Highly Accessible Nature of the Moore School Professional MBA program

With the University of South Carolina PMBA program, a well-respected MBA is closer than you think.

You don’t have to amass huge amounts of student debt to earn a quality business degree. The best part, with eight classroom sites and a flexible, distance-learning format, the Professional MBA program allows you to access your coursework in your region.

While the Darla Moore School of Business is physically located on UofSC’s main campus in Columbia, South Carolina, seven distant classrooms join the Professional MBA program classroom in Columbia. Professor Bob Lipe, the faculty director for the PMBA program, said the “telepresence” technology used in the PMBA program allows students to learn alongside their peers, even if they are situated in various locations across the state.

“In my class, students attending in Greenville, for example, feel like they are in one big classroom where they can gain insights from me in Columbia or another student in Charleston, even though we are many miles apart,” Lipe said. “Yet, when it is time for an in-class group exercise, the Greenville students huddle with their colleagues in the classroom for in-person debate of the problem I have assigned. The experience is like being in a classroom where all of the students are learning together without the long drive to Columbia each week.”

Further, if a student’s work schedule or other commitments interfere with their ability to be present in one of the live classrooms, a web-based platform for lectures is available. This allows students to be a part of the class from wherever they may be. During the spring 2020 semester, Lipe said he had a student complete his course via the web-based platform from Wuhan, China.

The web-based platform allows students to attend sessions from virtually anywhere. Nicholas Fernandez, a PMBA student who enrolled in the program when he lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, received a professional promotion in the middle of his MBA coursework that required him to move to Florida. Fernandez was able to complete the program virtually; he plans to graduate in summer 2020.

“As you can imagine, this promotion was a great opportunity for me as it was a chance to participate in an executive role at a regional level,” Fernandez said. “Luckily, I have full flexibility to complete the PMBA program, but I definitely rely on the remote connectivity [to complete my coursework].”

Lipe added that the synchronous component of the PMBA courses, which allows students and professors to interact during every session, is far superior to fully asynchronous online programs offered by some competitors. Even if students’ schedules prohibit them from attending the live sessions, they can watch the replay of the course and still benefit from the live instruction.

Whether class is attended live from a distant classroom, your own home or a different country, the Moore School PMBA program allows working professionals like you to earn a valuable MBA degree that can advance your career.