Why take two years to complete a full-time MBA program when you can do it one?
The Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri-Kansas City will offer a new one-year, full-time MBA program that’s being described as a “career accelerator” for candidates with extraordinarily high potential. For its first two years of operation, the program will offer free tuition to admitted students.
Admission requirements will be elevated. To be considered for the program, students must possess not only a bachelor’s degree, but have at least two years of experience in a for-profit business. They must also score a minimum of 650 on the Graduate Management Admission Test (only about 20 percent of students who take the GMAT score 650 or higher).
The free tuition will be provided by the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation, and take classes that combine innovative entrepreneurship and traditional business training. The one-year program requires students to finish 42 hours of coursework and includes a paid internship and a three-week “global experience.”
“This program will allow the Bloch School to reach a new level of quality,” said Henry W. Bloch, Bloch School patron and chairman and director of the Marion and Henry Bloch Family Foundation, in a release. “We want to continue to be recognized as an outstanding school of business, so we need to grow and add new programs that will benefit the Kansas City business community. The new Bloch intensive full-time MBA’s innovative curriculum will transform the way students approach challenges and prepare students to lead in today’s fast-changing business world.”
The new Bloch MBA program is one of only about 20 such one-year MBA programs in the nation accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), including Cornell, Emory and Northwestern universities.
“Graduates of this program will become collaborative, team-building problem-solvers who see solutions that elude others,” said Dustin Cornell, the Bloch School’s director of MBA programs. “They will be well-equipped to become the business leaders of the future. We can keep a lot of these high-potential young people here in Kansas City if the right relationships are built and the right opportunities develop for them. We’re eager to partner with local companies to offer internships, guest lectures, networking opportunities and sponsorship opportunities for student programs and events.”
