MBA schools got an overall enrollment bounce in the past year, though gains tapered off a bit from a year ago.
This week’s Business Journal directory includes all Southern California universities offering MBA degrees.
The directory is a mish-mash of traditional MBA schools, such as the University of California, Irvine and the University of Southern California, smaller schools such as Concordia University in Irvine, and Internet-based schools like Touro University Inter-national in Cypress.
The big five traditional schools with MBA programs in OC,California State University, Fullerton, UCI, Chapman University, Pepperdine University and USC,reported a 3% decline in enrollment here. Campus-wide MBA enrollment fell 5% at the schools. Pepperdine accounted for most of the decline.
Several factors are at work with MBA enrollment. Full-time MBA enrollment generally is counter-cyclical to the economy. When times are tough and unemployment is on the rise, people think more seriously about getting an MBA,the opportunity cost of foregoing work in favor of school is lower. Laid-off workers also are attracted to full-time programs.
But during an economic uptick, part-time evening enrollment in MBA programs tends to rise, since people are more likely to be employed while taking classes.
Overall, the schools on the directory showed an 8% rise in students to 5,459, versus a year earlier. The number counts all MBA students, including ones at online schools like Touro, which itself showed a 22% bump in students to 1,950.
Last year’s crop of MBA schools reported 10% growth in students. Campus-wide MBA enrollment fell 2% to 13,769, compared to 6% growth on last year’s listing.
The number of MBA students in OC graduating in the past year grew 12% to 1,756, reflecting previous years of bigger enrollment increases.
MBA programs in the California State University and University of California systems, which rely heavily on state funds and dominate the OC landscape, showed modest growth.
UCI’s Graduate School of Management saw enrollment rise 5% to 900 students.
“The economy is improving and companies are more willing to finance the lifelong education of their employees,” said Andy Policano, who became the school’s dean in August. “We’re seeing enrollment up at all our professional working programs, which encompass people with full-time jobs.”
UCI has a full-time MBA program, an “executive” program for those with a lot of work experience, a “fully-employed” program for people with an average job history, plus an MBA for people in the healthcare sector.
Cal State Fullerton reported a 7% increase in students to 418.
The university’s information systems MBA specialty was the only segment that declined, said Thomas Johnson, associate dean of the school’s College of Business and Economics.
“The bottom dropped out of that program a couple of years ago,” Johnson said. “The high-tech sector has recovered somewhat but that recovery hasn’t been reflected to the point where people want to pursue it as part of an MBA.”
Johnson said the business school is planning to promote itself more heavily than it has in recent years.
“We haven’t done much promoting historically but now we’re holding information sessions,people are less interested than a few years ago,” he said. “I don’t think the luster has gone off in a significant way. I do think people nowadays are more interested in entrepreneurship and start-up opportunities. They may be a little less oriented to working for big corporations.”
Meanwhile, Johnson said MBA enrollment growth could be limited by the rebounding economy.
“Opportunities out there can get too good and that hurts enrollment,” said Johnson, who nevertheless expects the MBA program to rise to 450 students next year.
Malibu-based Pepperdine saw enrollment at its Irvine campus dip 22% to 508 students in the past year.
Chapman in Orange reported an 8% rise in MBA enrollment to 149 students in the past year. The number of Chapman MBA graduates grew 2% to 45.
“Generally, the amount of people interested in MBAs is down, so schools now have to make a more concerted effort to market the advantages of getting an MBA,” said Jon Kaplan, who became associate dean in summer for Chapman’s George L. Argyros School of Business & Economics. “Typically, schools focus on promoting themselves only to people who already are interested in an MBA, and that pool is dwindling. People a few years ago saw the weak economy as an opportunity to take a couple years off (and attend school). Now that the economy is picking up, people see the costs as being a little bit higher than during that downturn.”
The school this year instituted a program called “Dinner for Eight,” where students have a meal with an OC businessperson. Dinners have included talks by Don Robert, chief executive of Costa Mesa-based Experian Information Systems Inc., a unit of Britain’s GUS PLC; and Clark Higgins, chief executive of Irvine-based Jonathan Engineered Solutions.
“The idea is to get our students in front of these people in an informal setting,” Kaplan said.
