Local Schools Keep Eye on Enrollments
With a slowing economy worsened by Sept. 11, Orange County business schools are watching their MBA application and enrollment numbers for fallout from the uncertain environment.
“The trends are a little bit early to call because of the economic situation and the world affairs situation,” said David Blake, dean of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. “This hasn’t been a gradually oncoming recession,this is more like falling off a cliff.”
While tough times can yield counter-cyclical benefits for universities and colleges, Blake said it was “much too early to determine” whether UCI’s master’s of business administration enrollment would benefit from the downturn.
“We’ve seen very substantial increases in applications this past year, but we don’t yet know what the effect of Sept. 11 will be,” he said. “This is a new thing, and we’re not exactly sure what it’s going to look like.”
Last year, Blake said many top schools found “flutteriness” in full-time MBA applications that came as a result of a “very precipitous drop in the economy,” he said.
“There have been non-trends for both the 2000 and 2001 school years, which indicates uncertainty,” Blake said.
He said that for academic year 2000, some schools’ MBA enrollments were up and some were down. There simply was no trend at a time when the dot-com industry appeared strong.
For this academic year, with applications that came after the tanking of the dot-com sector, Blake said the pattern of applications showed the same non-trend,some schools up and some schools down,which once again indicates uncertainty, he said.
“Picture a butterfly flapping its wings up and down and you’ll get an idea of what a non-trend like this resembles in visual terms,” Blake said. “There also has been no clear trend for back-to-back years in the quality of applications.”
And yes, that’s another indicator of uncertainty, he said.
While UCI’s Graduate School of Management plans to nearly double its full-time MBA enrollment, the school is facing state budget cuts that could conceivably force it to slow enrollment (see related story on page 22).
But Blake said he expects MBA enrollment to show long-term growth.
“It’s our belief that we should prepare for the longer term upsurge rather than be focused on the uncertainties of the moment,” he said.
UCI’s MBA enrollment fell 4% to 807, according to this year’s Business Journal directory of business schools.
California State University, Fullerton, counts 450 MBA students, up 4% from last year, and the school said it will begin offering an entrepreneurship concentration six months from now.
School officials reported that the dot-com meltdown had spurred interest in MBA programs.
“I noticed a bit of a drop in MBA enrollment during the height of the dot-com era,” said Thomas Johnson, associate dean of the school’s College of Business and Economics. “We also saw people quitting midstream, because they couldn’t resist the temptation of joining a dot-com.”
Johnson echoed Blake’s opinion that it still is too early to tell how the recession will affect MBA enrollment.
“The economic slowdown was occurring before Sept. 11, but the slowdown has accelerated since then,” Johnson said. “We have observed historical patterns where economic contractions have led to growth spurts in enrollment.”
This year’s Business Journal directory of 36 Southern California MBA schools shows that their total enrollment grew a modest 2% in the previous year, to 15,515. The number of MBA graduates grew 2% to 5,375.
On this year’s directory, the biggest MBA program in Southern California is at Pepperdine University, although enrollment there actually fell 3%, to 1,813 students.
Along with Cal State Fullerton, schools that reported enrollment gains included: Azusa Pacific University, up 43% to 200, and Riverside-based La Sierra University, up 81% to 78. n
