South College DBA

[cc95]

7/13/2024 Update:

Completed all the Formative assignments for the 1st course and submitted my Final Summatives 1 and 2 on 7/12/24. Awaiting feedback, meanwhile submitted first 2 Formative assignments for 2nd course DBA 6525 - Business Law, Ethics and Social Responsibility.

7/28/2024 Update:
Completed the last 2 Summatives and submitted for DBA 6525 - Business Law, Ethics and Social Responsibility. Awaiting feedback, need to complete the End of Course survey. 

Next course will be DBA 6635 Organizational Behavior and Dynamics.. hope to see it in my Student Canvas within a day or two.

In your opinion is a background in business or a prior MBA essential for success in this program?

I have a management degree, but nothing specific to business, not a background of any sort in business leadership.

Or is it enough of a generalist program that anyone could succeed?

My WGU MBA certainly helped due to the similarity of formatting, learning modules, deliverables, and communication with the instructors. The material builds on real world experience of management or management-adjacent leaders. The assignments are based on how to implement the learning material in your specific field/career/discipline. 

The first course is very much an advanced refresher of an MBA/MSML degree. The next requires more research, APA formatted documentation, tying in the learning to work situations past and future. 

I don't think you need a MBA or Management degree to succeed. The material covers everything you need, however, knowing what to spend time on and what to digest quickly is key. Also, you really can't fake the details requested. If you haven't worked in certain business scenarios or are unaware of operations/leadership in practice, you'll have difficulty because each builds on the previous.

That being said, I'm only 3 courses in, it may be different based on each instructor and lesson.

With your business background, I think you'll do fine. For me, the real benefit to a business background is that it helps speed up deliverables because I already have competencies in many of them and its part of my career. Applying new learning and research to these are not too straining. 

I should also add that my wife graduated from VUL's DHA a couple years ago, she had me reviewing some of her documentation to see if what she wrote made sense from my perspective as non-industry, non-student (outsiders). Because of this review of her research, I also had a general idea of what to expect in a doctoral program going into it.