Program director Dan Hebert answers questions about who enrolls, what you learn, where graduates go, and how AI shapes the online Bachelor of Professional Studies in Business Management.
You may have started a degree before. Maybe you have credits from an associate degree, years of military training, or a few semesters that life interrupted. You want a business management degree that fits around the life you already have. We asked Dan Hebert, who directs the online Business Management B.P.S. at Syracuse University, what the program looks like from the inside.
Who enrolls in an online business management degree, and what does life look like before they start?
Our students are typically adults who are already deep into building a career and a life. A significant number are current or former members of the military along with people working full time or raising families, and they're looking for a degree that fits around that life rather than asking them to pit it on pause. Some are transferring in credits from an associate's degree, prior military or professional training, or an earlier stint in college that didn't get finished' the program is built to accept up to 90 transfer credits, which recognizes that a lot of our students arrive with real academic and professional experience already behind them. What they have in common isn't a starting point so much as a goal: they want a credential that opens doors their current experience hasn't been able to open on its own, delivered in a way (online, part-time, in 8-week terms) that respects the responsibilities they're already juggling.
What does a business management career actually require?
Students often come in thinking the job is mostly about the big strategic call, the decision itself. What the curriculum helps them see is how much management is actually about the sturcture around the decision: how you communicate it, and how you build agreement across people who don't report to you, and how well you understand the legal, financial, and organizational context to know what's actually possible. That's part of why the program pairs courses like Strategic Leadership and Global Leadership with courses like Business Organizations, Essentials of Finance, and Introduction to the Legal System. The goal is for students to leave not just knowing how to make a good call, but how to make it stick inside a real organization.
What can you do with a business management degree?
Graduates go on to roles like business development manager, product manager, marketing manager, and business analyst. For our military and veteran students in particular, the degree often marks a deliberate transition: translating leadership and operational experience gained in service into a civilian business context, and being recognized for that experience rather than starting over. What the program is designed to prepare all students for, beyond the title change, is being trusted with different kinds of decisions: weighing in on a budge, evaluating a new market, negotiating with a vendor, or a taking a project from idea to delivery, rather than only executing plans that other people built.
What does a law and corporate background add to teaching leadership and strategy?
Legal training builds a habit of testing an idea from every angle before you commit to it: thinking through who is affected, what could go wrong, and what obligations come with a given choice. I bring that habit into leadership and strategy teaching, pushing students to ask not just "what's the best strategy" but "what's the best strategy that also holds up, legally, financially, and ethically, once it meets the real world." My background in corporate law and taxation also gives students a grounded view of how organizations are actually structured and governed, which helps strategy conversations stay connected to reality rather than staying abstract.
How is AI changing what business managers need to know?
AI is shifting a manager's day to day work away from producing every first draft (of a report, an analysis, a play) and toward directing, evaluating, and being accountable for what these tools produce. That means managers need sharper judgment: knowing where AI output can be trusted, where it needs a second look, and where it creates new risk around data, compliance, or decision-making. We continuously reveiw our courses to incorporate any relevant material that reflects rapid changes such as these.