ENEB Master Thread

[Thorne]

Let's stir the pot again!   

I've reviewed (briefly) 4 or 5 of the final project assignments at this point. I personally do not feel that the effort required for these degrees rises anywhere close to the level of a traditional B&M MBA in the US, or even a course-based online MBA.

Reviewed or completed? I'm not going to argue that it reaches the level of a traditional B&M MBA in the USA, but I have had several contacts of mine with MBAs from less-prestigious, lower-ranked schools who looked at the program with me, looked at the grading standards and what I put in to get a 10 (versus what I put in to get any lower grade) and thought it was pretty close, workload-wise, to their programs. Again, none that were prestigious, but small universities with their dime-a-dozen online MBA programs that their employers paid for 2-3 years ago. Also, none that were ACBSP, AACSB, or IACBE accredited, just NA or RA.

I ask about reviewed vs completed because a friend of mine tried to answer the questions with 1-3 paragraph answers, total page length of 5-6 on the whole document, and was rather unceremoniously failed. The people in my "cohort" who have managed to get 9.5+ are almost all writing pretty comprehensive papers answering all the details, but YMMV, as is the usual fare in life.

I believe the workload is closer to a competency-based MBA (based on this reddit thread of what a WGU MBA looks like), with the exception that there are no proctored tests at all, only papers, so there exists a larger possibility of academic fraud.

This may well be true, but I'm not sure that there really is a higher possibility of academic fraud here than any other program. ENEB states that your papers must be unique and are reviewed for plagiarism, which we have just as much proof of as we have that WGU, Walden, or even Harvard do it. Hell, a friend of mine who did an online MBA in the states said that one day he turned in a 20 page paper for a class, worth 50% of his grade in said class, and received a 96 on the paper within 30 minutes of turning it in. Not at WGU, but at a public university in Texas.

The comments on his paper amounted to a pat on the back with no critique whereas any of my sub-10 papers at ENEB actually have specific feedback related to my paper. Not saying ENEB is better, but that acting like any American school is better on all fronts and suffers less potential for fraud seems like a reach to me.

Also, there are plenty of programs I found, when looking in Texas, that had no proctored examinations for their online graduate programs, only unproctored online quizzes and exams and large papers. Only reason I didn't go to one of those schools, as I like writing more than memorizing for tests, was cost. I couldn't afford $10k+ for a graduate program, so I waited.

This degree is probably worth less than the effort most will put into it. I think that most students will put in the effort that it's roughly equivalent to a competency-based MBA, and some, of course, will go above and beyond.

If I may be candid, it seems like many of these judgments come from a pretty specific perspective. While you say that the amount of effort put in at ENEB would be better put into Walden or WGU, you act like Walden or WGU carry some special power in the job market that ENEB/Isabel would lack. In truth, most of these unranked MBAs are just a slip of paper that says "MBA" and checks a box.  I honestly think that an MBA from Spain would look better than Walden, but that's just my impression of how terrible and predatory Walden has allegedly been.

However, I also think that the possibility of fraud is too high, further diluting the degree from it's already-shaky Groupon google rankings, and combined with the difficulties of explaining a Spanish postgrad degree on my CV, I will treat this as a learning experience, and possibly an opportunity to gain transfer credit for a US-based MBA program. I will not be including it on my resume, even if I don't go to a US-based MBA program.

You restated your points here and I don't see much value in rehashing what I wrote just for emphasis. If the degree won't work for you, or if you don't want to put it on your CV, that's your perogative. You're entitled to that opinion and that course of action, though I agree with eLearner -- if you think so low of the program, why are you even completing it?

As long as you're not going to slander people who do put it on their resume, or act like putting it on your resume is unethical, we'll get along fine. If you try to impose your own opinion of the program onto my life and use case, that's where we will start to have a problem. For me, this degree works and has proven to be quite useful even without officially having the diploma in-hand yet.  

I will also echo what Rachel said -- if you could afford to pay others to write your papers for you, you wouldn't be in any propio program, let alone this specific one. Maybe you'd go for a propio from the University of Barcelona for its prestige, but not one from schools like Miguel Cervantes, Isabel I, or Antonio Nebrija which would be similar to "graduate level community college" (thanks Rachel, this is my new favorite expression!).

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Speaking for only myself, the reason why people are reacting badly to yourself and our other resident poster who thinks his excrement doesn't smell, notice the difference in tone. Most of us have acknowledge the limitations of the degree and discussed those cases where it would or would not work, where it would be valuable or worthless, and have talked over the issues of accreditation, quality standards, curriculum, and so forth to death.

The only people who have been repeatedly slammed for their negative opinions are the ones who refuse to see the positives or overstate negatives to the point where they unilaterally make the degree worthless and millish.

You seem to be going down the latter road, not the former, with your recent posts. Accordingly, people were reacting more cordially when you initially spoke of ENEB and stated your concerns and are becoming progressively less so as you become almost belligerent in stating your opposition.

I wrote out the above response because I want to keep this conversation productive and not start having a knock down, drag out fight in the muck over this, but I also felt that it was important to explain where people might be taking issue with your latest comments.