The Graduate School at ILM is announcing the inclusion of no-cost-to-students digital textbooks as part of its industry low $67 per credit hour tuition for the Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. This represents a reduction in cost in the program for students of between $1,000 and $2,000 dollars. Further, ILM offers no-cost-to-students exam proctoring using a webcam eliminating the only other costs specific to the program outside of tuition.
“I have spent the last couple weeks talking to people from all over the world with a focus on discussions concerning developing countries. We have discussed the imperative of access to education at great length.” Said Dr. David Lady, Provost for ILM. “I was reminded by some very bright people that in the US we assume everyone can go to amazon.com and order anything they want with a credit card. Well in most places folks can’t do this, or if they can, buying a $200 textbook and paying $85 to have it shipped to them in say Myanmar is ridiculously cost prohibitive. That would be 279,869 Kyats in the currency of Myanmar.
That’s the equivalent to 300 liters of milk, enough for a family of five there for an entire year. “I’m just not going to ask people to decide between buying milk for their children and buying a textbook for their education.” Dr. Lady continued. “That’s a ridiculous choice to have to make. “The world runs on commerce and the MBA is the generalists guide to efficiently competing in markets. The more people that are able to access and learn from the body of knowledge that exists here, in a quality resource rich educational environment where they are appropriately guided and challenged, the better equipped they will be to start improving their own quality of life as well as that of their fellow citizens.”
The ILM MBA program is $3,000 in tuition. With the inclusion of digital textbooks and the ability to have exams proctored at no cost, the program is the lowest cost in North America and one of the most accessible MBA programs in the world. “Our hope is to build an international body of students who can start to establish a network of both information sharing and relationships.” Dr. Lady concluded. “My experience is that smart reasonable people, if given the same information and same goals, will generally reach the same conclusions. We all need to start doing our part to reach the simple goal of making real education available to those who desire it.”
