I just finished the Marylhurst MBA in sustainable business program and am very impressed with the curriculum and the Instructors. Overall, there were numerous challenges and the capstone project was all consuming for the last six months of the program. The amount of information gained in this program was beyond my expectations. Of the twelve courses required for the MBA, I thought 10 of them were essential and two were somewhat arbitrary, but, still useful. Of the eleven instructors in my curriculum, nine were excellent, one was lacking and the remaining instructor was about average.

In addition, the curriculum allowed me to work and maintain some semblance of a home life. As with any school program, there were some students that decided to get cross-wise with a few of the instructors and took thorough grading as a personal affront. Frankly - I found these students to be a bit humorous and never understood why they took constructive criticism as a personal thing.

After all - the program is about learning and you need to accept criticism if you are going to be open enough to learn new information. I must say though, the capstone project was a real challenge and the fear of having a fatal flaw review is a serious threat to the student. If I have one recommendation for the Marylhurst sustainable MBA program, it is to lighten up on the fatal flaw criteria for the capstone project.

As a graduate of the MBA of the Marylhurst online Sustainable Business program, I can attest to positive and negative experiences with the school.

The first four classes -- Principles, Leadership, Natural Resource Economics and Marketing -- were generally well done.

Accounting lacked any focus on sustainability or the Triple Bottom Line. This was the key course where one would expect to learn the fundamental concept of business sustainability.

Finance did have a focus on sustainability but was essentially a financial accounting class.

The concentration courses were generally poorly done. Watch out for the attorneys who are overall the hardest graders in the program. Statistics was very poorly done, and taught by an instructor who did not understand the math behind the principles. She was very nice and tried to be helpful, but her Master’s degree was in psychology. The answers to several of the quizzes were programmed incorrectly in the learning platform, so even though the answers were correct, they were marked wrong. Statistics had little to none exposure to sustainability. Modeling and Decision-Making was a joke and in no way matched the course description. There was absolutely no modeling or decision-making through out the entire five weeks of the class. The course turned out to be all about feelings, with New Age concepts that seemed to be very inappropriate for a MBA program. The capstone course followed the course description, except there were no "panel of experts" reviewing the project. One instructor kept threatening students with “fatal flaws” and stated to several students that they would not pass the course. Yes, this was done publically for all students to read. Ironically, she was the same “love and light” teacher from Modeling and Decision-Making. The program is set up so that instructors are essentially graders. These graders rarely offered any personal experience related to the course that would have helped with the learning process. This is because very few had any practical experience. It seemed most instructors were recipients of nepotism and close relationships with Marylhurst management. For instance, one attorney who taught a class didn’t have the required work experience set by Marylhurst hiring policies. He was hired anyway because he was the brother-in-law of the program director. His friend in the same office where he worked was also hired. The student will be punished either by humiliation visible to the entire class or having grades lowered if one disagrees with an instructor viewpoint or if the grader just does not like the student. You have been warned. There is no academic freedom at Marylhurst. I do not recommend Marylhurst to anyone who is a critical thinking person, who values hearing and learning all sides of an issue, wants a rigorous and challenging curriculum and an overall quality education. My best advice is to STAY FAR AWAY!!

The overall experience was good at Marylhurst. Two of my professors were not the best, though one was just a bit unclear in expectations, whereas the other was completely absent from the discussions. The rest of the professors were amazing, and the other students had varied backgrounds and experiences to lend to the conversation. We used Moodle toward the end, but started on Angel. Moodle is a definite upgrade and fairly easy to use.

The best part of the program in general is the flexibility and ability to work it into your life. We had our second child about half way through the program, and I didn't miss a beat (though some of my posts may have been a bit lacking at 2am doing bottle time). I just say this to expand on the fact that this program is doable and flexible enough to allow for most any life change.

Having originally attended a different online university and had a bad experience, I was not sure what to expect from Marylhurst. I soon learned that all online universities are not created equal.

Marylhurst has mastered the art of online learning their online coursework promotes collaboration, interaction, and discussion with faculty and students. Their classes also provides textbooks and a detailed weekly syllabus. The classes revolve around virtual tools such as real-time chats, linked glossaries, email, online quizzes and the online bulletin boards.