Master of Business Administration General Online
Gain an edge in your career by expanding your business knowledge and sharpening your managerial skills in the SOU online MBA.
3/17/25
Next Application Due Date
3/31/25
Start Classes
Program Overview
Discover the SOU accelerated General MBA online
$19,350*
Total Tuition
As few as 16 months
Program Duration
45
Credit Hours
The Master of Business Administration General online program is designed to broaden your knowledge base in all the major functions and practices of a business (accounting, marketing, finance, operations management, organizational behavior, economics, and information systems) and to help hone core competencies essential for business leadership.
Critical topics such as leadership, teamwork, ethics, and effective communication are embedded in the program to further develop your ability to succeed in high-performing management roles. Plus, you can tailor this flexible online MBA to suit your goals with your choice of electives. Earn your master’s in as few as 16 months while you continue working by taking advantage of online courses that are seven weeks long with multiple start dates throughout the year.
In the general concentration program, you will learn to:
- apply critical-thinking and leadership skills to solving problems and conflict resolution,
- use organizational theory and policy implementation to facilitate and manage change,
- appraise and examine financial and managerial accounting information for planning, control, and decision-making,
- develop a framework to evaluate ethical and legal issues in the conduct of business activities,
- assess the impact of decisions regarding the selection and implementation of key information systems and emerging technologies,
- evaluate opportunities and challenges in global, economic, political, social, and technological environments using qualitative and quantitative techniques, and
- analyze and evaluate strategic business issues across business disciplines and conduct research-based plans for implementing solutions.
Also available online:
SOU offers our online Master of Business Administration in a variety of concentration areas. Explore all of our online MBA programs.
$19,350*
Total Tuition
As few as 16 months
Program Duration
45
Credit Hours
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Tuition
Our budget-friendly tuition is a great value
The SOU Master of Business Administration General online program features the same affordable, pay-by-the-course tuition whether you reside in Oregon or outside the state.
Tuition breakdown:
$19,350*
Total Tuitionx
$430
Per Credit Hour
Master of Business Administration General Program Tuition and Fees
The following is the tuition breakdown for the MBA General degree program.
| Program | Per Credit Hour | Per 3 Credit Hours | Per 4 Credit Hours | Per Program |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MBA General | $430 | $1,290 | $1,720 | $19,350* |
Note: SOU credit hours are quarter hours. 45 SOU hours = 30 semester credit hours.
Fees: There is a $60 application fee, an $85 graduation fee, and a $65 course fee for the ETS Major Field Test in MBA 514. Proctoring fees, if required, are not included.
*Tuition and fees are subject to change.
Tuition breakdown:
$19,350*
Total Tuition
$430
Per Credit Hour
Calendar
Our application deadlines and class schedules
The Master of Business Administration General online program is convenient and accessible for working professionals. All courses are seven weeks in length, with multiple start dates each year. View the calendar to see upcoming starts and related due dates.
Now enrolling:
3/17/25
Apply Date
3/31/25
Class Starts
| Term | Start Date | App Deadline | Registration Deadline | Tuition Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter | 1/6/25 | 12/23/24 | 1/2/25 | 1/10/25 |
| Spring | 3/31/25 | 3/17/25 | 3/26/25 | 4/4/25 |
| Summer 1 | 6/16/25 | 6/2/25 | 6/11/25 | 6/20/25 |
| Summer 2 | 8/4/25 | 7/21/25 | 7/30/25 | 8/8/25 |
Now enrolling:
3/17/25
Apply Date
3/31/25
Class Starts
Have questions or need more information about our online programs?
Ready to take the next step toward earning your degree online?
Admissions
Qualifications for our General MBA online program
The Master of Business Administration General online admission process is streamlined to help you get started right away. Requirements for full admission include:
Admission Requirements:
- Bachelor's degree from an accredited institution
- 2.75 GPA with three years relevant experience or 3.0 GPA
MBA General Online Admission Requirements
- Applicants with a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution and transcripts verifying a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale are granted full admission status into the MBA General online degree program.
- Applicants with a minimum GPA of 2.75 qualify for full admission status by verifying three or more years of relevant work experience within the application.
- Provisional admission status is available for applicants with an undergraduate GPA lower than 2.75 who have three years of relevant work experience. Students admitted on a provisional basis must earn a B or better in courses taken during their first term in order to continue in the program.
- Applicants must submit transcripts from all previous educational institutions attended.
- International student applicants interested in enrolling in the SOU online Master of Business Administration program should contact the Office of International Programs for information related to international admissions and visa restrictions. Contact the Office of International Programs by emailing [email protected].
Southern Oregon University considers you an international student if you are NOT a:
- U.S. citizen or national;
- U.S. permanent resident or other eligible noncitizen.
Graduate Admission Requirements for International Students:
- Applicants must have a bachelor's degree equivalent to a four-year U.S. bachelor's degree from a recognized university in that country.
- Transcripts from all colleges and universities attended; documents must be official and include an English translation. Applicants are required to have documents mailed to SOU in a sealed envelope from the school, which has not been opened.
- SOU will not accept scans, faxes, photocopies, or already opened documents.
- TOEFL or IELTS score
- If English is not your native language, you will need to submit a TOEFL or IELTS score.
- You do not need to submit a score if you earned a bachelor's or master's degree from a U.S. college/university or completed your education in a native English-speaking country.
If you need to submit official documents by mail, send them to:
SOU Admissions Department1250 Siskiyou Blvd.
Ashland, OR 97520
Have a question? Call us at 800-490-7974800-490-7974.
Courses
Read about our online business classes
In order to earn the Master of Business Administration General online, you must complete 13 courses (45 credit hours), covering 33 credit hours of core courses (including a capstone course) and 12 credit hours of electives.
You must take the following courses.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Students learn how to plan and implement effective marketing strategies through case analysis and research in strategic applications. Emphasizes best practices to successfully address marketing challenges faced by actual businesses.
Course learning objectives:
- Write clear and concise summaries of topical information
- Demonstrate knowledge of triple bottom line and corporate responsibility trends
- Evaluate alternative marketing strategies and make recommendations for change based on research
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Students apply contemporary operations management techniques and tools to realistic business situations. Case studies and computer-based models are utilized as decision-making tools.
MBA 514 must be taken during the final two terms.
The MBA ETS Major Field Test will be administered via this course. The Field Test is part of the program's accreditation and assessment process. An $80 course fee will be assessed for this test.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Examines the role of information systems (IS) in contemporary business organizations. Provides an overview of key information systems and technologies. Emphasizes the management behavior, knowledge, and skills necessary to participate in making decisions about information systems. Also introduces current trends and drivers, including emerging technologies that affect the present and future of information systems.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Explores the accounting function of an organization from a managerial perspective. Students gain an understanding of cost characteristics, cash flows, and reporting; the appropriate application of costs in decision-making; and the behavioral ramifications and interdependency of accounting within the organization as a whole.
Course learning objectives:
- Correctly apply concepts and vocabulary of the cost environment
- Organize accounting information properly for planning and control, decision-making, performance, evaluation, and reporting purposes
- Employ management accounting techniques and concepts to enhance organizational strategies
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Focuses on the roles and techniques of research in retail, service, community, and industry settings. Research methods and procedures such as design, data collection, analysis, and recommendations are applied to an actual organizational situation.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Explores fundamental concepts of microeconomics (market equilibrium, firm and consumer behavior, and industry structure and competition) as a means of understanding and analyzing business problems. Basic macroeconomic models are developed to help explain long-run trends and short-run fluctuations in key macroeconomic variables: GDP, inflation, interest rates, wage and profit rates, and budget deficits. Applies the basic principles of finance theory to decisions facing the corporate manager.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Acquaints students with fundamental legal concepts affecting organizations through case studies and guest speakers. Concepts are discussed within a general managerial framework with distinctions made for private, nonprofit, and governmental entities. Major topics covered include tort liability, contracts and legal agreements, intellectual property rights, administrative law, individual liability, and legal economics/ADR applications. Management law covered includes employment issues such as wrongful non-hiring and termination, discrimination, ADA (disabilities), sexual harassment, and similar issues. Introduces contemporary issues of ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) facing the business community.
Course learning objectives:
- Develop understanding and appreciation of current ethical and legal concepts/issues in business/management
- Effectively discuss the importance of ethics in the organizational decision-making process
- Become familiar with business law concepts/issues and be able to develop a proactive and preventive organizational culture and strategy
- Effectively express and support a socially responsible and ethical organizational structure
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Explores individual behavior, group behavior, and organizational systems. Topics covered (from theoretical and practical perspectives) include understanding people, motivation, group dynamics, communication, leadership, power, politics, conflict, diversity, culture, decision making, change, and organizational structure.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Explores essential financial theory and develops applications in the areas of valuation of assets, financing decisions, risk assessment, and short-term asset and liability management. Develops the abilities to compare and value uncertain cash flows; evaluate the costs and risks of financing from stocks, bonds, and entrepreneurial sources; and manage short-term capital.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
The capstone course is intended to provide an experience that integrates the MBA coursework using intensive business cases and analysis. Prerequisite: Successful completion of all core courses.
MBA 590 must be taken during the final two terms.
You must take three of the following courses.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Examines systems used for the accumulation, classification, processing, analysis, and reporting of accounting data, including the controls necessary for information security, data integrity, and system auditability. Extensive use of computer applications.
Course learning objectives:
- Become familiar with the knowledge and skills needed within multiple accounting information systems and computer applications
- Learn how to be proactive and improve the analysis and design of the Accounting Information Systems (AIS) to:
- Add real value to business organizations
- Protect business information and its net worth
- Advise businesses about security risks which affect the business internal control systems over financial documentation, record keeping, and reporting
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Advanced course in marketing goods and services online. Subjects include the potential for building powerful online communities, personalization, online advertising, brand-building, online pricing, customer support, transaction processing, fulfillment, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media, and website analytics.
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Covers the formulation of channel objectives and strategies, along with the appropriate tactics, policies, and practices. Emphasizes factors to consider when choosing channel intermediaries and the elements involved in an effective physical distribution system. Addresses marketing functions commonly assigned to or shared with intermediaries and issues pertaining to inventory distribution and control, order processing, customer service, and the establishment of cost-effective transportation systems. Pricing strategy includes the rationale for setting prices for products at all points in the product life cycle. Includes analysis of discount strategies. Particular emphasis is on a total system approach viewed from a managerial perspective with practical business applications.
Course learning objectives:
- Examine the business consequences of pricing, distribution and logistics decisions and develop skills to create plausible distribution and pricing plans for an organization
- Compare and contrast the value-pricing approach to the cost-recovery approach and understand the significance and complexities of pricing products and services in the marketing process
- Assess how true economic and perceived values are determined and be able to identify all costs relevant to pricing decisions
- Become familiar with pricing tools and processes, map the relationship between price and demand, and understand concepts of price customization
- Compare and contrast the increasing role and power of online channels to traditional stores
- Construct a channel value chain with an aptitude to manage issues and conflict as well as techniques for influencing channel decisions within the distribution system
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Explores Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an emerging technology/science over the last three decades and how this technology can and has been used to improve business decision making. Primarily the course examines the marrying of geographic information to data and thus how that substantially changes and improves the ability to compile evidence, construct arguments and therefore improve decision making. While business is the primary focus, the course helps students understand how GIS has had and is having a profound impact in government and nonprofits as well.
Course learning objectives:
- Gain ability for marrying geographic information to data to identify opportunities, analyze data, explore issues, problem solve, and evaluate situations in a geographic and business context
- Develop knowledge of GIS and how it has had a profound impact in business, government, and nonprofits
- Explore mapped data and manage geodatabases
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Analyzes investment instruments such as stocks, mutual funds, options, and other investment vehicles. Investigates the risk/return relationship and other aspects of modern portfolio theory. Also investigates efficient markets and basic stock analysis and valuation.
Course learning objectives:
- Introduce the different types of Investments and the markets (if any) in which they trade
- Employ the CAPM framework at a basic level to understand expected return, risk, and the benefits of diversification
- Understand the options at a level that enables implementation of at least one option strategy
- Monitor and evaluate the performance of an investment in real-time
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Applies financial management concepts to investment, financing, and managerial control decisions undertaken by multinational firms. Emphasizes the institutional environment of monetary arrangements, financial intermediary organizations, and balance of payment considerations that affect the international flow of capital.
Course learning objectives:
- Describe the international financial environment including the international flow of funds, international financial markets, exchange rate, and risk faced by multinational firms
- Apply the principal financial management techniques to analyze financial decisions undertaken by multinational firms
- Examine the challenges and develop strategies of firms going international
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Reviews the theory and practice of quality improvement, with an emphasis on modeling of business processes, development of decision support tools, and performance measurement.
Course learning objectives:
- Apply common elements of contemporary quality management frameworks to describe problems and identify possible improvements
- Implement management and analytic tools and techniques from the Six Sigma Body of Knowledge at an introductory level
- Demonstrate hands-on skills using statistical software to summarize quality improvement data
- Describe the interaction between the human side of change and analytic tools to achieve continual improvement
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Advanced course in management information systems with an emphasis on the use of business analytics to drive decisions and actions. Hands-on exercises and projects illustrate and promote further understanding of the topics. Includes SQL querying, data presentation, and data visualization techniques.
Course learning objectives:
- Understand and apply data visualization best practices
- Create Tableau data visualizations, including dashboards
- Extract and summarize data from a relational database using the SQL SELECT command
- Critique benefits and limits of descriptive and predictive analytics using readily available business data
- Assess the design and utility of static and interactive dashboard displays
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Engages key issues related to the organization and operations of the US healthcare system. The healthcare system in the United States is one of complexities due to the vast number of components that are central to its functioning. Regulators, payers, providers, consumers and suppliers all contribute to the system where higher spending does not necessarily equate to better healthcare outcomes.
Course learning objectives:
- Understand and describe the formation of the US healthcare system and identify and describe major US healthcare providers
- Ability to distinguish between various types of health insurance and financing plans in the US
- Identify and analyze health disparities in the US
- Understand the role of the Pharmaceutical Industry in the US, and examine telehealth and telemedicine process in the US
- Attain knowledge of different national and state level healthcare policies
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Explores communication in healthcare organizations. The course uses both a theoretical and applied approach to topics key to healthcare administrators, including communicating with patients and families, emotions (such as stress) in the workplace, new technology in healthcare organizations, crisis communication, and ethics.
Course learning objectives:
- Evaluate best practices in communicating with patients and families
- Identify communication and related challenges inherent to healthcare organizations, such as ethics, stress, burnout, and changing technology, and apply understanding by creating plans to address such challenges
- Apply communication skills (orally and in writing) by creating messages for a variety of stakeholders
- Analyze a specific healthcare organization’s practices and apply knowledge to make recommendations to improve those practices
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Examines the analytical tools necessary to understand and interpret corporate financial statements and their related footnotes. Students evaluate the financial strengths and weaknesses of companies from a decision-maker’s perspective. Prerequisite: MBA 516.
Course learning objectives:
- Apply analytical tools necessary to understand and interpret corporate financial statements and their related footnotes
- Understand vertical and horizontal analysis, ratio analysis, strategic analysis, and prospective analysis
- Effectively evaluate quality of financial information
Duration: 7 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 4
Analyzes information from corporate financial reports for the purpose of business valuation. Students learn how to use financial statement information to evaluate a company’s past and present performance and to predict likely future outcomes. Students evaluate how well (or poorly) the financial statements depict a company’s performance and how additional information, especially from footnote disclosures, is used to better understand and analyze financial statement information.
Course learning objectives:
- Explore business enterprises from a financial perspective
- Apply critical thinking skills to analyze financial data and draw conclusions about the health of business entities
- Analyze business entities from a valuations standpoint
*Tuition and fees are subject to change.
