What happens when you want to get an MBA education but you don’t have the money, time, or access? For Laurie Pickard, a Rwanda-based USAID worker, her answer was to go online. Thanks to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) the 32-year-old is taking business classes from Harvard, Wharton, and Yale and other elite schools, Poets&Quants reports. Because these classes are free or low-cost, she’s able to do this for a paltry $1000 — all while stationed abroad. According to the report, “If successful, she’ll arguably be the first person in the world to cobble together an MBA program from MOOCs.” Pickard plans to complete 16 courses over two to three years. Although she’s not sitting in an actual classroom or receiving a degree from the institutions, Pickard is saving a fortune. She wrote on her blog, “While I would like to have an MBA, I don’t want to walk away from the experience with $150,000 in debt, thank you very much.”
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