Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business

10. Duke University

Durham, NC 27708

Admissions: 919-660-7700

Website: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/programs/duke_mba/global_executive/

Apply Online: http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/programs/duke_mba/global_executive/apply/

Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has not one or two but three different Executive MBA programs to choose from. There’s the typical weekend Executive MBA delivered over 19 intense months on Duke’s campus in Durham, N.C. After a week-long orientation, classes are held on alternating weekends on Fridays and Saturdays in Terms 1 – 5, with accommodations provided on Friday nights. Term 6 sessions are held on campus for 2 weeks with the remainder of the term completed online.

Then, there’s the 16-month Cross Continent MBA that allows students to study in locales across the world, including Dubai, New Delhi, St. Petersburg, Shanghai/Kunshan, and the home campus in Durham. This program also has a distance learning component to it. The program is delivered in short immersive residencies followed by Internet learning.

And finally, there’s the 15-month Global Executive MBA with five mandatory terms (an additional sixth term can be taken to explore electives and a concentration). This program is delivered via short, in-person residency sessions in Durham, London & St. Petersburg, Dubai & New Delhi, Shanghai & Bangkok, and finally the home campus in Durham again. Each of these sessions is followed by longer distance learning periods. This second global EMBA is designed for older execs than the Cross Continent model. Typically, students are 38 years of age, versus an average 30 in the Cross Continent program.

These are both ambitious and expensive learning excursions. After a pre-reading period at home, Duke sends cohorts of students to travel around the world to meet for classes in residency sessions. Non-US residencies are split between 2 cities. The residency experience is followed by roughly two months of distance learning from home in which you will continue your coursework through online classroom sessions, team projects, individual assignments, and exams.

There are optional concentrations that include Energy and Environment, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Marketing, Finance, and Strategy, along with an optional Health Sector Management certificate.

The cost for the Global Exec program? Hold on to your hats. It’s $146,600 for classes graduating in 2012 and $152,500 for classes graduating in 2013. The Cross Continent program for younger managers is priced slightly less at $125,400 for classes graduating in 2012 and $127,900 for classes graduating in 2013. Far more reasonable is Duke’s standard weekend EMBA: $109,200.

With the typical EMBA student base salary of $142,000, a good number of Duke’s EMBA candidates hail from such companies as Deere, IBM, Deloitte, Lenovo and Cisco. Some 26% of them already have advanced degrees.

Latest Up-to-Date Executive MBA Rankings:

2012 Poets&Quants: 10

2011 BusinessWeek: 10

2011 U.S. News & World Report: 4

2010 The Wall Street Journal: NR

2011 Financial Times: 6

Rankings Analysis: Duke switched places with the University of Southern California in PoetsandQuants’ 2012 survey of the world’s best EMBA programs, rising to a tenth place finish from 11th in 2011. The improvement is largely based on a gain of three places in The Financial Times’ 2011 ranking of EMBA programs. Duke rose to a sixth place finish in the world, up from ninth in 2010. All its other key rankings–at U.S. News, BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal–remained exactly as before.