B School Confidential

UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON

  The Target of Texas B schools, the University of Houston's College of Business Administration may not be pretty, but the price and product make it an amazing value. Located minutes from downtown Houston just off Interstate 45, the CBA's nondescript three-story concrete-and-glass building is just the type of utilitarian structure you'd expect to find on an urban campus. "We're truly the working man's MBA program," says William R. Pasewark, U of H's director of MBA programs. In fact, the CBA offers one of the lowest tuition rates--not just in the state but in the nation.

Another superlative: The CBA is the largest MBA program in the state and one of the largest in the country, with 1,200 students. By design, part-timers outnumber full-timers by a ratio of three to two. "We're serving a community that doesn't have the luxury of leaving the job market for two years," says interim dean Keith K. Cox. To meet the demands of working people, the CBA has made getting an MBA as flexible as possible, offering day, night, and Saturday courses as well as six of ten core courses over the Internet.

The traditional two-year, full-time MBA program requires 54 semester hours for graduation. (Anyone with a four-year undergraduate degree in business administration from an accredited school is eligible for a 36-hour program.) Students can opt for a general MBA or a degree with a concentration in one of nine areas--among them, accounting, finance, international business, and taxation. The CBA also offers six joint-degree programs, including an MBA­master's of international management degree in cooperation with Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona, which is first in the nation in its field, according to U.S. News.

The downside of U of H's low tuition is, of course, not enough money to fund new programs. "I'd rather not be as good a buy and have additional revenue sources," Cox admits. "We need to attract private money for innovative programs." One such donation was used in 1997 to establish the Elizabeth D. Rockwell Career Services Center. An alumnus of U of H who is the executive director of the private client division at CIBC World Markets, Rockwell donated $250,000 to fund the CSC, which offers traditional recruiting services as well as Web-based technology, including online job listings and a full-service online MBA résumé database to help recruiters identify, recruit, and hire qualified job candidates. There are also tips on interviewing, résumé and cover-letter writing, and leads on summer internships.

It must be a helpful service: With more than nine-tenths of its students employed while the ink on their diploma is still wet, the CBA has no trouble on the job-placement front. "All major Houston employers come here," says CSC director Rachel Seff. They include big oil and energy companies like Halliburton and Exxon, as well as Houston's major medical centers. And with generous average starting salaries, it's clear that CBA grads are valued by employers as much as their peers at more prestigious schools are. You might even say that they're on Target.