A Personalized Master's Degree Built Around Your Goals, in Under a Year
Most master's programs hand you a fixed course catalog, a cohort schedule, and a two-year timeline — whether or not any of that fits your life. We start from a different question: what do you need to master, and how fast can you get there?
Every Elton master's candidate works one-on-one with an expert professor from day one. You choose your concentration — or design your own — and your curriculum, pace, and milestones take shape around your goals, not a semester calendar.
- Complete in ~1 Year
- 1-on-1 Expert Professor
- Design Your Own Concentration
- 100% Remote & Flexible
- Study While You Work
Areas of Concentration
Business Administration, Software & AI, Cybersecurity, Economics, Student-Centered Education, and Writing each have a dedicated program you can explore below. The Humanities and Social & Environmental Sciences draw on Elton's graduate faculty in those fields. Every concentration is designed one-on-one with your advisor and culminates in a capstone project that proves your mastery.
Business Administration (The Executive Coach MBA)
Build the strategic, financial, and leadership skills to run a company, lead a team, or launch a venture. Your advisor works with you through the fundamentals — finance, operations, marketing, and organizational leadership — but always anchored in a business problem you're actually facing, whether that's your own startup, a team you're scaling, or a function you want to master. You leave with sharper judgment and a body of real work — pitch decks, financial models, growth plans — instead of a transcript full of case studies written for someone else's industry.
See Concentration →
Software Engineering & AI
Master modern software engineering and applied AI development, from architecture and clean code to model fine-tuning and deployment. You build real, working software with your advisor's guidance instead of toy assignments, tackling the same technical decisions engineering teams make every day. You graduate with a portfolio of deployed projects that shows exactly what you can build, not just what you can describe in an interview.
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Cybersecurity
Develop the technical and strategic expertise to defend real systems, from network architecture and threat modeling to incident response and security governance. You work through the frameworks, tools, and attack scenarios that security teams face today, guided by a professor who has defended real infrastructure, not just taught the theory behind it.
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Economics
Study heterodox economics alongside the mainstream, not just the neoclassical synthesis: Post-Keynesian, institutional, MMT, ecological, Austrian, Marxian, feminist, and more, in any field from macro and labor to health and urban economics. Your professors help you weigh each tradition against the evidence, so you graduate able to think like an economist from more than one school.
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Student-Centered Education
Learn how people actually learn, and put it to work. Study the evidence behind Montessori, Waldorf, Finnish education, project- and inquiry-based learning, homeschooling, and more, then choose a practice track to become an exceptional teacher or a research track to build new knowledge in the field.
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Writing
Plan, write, publish, and sell a body of fiction, nonfiction, or memoir. You work with a creative advisor on your craft and a business advisor on your career, a writing master's with an MBA inside, so you graduate as a professional writer with a published body of work instead of a manuscript in a drawer and a pile of debt.
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The Humanities
Study literature, philosophy, history, or the ideas that shape how we understand ourselves and the world, guided by a scholar who has spent a career in your specific field. Your work moves beyond summarizing existing scholarship — you develop an original thesis, build the argument through careful research, and defend it in writing that could stand on its own in the field.
Social & Environmental Sciences
Study the economic, political, and ecological systems that shape our communities and our planet, from climate policy and sustainable development to political economy and social behavior. Your capstone takes whatever shape fits your goals — original research, a policy analysis, or an applied project with real stakeholders.
Design Your Own
Your goals don't have to fit a category we've already named. Work with your advisor to design a concentration around the exact expertise you need — combining disciplines, focusing deeply on a niche most programs ignore, or charting a path that doesn't exist anywhere else.
Traditional Master's vs. An Individualized Master's
A Traditional Master's
The conventional model was built for full-time students moving through a fixed curriculum together. It works, but it asks you to adapt your life to the program's calendar, not the other way around.
- 2-3 years to completion
- A set course catalog, largely the same for every student
- Large lectures and limited 1-on-1 faculty access
- Concentration options limited to what the department already offers
- $50,000+ total tuition (and often loss of salary during those years)
- If in person, must relocate to university location
- If online, mostly impersonal videos and quizzes
- Stops you from advancing your career during degree
An Individualized Master's
We've reimagined the modern Master's degree—prioritizing what actually matters for your career while eliminating unnecessary parts.
- Complete at your own pace, can be completed in ~1 year
- Whole program based directly on your goals, interests, and career
- Direct, ongoing access to an expert professor in your field
- Six dedicated concentrations, or design your own
- $18,000 total tuition—less than half of a traditional master's
- Fully remote: study from anywhere in the world
- No boring online videos or endless "reflections" and quizzes
- Earn credit from advancing your career during the degree program (e.g. get hired and start working, launch a business, etc.)
Apply It at Work the Next Morning
Your coursework is built around the problems you are already working on. A pricing decision, a product launch, a research question, a team you are trying to lead: these become the material you study, analyze, and improve with your professor.
Because what you learn goes straight into practice, you see the return on your degree while you are still earning it, and your employer sees it too.
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Graduate With Proof, Not Just a Transcript
Every master's culminates in a capstone that shows what you can do: a business plan you have tested, software you have shipped, an original research study, or a project with real stakeholders.
Along the way, you build a portfolio of the work behind it. When an employer, investor, or admissions committee asks what you can do, you can show them.
Speak with an Admissions Officer
Study Early, Late, or Between Meetings
There are no semesters to wait for, no lecture schedule, and no campus to move to. You set your pace and meeting times with your professor and fit your study around your work and family, wherever in the world you are.
Move faster when you have the time, slow down when life gets busy, and keep making progress either way.
Schedule a Free Info Session
Credit for Past Learning & Stacking Credentials
At Elton, we believe in choice and freedom. Not everyone needs a full year of study, and nobody should pay to relearn what they already know.
Start With a Graduate Certificate
about 2.5–6 months, depending on your pace (12 credits | 300 hours) · $8,000
Every master's begins with a graduate certificate in your concentration. You work 1-on-1 with an expert professor and a coach from day one, on research and projects built around your goals, at your own pace.
The certificate is a complete credential on its own. If a focused certificate is all you need right now, stop there and you'll leave with a credential in hand. If you want to keep going, every credit counts toward your master's.
Request More InformationContinue to Complete Your Master's
10-18 months (36 credits | 900 hours) · $18,000 total
Elton has a generous transfer policy. Relevant graduate credits you've already earned can count toward your master's, with no upper limit, as long as at least 25% of your credits are earned at Elton. Learning from your work and life experience can count too.
You can also earn credit on the job. If you get hired, start a new role, or launch a business during the program, your professor can award credit for work that meets your learning outcomes. And because credentials stack, you can withdraw at any time and still be awarded your graduate certificate.
Contact us today to talk to an enrollment officer, apply to find out your financial aid package, and begin your no-risk 1-month trial.
World-Class 1-on-1 Education at Every Step
Align your education with your success. Every Elton master's candidate receives:
A Dedicated Coach and Advisor
An experienced faculty member guides your coursework, your capstone, and your overall direction from day one.
A Curriculum Built Around You
You and your advisor design your course of study together, so every assignment moves you toward your actual goals.
Integrated Career Support
At Elton, your advisor and professors integrate your career goals directly into your curriculum from day one. If your goal is to land a job, that's your first assignment.
A Community of Fellow Students
You connect with other Elton candidates across concentrations for peer support, feedback, and collaboration throughout your program.
Why Choose Elton's Master's Program?
Every part of this program removes a barrier that traditional graduate education takes for granted.
Speed That Matches Your Ambition
You don't wait on a semester calendar or a cohort's pace. You move as fast as your time and effort allow, and nothing about the structure holds you back.
Grow Your Career and Business
You study alongside your full-time or part-time job. Nothing about this program asks you to give up your income or put your life on hold.
Real, One-on-One Instruction from Expert Professors
You work directly with an experienced professor in your field at every stage — not a teaching assistant, not a discussion board, not a lecture hall of 200 students.
Genuinely Affordable
Our tuition runs far below traditional master's programs, with no hidden fees and a discount when you pay upfront.
Freedom to Choose Your Path
Pick Business Administration, Software & AI, Cybersecurity, Economics, Student-Centered Education, or Writing — or work with your advisor to build a concentration that doesn't exist anywhere else. Your master's reflects your goals, not a fixed catalog.
Learn From Practitioners, Not Just Academics
Your professors have done the actual work — built companies, shipped software, defended real systems — not just taught about it. You learn what works in the field today, not theory from a decade-old textbook.
Backed by the Science of Learning
Landmark research on one-on-one, mastery-based tutoring found that "the average tutored student performs about two standard deviations better than students in a conventional classroom, scoring above roughly 98% of conventionally taught peers." We built Elton's entire model around that finding.
A Mission-Driven, Nonprofit Institution
Elton is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Your tuition funds your education and your advisor's time — not shareholders or investors. We built this program to serve students, not extract from them.
Eligibility
To enroll in a master's program or graduate certificate, you need one of the following:
- A bachelor's degree, or
- Some college and 5 years of relevant work experience, or
- Proof of your ability to engage in master's-level study.
No standardized tests are required: no GRE, no GMAT.
Pace, Tuition & Financial Aid
- No Risk First Month - If during the first month you or Elton decide that you are not a fit for the university, you will receive a full refund.
- No Additional Fees - Once you pay your tuition, there are no additional fees for studying at Elton.
Program tuition: $18,000
Enjoy a 10% discount if tuition is paid in full upon enrollment.
Spare Time
18 months
10 Hours/Week
- Dedicated Advisor
- 1x Professor
- Career Counseling
- Mentors & Subject Matter Experts
- Access to the Elton Community
Part Time
12 months
15 Hours/Week
- Dedicated Advisor
- 2x Professors
- Career Counseling
- Mentors & Subject Matter Experts
- Access to the Elton Community
Accelerated
10 months
25 Hours/Week
- Dedicated Advisor
- 3x Professors
- Career Counseling
- Mentors & Subject Matter Experts
- Access to the Elton Community
Graduate Certificate in your concentration
Prefer a shorter commitment? Earn the graduate certificate on its own, with the same 1-on-1 professors and coaching as the master's.
- 12 credits, one third of the master's (about 300 hours of engagement)
- Typically about 2.5–6 months, depending on your pace
- Credits stack: continue any time to finish the full master's degree
Need-based scholarships are available. Schedule an info session to see what you qualify for.
