Hi,
I am about to touch a subject that has been widely discussed in this forum.
I am considering doing an online doctorate program with Swiss Management Center.
I am aware that SMC's doctorate programs are ACBSP accredited. I am also aware that SMC does have Cantonal approval (Zug) to award degrees to foreigners.
Has anyone successfully completed doctorate program with SMC?
I would appreciate if you could share your experience and how you feel the program has benefited you. Have you encountered any problems during the entire duration of the program? How have you received support from the professors and/or SMC staff?
Your feedback and guidance will be greatly appreciated as it will help me determine if I should proceed with the doctorate program at SMC.
Thanks!
1. There is no such thing as a cantonal approval to award degrees, especially for business schools: Terms like "MBA" are not legally protected in Switzerland and you or I could start our private school tomorrow and hand out degrees to anyone we want...
2. Schools are under the supervision of the canton and not the confederation level. So the cantonal authorities are supposed to make sure the school is delivering quality and not a diploma mill. Switzerland has many cantons, some of which are really small and do not even have a regular state university (so students simply travel 20 miles to the next larger town in a nighbour canton...). Those cantons have a hard time supervising private institutions as they do not have the manpower or know-how to deal with universities of any type. As a result does Switzerland have an ongoing issue with dodgy diploma mill type of private schools who bank on "Swiss quality" and abuse that small cantons don't have the means to stop them... Zug happens to be one of those cantons.
3. According to ACBSP is SMC only accredited to Bachelor level and not doctorate: http://www.acbsp.org/?page=membership_list
4. I just looked at their website and SMC charges a total tuition of 990 Euro for a bachelor course... that's impossibly low for a private school in exchange of a quality education.
Long story short: I do not know the school or their program first hand, but there are some obvious warning signs that I would recommend you to be careful. I did an online masters and was back then so unimpressed by the many "Swiss" schools that I rather chose a large and well known university abroad.
Then either SMC is lying or the ACBSP list is out of date. According to SMC only their Masters and Doctorate programmes are ACBSP accredited.
http://www.smcuniversity.com/about/a…bership/acbsp/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Management_Center
A rather old thread, but may be useful to you.
Reputation of the Swiss Management Center (on-line education)
I've checked on ACBSP's site and both their Masters and Doctorate programs are listed
http://acbspsearch.org/Home/Details?instId=Inst3140