How to Start an Online Business School

Distance education has advanced mightily since the advent of videoconferencing tools like Skype and streaming video services like YouTube. Now it is possible to deliver a full educational experience through rich media, and to allow students and professors to interact naturally. Research from the U.S. Department of Education shows that students who take all or part of their courses online actually perform better than traditional students. For business schools in particular, it is important that academic coursework be just as cutting-edge as industry, and that students be able to continue in their careers while going to school.

Hire your staff. You need not just faculty to teach the courses, but also a strong information technology department that can keep your critical technologies running, such as your website and video conferencing, and support staff to provide customer service to students. Your reputation will be judged on the quality of students who graduate from your school, so hire and structure your admissions department carefully. Require prospective students to take and excel at entrance exams such as the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) and to provide application essays that prove their literacy and previous education. If you find you have too few students, you can relax the exam score or prior grade point average standards, or lower your tuition.

Obtain financing. Your business plan should include not only the costs for starting a school, going through accreditation, marketing, and staff salaries, but also for having few students during your first several quarters or years. Ensure that when you get your investment funds, whether from bank loans or venture capital, you have more than enough to carry the school through until it has achieved profitability.

Develop your curriculum. Since you will need to update your courses every quarter in order to keep up with business and industry, design a flexible curriculum that teaches basics such as finance and marketing solidly but also leaves room for new courses topics like corporate social responsibility or social entrepreneurship. How well you do this step will determine whether or not your school ever becomes accredited.

Develop your business model and teaching philosophy. You may choose to design a school that is affordable and accessible to English-speaking students in the developing world, or to offer only continuing education classes leading to professional certifications, or to specialize in rigorous and high-priced master's degrees in technology management.

Apply for accreditation, if you are offering degree programs. It will be difficult to get students to enter without having an accredited business program, since the status of the school tends to be particularly important to business students. If you only offer professional certificates or single courses, you may not need accreditation.

License the technologies you will need, and set up the school website. There are many software packages available for offering streaming lectures with video and PowerPoint, messageboard systems, automated tests and quizzes, and podcasts. You need to set up all these features in a user-friendly website.

Difficulty: Challenging