MS IS&A experience at Western Governor's University

[rebel100]

I hope I don't have to find proctors for the Healthcare MBA - that would suck - I'd much rather write.

I doubt it's different than the regular MBA. You change out a couple classes. I think you drop Supply Chain and pick up a class on The Joint Commission...uggh. And there is perhaps one more swap.....it's almost certain to be writing.

[Ace_King]

Hey Rebel, so what decided you to take on the WGU MBA program? I told some people I am considering an MBA but I keep getting, "Oh you know the markets are flooded with people with MBA's good luck" etc. I tell them the same thing could be said with lawyers and even nursing degrees. That's really what I am interested in though, nothing else really fits me.. I feel like our economy runs on businesses and the future will be decided if businesses want to stay here or out-source to other countries and that an MBA could possibly help me if businesses get to booming back in America.

[rebel100]

Hey Rebel, so what decided you to take on the WGU MBA program? I told some people I am considering an MBA but I keep getting, "Oh you know the markets are flooded with people with MBA's good luck" etc. I tell them the same thing could be said with lawyers and even nursing degrees. That's really what I am interested in though, nothing else really fits me.. I feel like our economy runs on businesses and the future will be decided if businesses want to stay here or out-source to other countries and that an MBA could possibly help me if businesses get to booming back in America.

A few reasons:

First, As an Emergency Manager who really wants to be an Emergency Management Director some day I felt that I needed a Masters. After trying the MAIS at WNMU (really long 16 week semesters) I decided that for the my purposes a general MBA was a better fit. Once I realized WGU was self paced and that paying for a semester was 6 months...it became an easy decision.

Secondly...as you likely know my Undergrad from COSC is in liberal studies, the MBA is a way to prove business skills to the broadest possible employer base...make sense?

Third, I would like to teach EMS/Emergency Management/Business at the CC level...the regionally accredited WGU MBA should make me at least basically qualified to go after those teaching slots.

I would agree that it's tough to find a job, any job, right now. I wouldn't go out and spend 10's of thousands on any Masters program right now...but all said and done the WGU MBA should be less than $7000.00. That's the price of a used car, how can spending 7K on a Masters be a bad thing?

[Ace_King]

Nice, yeah $7,000 is not bad. Heck you can even go for your PhD and still be somewhat debt-less?

[jtalama]

5 month update:

I'm coming to a close on my 1st term in MS IS&A at WGU. So far it's been an interesting ride. I have 4 classes this term. I completed my first two classes within the first month and 1/2. COV2, which is basically the CCENT cert, really threw me for a loop. I didn't study enough and failed the first attempt. Luckily, WGU pays the exam fee for the first two attempts; after that the student needs to pay for any additional attempts. The other thing is that after you fail, you need to wait 2 weeks before re-taking the exam and it can take several days for scores to be recorded and receive an exam voucher. Well, I failed twice. So that severely prolonged my time with this course. By the way, if you ever take the CCENT cert, be sure to know IP subnetting like the back of your hand! It will also help if you actually want to obtain the cert; in which case I did not. That's another story.

I'm going on 2 weeks into my Cyberlaw course TFT2 and half done. I've got 2 papers to write with the last paper expected to be a bit more involved. The material is very dry, but it's better than learning about network administration (ie: CCENT). We are asked to modify and create policies based on regulatory compliance, such as HIPAA, PCI and borrowing from ISO 2700x, NIST Special Publication 800 series. Overall, the papers aren't difficult if you're familiar with compliance and policies. If you're taking COV2, be sure to know subnetting as this may impact the pace of your studies.