By Gabby Zuniga

More than just a guilty pleasure, social media has become an effective way to communicate and people are starting to notice.

In fact the London School of Business and Finance (LSBF), not to be confused with the prestigious London School of Economics, is offering the first Facebook MBA. The Global MBA program is offered through a facebook application on the social networking site where the LSBF will post all of their lectures and course material for free. There is a catch: you can only access material in exchange for giving LSBF your basic information and permission to post messages, photos and videos to your wall. If users want to pursue the program further and get accreditation they need to pay up and write exams. 

30,000 people have already signed up, or at least registered for free access. LSBF is hoping that many of the 30,000 who have signed up will eventually pursue formal accreditation. 

With numerous schools across the world embracing online distance education, is this just the next step in the continuum? Are traditional methods of higher learning stale and do they need to evolve to support globalization?

I’m not sure I’ll be signing up for a Facebook MBA any time soon, but this is an interesting trend to watch in higher learning delivery methods. Is a degree a degree no matter where it’s completed? I don’t think so at least not yet!

If you want to check this out, search “LSBF” on Facebook or you can watch the plug on YouTube here.

Gabriela Zuniga is assistant director, human resources at Ernst & Young LLP in Vancouver. She brings with her over 10 years of front line HR experience working at Hatch Ltd, McGill University, and Kraft Canada.