Florida Southern College - Barney Barnett School of Business and Free Enterprise

Based at Florida Southern College, in Lakeland, Florida, the Barney Barnett School of Business & Free Enterprise is a small, “well-connected” school with an “excellent” and “amazing” MBA director who “seems to know all the students personally and is vested in their success.” Students praise the school’s “small classroom size, “involved administration,” and “prestige.” The school’s “symbiotic” partnerships “enhance both the business school and [local] community organizations.” The “thoroughly vetted” faculty shows strong “leadership and experience” and are both “responsive” and “easy to work with.” Florida Southern MBA students often choose Barnett for its “excellent” hybrid program, which offers coursework every other Saturday on campus and the remainder online.

Many students choose the Florida Southern MBA “because their program [is] catered towards working professionals.” Indeed, the hybrid program is a great offering for working students, who praise the “convenient[t] location,” schedule, and value, saying it’s “the best money can buy.” Florida Southern MBAs get plenty of real consulting practice through Living Case Studies, which ask student cohorts to conduct research around an actual business problem or opportunity and make a recommendation to the company. Many students also attended Florida Southern as undergraduates and note prior relationships with business faculty. Some prominent alumni include Abdalla Salem El-Badri, Secretary General of OPEC; James Carl France, President, International Speedway Corporation; Barney Barnett, Vice Chairman, Publix Supermarkets, Inc.; Rick Ruffner, President, Avanti Press, Inc., and Shelly Schaffer, Executive Vice President and CFO, Yahoo.

Florida Southern College is located in a “beautiful setting on Lake Hollingsworth, with lots of access to water sports.” MBA students note that nearly “everything is within walking distance.” Many students are “busy professionals” who commute and live off campus, but students generally find the student body to be “caring and helpful,” “easy going, but opinionated and open to discussion,” “hardworking,” and “liberal, friendly, intelligent, and motivated.” There is a mix of younger and older students at Barnett, with seemingly “ an even split [between] millennials and Gen-Xers.” Said one student: “You could definitely tell a difference between the generations, but [it] was surprisingly refreshing in most cases.”