Penn State Erie, The Behrend College - Sam and Irene Black School of Business

The Black School of Business at Penn State Behrend College “provides the best value for a working student in the local area,” one MBA here explains, adding, “You get the Penn State name, an outstanding general MBA education, and student-work flexibility.” Behrend enjoys “an outstanding reputation” in the region, making it an excellent choice for students looking to build their careers in and around Erie.

A general degree that aims to develop the critical-thinking skills necessary for a career in midand upper-level management, the Behrend MBA curriculum consists of forty-eight units, or thirteen courses. Of these, eighteen units form the foundational core courses, which are comprised of three introductory classes: Costs, Competition, and Market Performance; Demand, Operations, and Firm Performance; and Integrated Business Analysis. After completing these courses, students must complete twenty-one credits of required advanced courses and nine credits of elective course work. For those who have already taken business courses, the program can be streamlined through the omission of certain foundation courses. Depending on their previous academic preparation, fulltime students can usually complete the MBA curriculum in three semesters; part-time students usually require two to four years to complete the program.

Behrend works hard to keep its MBA program student-friendly with an “attractive and clean” campus (that includes “a new facility for the business school”), “small classes” and “accessible professors.” Most faculty members “have extensive real-world experience that greatly adds to their lessons. Additionally, many are locals and have experience at the major companies in the area and understand the general job situation of the area.” Students describe the curriculum as challenging, citing “tough courses” that “equate to well-educated students.” Another reports, “The professors expect a lot. No class was easy. I consider myself to be an intelligent person, but have felt less so at times because of the difficulty of the work.” Among the drawbacks of a Behrend MBA, “some courses are only offered one semester each year,” making it “very difficult to have a consistent workload. Some semesters are much heavier than others due to course offerings.” Even so, students here agree that Behrend is “the best school, academically, for the region.”

A high percentage of Penn State Behrend students are currently employed in profes- sional positions and are pursuing an MBA with the intention of improving their career opportunities at their current companies. In fact, a considerable number of Penn State Behrend students receive tuition assistance from their employers. Some, however, see their MBAs as a stepping stone to a new career (or, for students pursuing MBAs straight out of college, simply a career). For those, the Penn State Behrend Academic Advising and Career Development Center serves both the undergraduate and graduate popu- lation at the college, including students in the MBA program. The CDC hosts career fairs, on-campus recruiting and interview events, seminars, and workshops. A grow- ing number of organizations participate in Penn State Behrend career fairs each year. Employers who frequently hire Behrend MBAs include: Deloitte Consulting, Paradigm Wave, Ingentor, GE Infrastructure-Transportation Systems, IBM, Erie Insurance Group, National City Corporation, Graham Packaging, HealthAmerica, and the Pennsylvania State University.

Behrend MBAs enjoy “state-of-the-art” classrooms that “allow us to utilize multimedia learning,” which they very much appreciate. The campus itself is “very clean, safe, and attractive,” “not so large that it is overwhelming but still offering most [of the] opportu- nities of a large school.” And here’s something you rarely hear at any school, much less a state institution: there’s “plenty of parking” here.

Campus life offers “a number of clubs and organizations for students,” and “the school also hosts a very wide array of speakers, and events,” but most of these events seem planned primarily for undergraduates. “There are no solely business school programs of any kind. The most activity available is an unofficial happy hour at the end of the semester,” one student writes.