MBA programs serving Orange County posted a third-straight year of enrollment declines, falling 4% over the past year to 3,944 students, according to this week’s Business Journal directory.
The directory features 40 schools that offer MBA programs at campuses here or in neighboring areas that draw students from Orange County.
This year’s decline in local MBA enrollments follows a 27% drop a year earlier and an almost 7% decrease in 2010.
The double-digit decreases of the last two years largely were due to sizable enrollment drops at Trident University International in Cypress.
Trident saw its enrollment cut by 17% compared with a year ago, to 1,166 students as of August. The for-profit, fully online school shed about 1,700 students a year earlier, shrinking its student base at the time by 55%.
The rest of the schools on the directory would have combined for an almost 2% uptick in enrollment last year without Trident and an increase of about 3% this year.
Trident has been under review for accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which in March said it was placing Trident on probation. The association said the school has made “significant strides in addressing the areas of non-compliance” but still falls short of two of four standards for accreditation.
Trident did not return calls for comment.
Seven of the other 39 schools on the directory also reported enrollment drops.
University of California, Irvine, has seen enrollment at its Paul Merage School of Business decline almost 5% in the past year, and now has 800 students in its MBA program, the largest on the Business Journal directory in terms of enrollment. UC Irvine had the second-biggest MBA program last year, behind Trident.
Mihaylo College of Business and Economics
Other University of California campuses in Southern California—Los Angeles, Riverside and San Diego—have combined to gain 102 students over the year in their MBA programs for a 5% uptick.
UCLA now has 1,838 students at its Westwood campus, UC Riverside has 190 students, and UC San Diego has nearly 300.
California State University, Fullerton’s business school reported a 10% increase in its MBA enrollment from a year earlier, to 449.
Cal State Fullerton also has additional students who take select MBA courses but aren’t enrolled in the MBA program full time, said Christopher Kondo, interim director of graduate programs at the Mihaylo College of Business and Economics and director of the school’s Sales Leadership Center.
“The full-time program is relatively new,” Kondo said. “We just got done with processing our [second] incoming class. We had significantly more applications in the second year, but we’ve kept our cohort size in the 25-students range.”
Pepperdine Down
The Irvine campus of Pepperdine University saw its MBA enrollment decrease by 20% to 132 students. Pepperdine offers only part-time graduate programs here through its Graziadio School of Business and Management. The program saw a 12% decrease in enrollment overall, including its other locations in Southern California, for a total of 996 students.
Seven local schools reported gains in enrollment, with the largest increase coming from the Anaheim campus of DeVry University. The for-profit school saw enrollment at the OC location of its Keller Graduate School of Management quadruple from 25 to 107 over the past year.
DeVry University is part of Downers Grove, Ill.-based educator DeVry Inc., which operates nine schools and offers coursework related to the business, technology and healthcare industries.
DeVry University has 893 MBA students throughout Southern California, up 11% from a year earlier.
Irvine-based Brandman University doubled its enrollment here to 158 students. Brandman has other campuses, including in Temecula and Coachella Valley. Brandman’s Irvine campus accounts for 41% of its overall MBA enrollment in Southern California, which has grown 83% over the past year to about 380.
Concordia University in Irvine posted a 29% increase in enrollment to 123 here, its sole location.
The Argyros School of Business and Economics at Orange-based Chapman University saw its student population grow to 261 over the past year, an increase of 20.
Bristol University in Anaheim, formerly known as Kensington College, has boosted its MBA program by 28% to 32 students over the past year.
The MBA programs in the directory combined to graduate 2,176 students in the 12-month span through June, up 5% from a year earlier.
