Building on the success of the online MBA first offered by Questrom School of Business in 2020, BU has launched an ambitious online degree unit called BU Virtual.
As part of the University’s 2030 Strategic Plan, the development of a select number of “online at-scale” graduate programs will be an important University-wide focus. Next up, the School of Public Health, which will offer an online Master of Public Health in health equity starting in January 2023. The MPH will launch in collaboration with BU’s partner on the Questrom Online MBA, the online education company edX, which was acquired by 2U in 2021.
Tuition for the online Master of Public Health will be $24,000 for the entire program, the same as the Questrom Online MBA and roughly one-quarter of the cost of the in-person MPH. Questrom’s Online MBA has been a widely acknowledged success, with nearly 1,200 students enrolled as of October 2021 and the first cohort graduating at a rate of 94.8 percent. The average student is 37 years old, with a dozen years of work experience, compared to an average age of 28 and six years of work experience for residential MBA students. The program attracts a broad demographic of both international students and students from different income groups.
“We have learned a lot from the experience of launching the online MBA,” says University Provost Jean Morrison, “so we feel we have the knowledge necessary to put together a very high-quality MPH program online.”