1000美元读完MBA

    如果一切顺利，劳里•皮卡德将以不足1,000美元的代价，在三年内获得自己的MBA学位。她将攻读哈佛（Harvard）、沃顿（Wharton）和耶鲁（Yale）以及其他顶级商学院的课程。而与此同时，她可以继续在美国国际开发署（USAID）的全职工作，担任乡镇企业开发与创业专员。她将在卢旺达的基加利完成自己的学业。

    这样的好事听起来令人难以置信，但32岁的劳里却志在必得。如果成功取得MBA学位，她将成为世界上第一个通过大规模在线公开课（MOOC）平台集齐整套工商管理课程的人。MOOC提供免费或廉价课程，只要有互联网连接，任何人都可以访问、学习。

    一开始，皮卡德并未打算花很少的钱去接受商学教育。实际上，她最初关注的是更为传统的途径，而且，从她的背景来看，她也有条件去攻读一个精英课程。皮卡德的履历中包括欧柏林大学（Oberlin College）政治学专业文学学士学位、坦普尔大学（Temple University）地理与城市研究专业文学硕士学位，还曾参加过美国和平队（Peace Corps），并担任过国际金融公司（International Finance Corporation）驻尼加拉瓜的工作人员。

    她说：“我开始考虑的是传统的、位于美国的高端MBA课程，价格昂贵。但后来我放弃了这种想法，转而考虑学期较短的位于欧洲的MBA课程。因为这些课程只需要一半的时间，成本只有美国课程的四分之一左右。”皮卡德自己也承认，她“并不是从一开始就接受”MOOC这种方式。但后来一位朋友在MOOC提供商Coursera报了一门金融课程，于是她也开始重新考虑传统MBA。她说：“我在想：‘我也可以这么做。’于是，我开始查找相关的信息，正是在那时，我开始萌生了通过免费课程攻读MBA的想法。”

    皮卡德在互联网上四处搜索其他MOOC MBA课程，结果却一无所获。她找到了一些从投机角度来讨论这个问题的文章，但除了社交网站Poets&Quants的有关文章外，其他的文章都没有提到具体的做法。于是，皮卡德决定在个人博客“免费MBA”（The No-Pay MBA）中记录自己的学习历程，供其他有类似想法的学生借鉴。到目前为止，共有五到十位志同道合的学生与她取得了联系。

    一年前，不可能会有人想到能通过MOOC取得MBA。但据国际商学院联合会（Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International）统计，在2012年2月至11月的九个月期间，提供免费在线商学课程的机构数量从26家增加到51家，翻了一番。与此同时，教授MOOC课程的商学教师数量也增加了一倍以上，从39名增加到83名。

    皮卡德研究了沃顿、哈佛、斯坦福（Stanford）和麻省理工（MIT）等商学院的课程，制定了自己的课程计划。她的课程设计非常灵活，因为MOOC课程没有保障：“你不知道它们会什么时候提供，也不知道它们还会不会再次提供。”因此，她并没有设定一个严格的课程列表，而是按照课题组织学习过程。第一学期，她选择了标准MBA核心课程中常见的三个课题：管理、商业道德和领导力，另外还包括金融与会计。这些课程既有沃顿商学院克里斯蒂安•特尔维施教授的《运营管理入门》（An Introduction to Operations），也有日内瓦大学（University of Geneva）多位教授授课的《国际组织管理》(International Organizations Management)。皮卡德从多个MOOC平台选择课程，包括Coursera、Open Yale、iTunesU和Udacity等。到目前为止，Coursera所提供课程的多样性和质量以及Udacity的实践技能方法给她留下了最深刻的印象。不过，她一直期待着哈佛商学院能推出MOOC平台——但后者的正式发布时间目前仍然不清楚。

    If everything goes according to plan, Laurie Pickard will earn her MBA in three years for less than $1,000. She'll take classes from Harvard, Wharton, and Yale, among other top-tier schools. And she'll tackle it all while keeping her full-time job as a rural enterprise development and entrepreneurship specialist at USAID. She'll accomplish all of this from Kigali, Rwanda.

    It sounds too good to be true. But Pickard, 32, is determined to pull it off. If successful, she'll arguably be the first person in the world to cobble together an MBA program from massive open online courses (MOOCs), free or low-cost classes accessible to anyone with Internet access.

    Pickard didn't plan to pave the way for earning a dirt-cheap business education. In fact, she initially had her sights set on a more conventional path -- and she has the background to get into an elite program. Pickard's resume includes a B.A. in politics from Oberlin College, an M.A. in geography and urban studies from Temple University, and stints with the Peace Corps and the International Finance Corporation in Nicaragua.

    "I was looking at traditional, U.S.-based, high-end, expensive MBAs, and then I kind of dropped that idea in favor of shorter, European-based MBAs ... that take half the time and cost a quarter as much," she says. By her own admission, Pickard was "not an early adopter" of the MOOC movement. But after a friend enrolled in a finance course with MOOC provider Coursera, she reconsidered the traditional MBA. "I was thinking, 'I could do that.' And so I started looking into what was out there, and that's when I got this idea that I should just do an MBA out of free courses," she says.

    Pickard scoured the Internet to find other MOOC MBAs, but came up dry. She uncovered a few articles that discussed the subject from a speculative standpoint, but outside of Poets&Quants' story on the subject, none suggested ways to actually do it. Pickard decided she would document her own journey in a blog, The No-Pay MBA, so other like-minded students could use her path as a resource. So far, five to 10 students attempting the same thing have reached out to her.

    Only a year ago, it would not have been possible to even consider getting the equivalent of an MBA via MOOCs. But in the space of just nine months in 2012, from February to November, the number of institutions offering free online business courses has doubled to 51 from 26, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International. The number of business faculty teaching MOOC courses has more than doubled in the same timeframe to 83 from 39.

    Pickard developed her program by reviewing B-school curricula at Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, and MIT. She designed it to be flexible because MOOC courses are not guaranteed: "You have no idea when they'll be offered and if they'll ever be offered again," she points out. Rather than setting a strict course list, she organized her degree path by themes. Her first semester tackles three topics generally found in a standard MBA core curriculum: management, business ethics and leadership, as well as finance and accounting. The courses range from An Introduction to Operations taught by Wharton's Christian Terwiesch, to International Organizations Management, led by a group of professors from the University of Geneva. Pickard selects her classes from a variety of MOOC platforms, including Coursera, Open Yale, iTunesU, and Udacity. So far, she has been most impressed with the variety and quality of Coursera's offerings, and Udacity's practical-skill approach. But she's eagerly awaiting the release of Harvard Business School's MOOCs -- the official launch date remains unknown.