Program Overview
The Master of Business Administration General online program is designed to give you a broad 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 skill sets to apply in high-performing management roles.
An MBA that prepares you for any business challenge
Discover how an MBA from SOU Online gives you new perspectives that drive business growth.In the MBA General online 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.
Courses
In order to earn the Master of Business Administration General online, you must complete 13 courses (45 credit hours), comprising 33 credit hours of core courses (including a capstone course) and 12 credit hours of electives. All courses are seven weeks in length.
To see the full list of MBA General online courses, view courses.
Admissions
An as applicant for the Master of Business Administration General online degree program, you must hold a baccalaureate degree from an accredited institution, with transcripts verifying a cumulative undergraduate GPA of at least 3.0 (or 2.75 with three years of relevant work experience) to achieve full admission status. You must submit a resume with three professional references.
To learn more about the MBA General online admission requirements, view admissions.
Tuition
As a student in the Master of Business Administration General online degree program, you can pay for each course as you enroll. There is a $60 application fee and a $75 graduation fee. Costs are the same for students in Oregon or from outside the state.
To learn more about our MBA General online tuition, view tuition.
Calendar
With multiple start dates each year, the Master of Business Administration General online degree program is convenient and accessible. Before beginning, you should consider application date deadlines, turn in all required documentation and fees, register for classes, and pay tuition to begin on your desired start date.
To see the full calendar of upcoming start dates for the MBA General online, view calendar.
Also available:
- Master of Business Administration with a Concentration in Accounting Online
- Master of Business Administration with a Concentration in Business Analytics Online
- Master of Business Administration with a Concentration in Marketing Online
- Master of Business Administration with a Concentration in Finance Online
- Master of Business Administration with a Concentration in Healthcare Administration Online
Courses
The Master of Business Administration General online curriculum is comprised of 13 courses (45 credit hours), including 33 credit hours of core courses and 12 credit hours of electives.
You must take the following courses.
MBA 512: Marketing Management and Strategies
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 514: Strategic Operations Management
Duration: 7 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. Educational Testing Services (ETS) MBA Major Field Test is administered in this course.
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 516: Managerial Accounting for Decision Making
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 519: Graduate Research Project
Duration: 7 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 | 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.
MBA 521: Legal and Ethical Issues in Business and Management
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 575: Advanced Organizational Behavior
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 585: Financial Management Practices
Duration: 7 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 | Credit Hours: 3
The capstone course is intended to provide an experience that integrates the MBA coursework using intensive business cases and analysis.
You must take three of the following courses.
BA 554: Accounting Information Systems
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 559: Financial Statement Analysis
Duration: 7 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
MBA 560: Business Valuation and Financial Statements
Duration: 7 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 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.
Duration: 7 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.
Duration: 7 weeks | Credit Hours: 4
Explores geographic information systems (GIS) as an emerging technology/science over the last three decades and how this technology may be used to improve business decision making. Primarily examines the marrying of geographic information to data and how that substantially changes and improves the ability to compile evidence, construct arguments, and improve decision making. While business is the primary focus, the course helps students understand how GIS has a profound impact in government and nonprofits as well.
BA 536: Internet Marketing and eCommerce
Duration: 7 weeks | Credit Hours: 4
Advanced course in marketing goods and services in cyberspace. Subjects include the increasing trend toward one-to-one marketing, internet infrastructure, digital technology, the potential for building powerful online communities, personalization, online advertising, brand-building, product development, online pricing, customer support, transaction processing, and fulfillment. Uses local internet marketing companies and dotcom cases as examples. Open to non-admitted business students and non-business majors.
BA 597: Advanced Management Information Systems
Duration: 7 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.
BA 541: Marketing Channels Management and Pricing Strategy
Duration: 7 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. Also addresses issues pertaining to inventory distribution and control, order processing, customer service, and the establishment of cost-effective transportation systems. Study of 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.
Duration: 7 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.
BA 573: International Financial Management
Duration: 7 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.
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 536: Advanced Health Communication
Duration: 7 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.
MBA 537: Healthcare in the United States: Structures, Systems, and Policies
Duration: 7 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.
Admissions
It's time to begin! The admission process is the first step toward earning your online degree. Familiarize yourself with these requirements for the Master of Business Administration General online program, along with information on required documents.
MBA General Online 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 but less than 3.0 qualify for full admission by submitting resume verifying at least three years of relevant work experience and contact information of three professional references.
- Applicants with less than 2.75 GPA qualify for provisional admission by submitting resume verifying at least three years of relevant work experience and contact information of three professional references. Students admitted on 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 intprogs@sou.edu
- 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 have 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 800-490-7974.
[close-]Tuition
The following is the tuition breakdown for the Master of Business Administration General online degree program. Tuition is the same for in-state and out-of-state students.
| Program | Per Credit Hour | Per 3-Credit Hour | Per 4-Credit Hour | Per Program |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Master of Business Administration General | $430 | $1,290 | $1,720 | $19,350* |
Note: SOU credit hours are quarter hours. 45 SOU hours = 30 semester credit hours
*Tuition and fees are subject to change.
Note: You will be charged a $75 graduation fee and an $80 course fee for the ETS Major Field Test in MBA 514. Proctoring fees, if required, are not included.
[close-]Calendar
The Master of Business Administration General online program is structured for working professionals, and conveniently features multiple start dates each year. Choose the start date that's best for you.
| Session | Program Start Date | Application Deadline | Document Deadline | Registration Deadline | Payment Due | Last Class Day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summer 2 | Aug. 5, 2019 | Jul. 22, 2019 | Jul. 29, 2019 | Jul. 31, 2019 | Aug. 2, 2019 | Sept. 22, 2019 |
| Fall | Sept. 30, 2019 | Sept. 16, 2019 | Sept. 23, 2019 | Sept. 25, 2019 | Sept. 27, 2019 | Nov. 17, 2019 |
| Winter | Jan. 6, 2020 | Dec. 23, 2019 | Dec. 30, 2019 | Jan. 1, 2020 | Jan. 3, 2020 | Feb. 23, 2020 |
| Spring | Mar. 30, 2020 | Mar. 16, 2020 | Mar. 23, 2020 | Mar. 25, 2020 | Mar. 27, 2020 | May 17, 2020 |
| Summer 1 | June 15, 2020 | June 1, 2020 | June 8, 2020 | June 10, 2020 | June 12, 2020 | Aug. 2, 2020 |
| Summer 2 | Aug. 3, 2020 | July 20, 2020 | July 27, 2020 | July 29, 2020 | July 31, 2020 | Sept. 20, 2020 |
Aaron Hill
"Even though I haven't met a single professor face-to-face, I feel like I know all of them because you can talk to them. They have office hours so you can talk to them during that time, but most of my communication has been through email. I usually don't even wait a few hours before I get a response; they're very quick and attentive to responding to questions."
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