Wharton, Berkeley, NYU Offering Online MBAs For the First Time
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Wall Street Journal: Starting next year, executive M.B.A. students at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania can earn the $223,500 degree from their living rooms. After years of resistance, some of the country's top business schools are starting virtual M.B.A. programs that require only a few days of in-person instruction. Wharton and Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business said they would include options for executive and part-time M.B.A. students to take most coursework online in 2023. This fall, part-time M.B.A. students at New York University's Stern School of Business and the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business were given an online option for most of their classes. All of the programs will charge online students the same tuition as those who attend in person, and those online students will get the same degree and credential as on-campus counterparts. The move to give students flexible location options comes as demand for two-year, full-time traditional M.B.A. programs has been dropping amid a competitive job market and growing concern about the cost of college. Between 2009 and 2020 the number of online M.B.A.s at accredited business schools in the U.S.more than doubled, and schools added more fully online M.B.A. degrees over the past two years during the pandemic, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Recent announcements by Wharton and others mark a turning point for adoption of the degrees even at highly ranked campuses, school leaders say. For decades, part of the M.B.A.'s allure has been the face-to-face networking.But over the past two years, fully online M.B.A. programs in the U.S. enrolled more students than fully in-person programs, according to the association's survey of more than 150 business schools. A McDonough official said that part-time M.B.A. students tend to be less interested in the networking aspect of school.
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