Abstract:

The constraints of the pandemic have put education in general and business education in particular in the face of a major digital transformation. Students, professors and all administrative processes were forced to go online overnight. How business education has changed today: can we say that the digital environment is its new reality? Are its participants ready for it? How have the parameters for assessing the quality of MBA programs changed within the transition to online? This work is devoted to these issues.

According to Klaus Schwab, digitalization involves a fundamentally new unification of the "physical, digital, and biological worlds" through technology. Indeed, the distance format of educational programs requires building new business processes, as well as the formation of a fundamentally new educational environment, which is physically wider than the university, provides a new educational experience. Traditional educational structures should rethink their management approaches and look for new «fulcrums» in order to remain in demand in an increasingly competitive market.

We have identified MBA programs as the focus of our research. Within the framework of this paper, two issues were investigated. The first question is related to the study of consumer behavior at the stage of choosing MBA programs during the pandemic. The second question is related to the study of how its participants (students and teachers) perceive the process of distance learning, including those who were forced to switch from face-to-face programs to online in the context of the pandemic: their perception of the benefits and difficulties they faced .

As research methods, we used online questionnaires of students and teachers of MBA programs of the Faculty of Economics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University conducted in January and April 2021. The results of the study were compared with our survey conducted and described in 2019.

The survey results showed that choosing an MBA program is a carefully considered consumer decision. It was analyzed how the applicants choose the training program, what motivations they are guided by and what goals they set for themselves. The main factors of competitiveness of online MBA programs were identified as the team of teachers, the brand of the university, the content of the program, the availability of an online educational platform and international accreditation. These factors should be the focus of the management of MBA programs.

Another important conclusion of our research can be considered the fact that today we can talk about the high readiness of students and teachers of the MBA of the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University for remote learning, since most of them positively assess their experience of online learning. In our opinion, the results of the study indicate in favor of the implementation of mixed formats of programs (blended learning). The perceived benefits and key challenges associated with distance learning for both trainees and teachers were identified. Their analysis allows us to develop a system of measures to improve the management of remote learning, as well as to adjust the strategy for the development of MBA programs in the future.

Keywords:

Management in further education, digitalization of education, consumer choice parameters, MBA.