Enrollment in master of business administration programs serving Orange County is up by nearly 1%, stopping three years of declines.
The figures were compiled in this week’s Business Journal directory, which features 40 schools that offer MBA programs at campuses across Southern California.
OC campuses attracted 4,016 students, up from 3,983 a year earlier, while MBA enrollment in Southern California overall was 15,386, down 2.1% from last year.
Past enrollment decreases were largely due to shrinkage at Trident University International in Cypress, OC’s biggest MBA administrator. The school didn’t submit its figures this year.
• Several MBA schools reported enrollment increases, including Brandman University in Irvine, whose School of Business and Professional Studies enrollment rose 48.7% to 235 students.
Glenn Worthington, dean of the business school, credits the increase to the university’s strong ties with the local business community.
The school recently formed a business advisory council comprised of local executives that meets three times a year and serves as a “sounding board” for ideas on how to continually improve its MBA offerings.
“The business environment changes year to year,” Worthington said. “We asked them what they want to see in our MBA program, and we have delivered on that. The key areas they wanted us to focus on were leadership, ethics, corporate responsibility and sustainability, and innovation.”
The business school is ranked No. 70 on the U.S. News and World Report’s list of the best online MBA programs.
Worthington said students appreciate the flexibility that the program provides.
“It’s a lot different than when I went to school,” he said. “Now they can [submit] their homework at two in the morning.”
• Irvine-based California Southern University, another school that offers online MBA classes, posted a 74% increase to 73 students.
• Concordia University in Irvine posted a 30% increase in enrollment to 160, the same percentage increase as a year earlier.
• Anaheim University, a for-profit school based in Anaheim, nearly doubled its enrollment, with the addition of nine MBA students.
• University of California, Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business now has 854 students in its MBA program, up from 847 a year earlier.
• Other University of California campuses in Southern California posted mixed results. University of California, Los Angeles, retained similar enrollment figures with 1,831 MBA students at its Westwood campus, seven fewer than last year.
• UC San Diego saw enrollment decline by nearly 13%, to a total of 256 students.
• UC Riverside had 227 students, a 19% uptick.
• California State University, Fullerton’s business school reported a 15% decrease in its enrollment, to 381 students.
• The Irvine campus of Pepperdine University’s MBA enrollment rose by 59% to 210 students. Pepperdine offers only part-time graduate programs here through its Graziadio School of Business and Management. The program saw a 13% decrease in overall enrollment, including at its other locations in Southern California, for a total of 870 students.
• Enrollment at the Anaheim campus of DeVry University’s Keller Graduate School of Management dipped 20% over the past year to 86 students. The for-profit university is part of Illinois-based educator DeVry Inc., which operates nine schools and offers coursework related to the business, technology and healthcare industries. The school has 727 MBA students throughout Southern California, down almost 19% from a year earlier.
• The Argyros School of Business and Economics at Orange-based Chapman University had a 6% enrollment decline over the past year.
• National University reported an 82% decline in already-small enrollment numbers, with only two MBA students in Costa Mesa. The school has 471 students enrolled in Southern California, down nearly 4% from last year.
• Enrollment at Webster University’s Irvine campus was up 20%, for a total of 120 students. The school’s Southern California enrollment figures were up to 450 students, a nearly 13% increase.
The MBA programs in the directory combined to graduate 2,130 Orange County students in the 12-month period through June, down 3.1% from a year earlier. Southern California’s graduation figures decreased to 7,029 students, or 1.6%.
