San Diego building project to meet everyone’s regulatory needs.

Sure it seems strange that the California Coastal commission would be the group that finally tells the Navy no, but consider this: A decade ago on the heels of watching the Pentagon be bombed by terrorists, the Navy floated the idea of putting its permanent headquarters in downtown San Diego, the largest tourist zone on the West Coast. It would seem that for security purposes alone, it was ill-advised. Turning the complex into a sort of Navy Disneyland to blend in with the tourists hasn’t met with success. Far better to take 9 holes out of one of the three full-length golf courses on neighboring Coronado, which are on-base, and build away.

Torrid Snapdragon sales will cause Qualcomm to expand as much as online MBA programs have in the past few years.

In a competitive market, Qualcomm has built another winner.

There will be calls in the US congress to revisit the BRAC or base closure process.

San Diego will need to begin the process to polish everything it has to keep everything open.

Distance learning is growing in popularity because of the many benefits that come with it. The fundamentals of distance learning include time management, affordability and a great degree. Distance learning has given working adults, stay at home parents and students the opportunity to pursue a degree without having to quit their jobs or leave their homes. Online programs put education right where it belongs: in the students’ hands.

An online education is usually more affordable than traditional, on-campus programs. Students also have the freedom to maintain a job and personal responsibilities and study where they want, when they want. Who wants to work all day and then drive to a campus and take night classes? Heading home after work, relaxing and studying at one’s own pace is definitely the most ideal situation for working professionals. On top of that, accredited online degrees are very reputed and are becoming more popular, as many employers give online degrees the same weight as on-campus ones. In the end, it’s the diploma that matters, not whether you went to a lecture hall or sat in front of a computer screen.

Why is distance learning great for getting an MBA?

A Master of Business Administration is one of the prevalent online degrees attainable. When a student earns a higher education degree such as a Master’s or Doctorate, they can expect more career opportunities. Usually a person with a Business Administrations degree already has a job but is looking for more ways to earn a higher salary or get a promotion.

An MBA online allows a person to keep their job and personal commitments while studying. A Master’s degree can be finished in two years, but the advantage of an online program is that it can be done in less time. There is also the opportunity to take longer if needed. There is no need to quit your job to attend day or night classes because everything is done online. An MBA through distance education puts the education in your hands. This means that you get to study at your own pace and get your degree when you want to.

Who benefits from distance learning with MBAs?

Many businesses are looking for people with work experience and higher education diplomas. A lot of people are getting their Bachelor’s degree, but not everyone is getting a Master’s, especially an MBA. International businesses can benefit from employees with MBAs, and of course, the employee sees countless benefits as well. Not only are MBA graduates’ starting salaries higher, but so are their average positions and opportunities to advance within businesses. Today’s global economic downturn has hurt the job market and consequently increased competition within the work force. When two professionals are vying for the same position and their only notable difference is their educational background, the person with the MBA is probably going to get the position over the person with only an undergraduate degree. MBA degrees have become invaluable assets in today’s business world and will only continue to grow in value as the world becomes more globalized.

Alright this week we’re going with a more technological lesson from MIS 6110: Management Information Systems. When starting your own business or trying to refresh/recreate the infrastructure of the business you work at, technology is one of the most important factors to consider. This is especially true for business in today’s globalized world. Check out the video and learn about different technological options available to businesses that can really mean the difference between enhanced productivity and time lost.

Transcript of the Lesson

So, from an infrastructure perspective, we have a variety of things to consider. When we talk about networking technologies, we really have – and again we are going to focus on this more in depth as we get into the classroom environment – but if you think about networking technologies, we really deal with a variety of different connectivity considerations. The first is a local connectivity consideration and that really relates to, ‘how do we interconnect within a geographically separated space, a geographically isolated space, those systems and those environments within that space?’ In this case, you’ll hear terms such as Local Area Network, LAN; you’ll hear terms such as 80211; or Wireless LAN, WLAN;you will hear terminology related to connectivity with Ethernet or fibre optics or some other specific kind of technology related to the local connectivity.

Infrastructure considerations in the local environment are extremely important. The reason for that is that the connectivity typically in the local environment extends not only from the individual machine, that the user might be using, but also back to the system components that allow access to those applications that provide business services, such as email or database access, etc.

We are going to talk more in depth about what the consideration is related to local area or LAN connectivity as well as some of the considerations related to wireless as we get into class. But it is important to understand that that is the first piece of this environment.

The second piece is the wide area network, where the connectivity outside of your local connectivity. And often times a wide area network, or WAN, is to find as connecting multiple LANs. That may or may not be the case in terms of modern technology but it is a common definition that makes sense moving forward.

So what is a WAN? Well, a WAN typically will utilise external services, such as point to point T1s, T3s, OCs – Optical Carriers, which we’ll talk about more in depth. They are typically leased or purchased from a carrier. Now this can change depending on the environment that you are in, in some cases a carrier will provide, what they call a dark fibre connection, for example, which is a dedicated service that’s leased to the organization that only that organization has access to. But for the most part and many other cases it is a shared leased service. For instance, the use of something like,Frame Realer and PLS. These types of environments are shared by multiple entities, managed and owned by the carrier and then the services are leased to the client.

So from a business perspective, its important to understand that there are multiple options as it relates to this kind of technology and this kind of connectivity and really the choice of connectivity depends to a large extent on what is the best alternative for the organization.

Video Transcription by GMR Transcription