College of Business

Business Administration

doctor of Business Administration

Achieve Professional and Academic Success

The Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program is a part-time program designed for experienced managers, professionals, and educators who are employed in business, nonprofits, government, military, healthcare, higher education, and a variety of other organizations. The program helps students attain the insights and skills that are needed to advance to executive or professional leadership positions. The program fosters a rich learning community in which students learn from sharing each other's experiences and perspectives in addition to classroom learning and personal study, research, and reflection. Students are encouraged to develop their own distinctive views concerning leadership, strategy, finance, ethics, and other business disciplines through evaluating and integrating the ideas and research of leading scholars. In addition, students develop specialized expertise by conducting independent research on problems and issues that are important to their employers, professions, or industries.

A Practical Alternative

The DBA program is designed to analyze current business and managerial issues that provide students with knowledge and skills that can be used daily in a business environment. In contrast to the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), which places more emphasis on the development of new knowledge and theoretical perspectives, the Doctor of Business Administration is a practitioner’s degree that develops skills that are immediately applicable.

Convenient Scheduling For Busy Executives

Wilmington University caters to students with full-time careers and a busy lifestyle. In order to make best use of face-to-face class time, the DBA program uses a "hybrid" format. All courses encompass seven face-to-face classes of three hours each complemented by an equivalent amount of online instruction. Evening classes meet one weekday evening per week, and courses are completed in seven-week blocks. (There are two, 7-week blocks per semester, and most students take one course per block which amounts to two courses per 14-week semester).

As of fall, 2011, we added another format for students who wish to take classes on Saturdays. Students participating in the new format would take classes every other Saturday, thus completing seven classes over the course of a 14-week semester, rather than in a more compressed, 7-week block. Weekend students will have the opportunity to take one class on Saturday morning and a different class in the afternoon, thus completing two courses per semester as in the current program.

Get Started Now!

This information applies to students who enter this degree program during the 2011-2012 Academic Year. If you entered this degree program before the Fall 2011 semester, please refer to the academic catalog for the year you began your degree program.