U.S. News’ Best Online MBA Ranking Released with Three-Way Tie for First

Yesterday, the U.S. News & World Report released its rankings for the best online MBA programs of 2022. In a three-way tie, Indiana University’s Kelley, University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler, and University of Southern California’s Marshall all took the number one spot.  

UNC’s Kenan-Flagler received the top ranking for the second year in a row, sharing the 2021 accolade with Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business (ranked fourth in 2022), while Indiana increased two spots from last year and USC increased three spots. 

Indiana’s Kelley also ranked highest for Best Online Finance MBA and Best Online General Management MBA.  

U.S. News & World Report Top 10 Online MBA Programs 

Admitted Students Hesitant to Start MBAs via Distance Learning

Poets & Quants published the results of a survey last week that showed prospective MBA students are feeling anxious over the uncertainty regarding when campuses will reopen. Among survey respondents, almost all—96 percent—said that missing out on the on-campus MBA experience is a “major concern.” Approximately one-third of the admitted students said that they will want to defer their start year if students are not invited back to campus in the fall, while fewer than one in five (17 percent) said they are okay with attending classes online. Just under half, 43 percent, believe that tuition and fees should be reduced if MBA programs cannot be conducted on campus, with a suggested tuition decrease averaging 37.5 percent.

With most business school deans reporting that they do not believe campuses will return to normal operations until September 1, 2020 or later, according to a recent survey that included 48 business school deans completed by Eduvantis, a higher-education consulting firm, there is talk that the current necessity of technology-based courses may forever impact the mode of business education delivery. The Eduvantis survey also asked deans to comment on how much their programs will “tilt towards distance learning” even after normal operations have resumed. While just 26 percent of respondents believe that their schools’ offerings will look “similar to what it was before,” a majority, almost three-fourths, say that they believe their schools will tilt more towards online learning to varying degrees. Additionally, there was notable consensus in response to an open-ended question asking deans what long-term institutional positives, if any, may stem from COVID-19 with 65 percent responding within the theme of “increased online teaching capabilities and comfortability.”

A recent Financial Times article described this period in business education as a time of innovation, and even as a tipping point for embedding technology more firmly into the foundation of the MBA experience by necessitating that even formerly resistant staff now provide online courses.  The article quotes Paul Almeida, dean of Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. “We do feel the students’ pain, the challenge they are facing, not just moving from face-to-face teaching to a virtual classroom but having to study from home and concerns about the future jobs market,” says Almeida. “But this crisis has planted seeds for innovation and transformation in the use of technology, about the potential for using our buildings differently so that people can study more flexibly and staff can telework.” He points out that distance learning can provide faculty researchers opportunities to work more collaboratively with other institutions or labs, “where we can unleash the power of working across universities.”

While this time of uncertainty is rife with questions, it seems that business school leadership and faculty are uniquely positioned to meet the challenges with optimism. Many programs have been building up online course offerings and integrating technology into course delivery for years. Prospective students, particularly those who are feeling anxious over the possibility of obtaining part of their degree online, may alleviate some of their anxiety by familiarizing themselves with their preferred schools’ existing online structure and offerings. While it is true that online substitutions will not provide the same experience as an in-person, on-campus MBA, schools are demonstrating that there is still ample opportunity for an excellent business education, and they are looking to find and integrate the best practices from this period into their standard operations.

Declining MBA Applications Prompt Business Schools to Change Program Delivery Models

Late last month the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced its decision to shut down its two-year MBA program and reallocate funds to its online MBA. Just prior to this announcement, earlier in May, the last two-year MBA class graduated from the University of Iowa Tippie School of Management.

And they’re not the only ones. Wake Forest University, Virginia Tech, and Stetson University in Florida have also cut their two-year MBA programs. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Between 2014 and 2018, the number of accredited full-time M.B.A. programs in the U.S. shrank nine percent to 1,189, with schools reporting 119 fewer two-year degrees in the most recent survey by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.”

At the University of Illinois, the numbers told a clear story: In 2015 the incoming full-time, two-year MBA program had 74 students, in 2018 it had 49, and the current matriculation for the fall of 2019 is 38 students. Applications for the online MBA program, however, have tripled since 2016. Jeffrey Brown, dean of the business school at the University of Illinois, said the full-time MBA program will lose two million dollars this year. “This was an easy business decision to make, and a relatively easy educational decision, but it was an extremely hard call to make from the emotional side of things,” said Brown.

With the documented lackluster application volume to MBA programs and amidst a strong economy, some schools are focusing on offering competitive online MBA programs, as well as more specialized master of science degrees. The Wall Street Journal noted that among the business schools included in the aforementioned AACSB survey, there were 140 new specialized master’s programs in 2018, a 16 percent jump from 2014. And the number of online MBA programs doubled to 390.

Believing that one component of the decline in applications may be due to the steadily increasing costs of the two-year MBA, Harvard Business School and University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business have both decided to hold tuition costs steady while also increasing scholarship funds.  An article in Forbes recently noted that the “decades-long steady march of escalating price increases” has been consistent across almost all business schools and has typically exceeded the cost of inflation. The article notes that last year, tuition costs increased at variable rates from 11 percent at MIT’s Sloan to 1.6 percent at UCLA’s Anderson. Chicago Booth’s decision to freeze tuition garnered praise from Dean Edward Snyder of the Yale School of Management who said, “I think that is a brilliant move… It’s not because of weakness. It’s because of strength, and it’s the first school that is stepping back and saying we are not going to keep going down this path... It doesn’t indicate how the business model is going to get redone, but it is a signal that it needs to change.”

While online models may not be able to offer the corporate recruiting and networking opportunities, or prestige that the full-time, two-year MBA provides, the programs appear to meet a need in the market for developing business skills. And they do so with added flexibility and without the high costs of tuition and time out of the workplace.

This is good news for prospective students. The online route is providing a closer substitute for educational delivery than we’ve seen in the past. And for those still interested in the full-time, two-year model, lower application volume could mean a higher likelihood of securing both a coveted spot at a top ten school, as well as scholarship money.

Online Business Courses Can Provide Value to Graduates Long After They Obtain MBA

On Tuesday, Harvard announced it would be rebranding its online course offerings from HBX to Harvard Business School Online in an effort to raise awareness and reach motivated learners throughout the world. Nitin Nohria, dean of Harvard Business School, says “Harvard Business School Online has allowed us to extend the reach of the School to people wherever they are in the world, …Through this innovation we have brought much of what is special about the HBS experience to life online, helping us to achieve our educational mission in an entirely new medium.”

Along with the announcement of the rebrand, Harvard Business School released the results of a recent survey of nearly 1,000 past participants of the online courses, who reported positive outcomes resulting from the online certificate programs. Over 90 percent of survey respondents said that obtaining the online certificate led to personal betterment, improved their professional life, bolstered their resume, and 90 percent said that it made them a more confident leader and increased their knowledge of business terminology.  Similarly, Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy released survey results from 750 HR leaders, with the majority (61 percent) saying that they believe online credentials are “of generally equal quality” to those completed in-person, an increased percentage from previous years.

This online method of offering business education complements a position that Bodo Schlegelmilch, chair of AMBA and a professor of international management and marketing at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, takes regarding the key nature of continuing education for MBA graduates in a Financial Times article published last week. The professor contends that MBAs have a need to continually top-off their degrees to stay relevant in the ever-evolving business environment. He advocates for the MBA as a “rented qualification” dependent upon graduates taking courses to renew their qualification over time. While this is a more radical idea, other business schools are also making changes to support graduates. Over two years ago all University of Michigan Ross Business School alumni, including MBA graduates, were granted complimentary access to all online course offerings and the ability to audit classes on campus. To encourage participation, the school created targeted online courses for MBA graduates returning to the workplace. Though a relatively low percentage of alumni are currently taking advantage of the offering, the most engaged are those graduates with under 15 years of work experience.

The rise in the quantity and status of online courses can greatly benefit both prospective MBA candidates and graduates. A prospective MBA student may take an online course or certificate program to help overcome a perceived weakness in his/her application to business school, or to demonstrate commitment to a particular focus area. Prospective students may also want to consider future access to online or in-person offerings for alumni during the school selection process. For MBA graduates, continued online coursework exhibits a commitment to continual learning and improvement.  These courses are being taken more seriously by corporate recruiters and the business schools themselves, so prospective and former MBA students should use them to their advantage.