There’s no reason a top MBA program can’t be affordable. While the average MBA student debt exceeds $100,000 for many top-ranked schools, that’s not the case at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. MBA graduates from the Foster School can expect just $35,104 in debt; that’s over $3,000 less than last year. And that lower debt doesn’t mean less opportunity. Foster grads have one of the highest job placement rates and highest salaries, averaging 95.6% in employment and $118,405 in earnings.
The reason for the Foster School’s affordability is because the school has been able to offer more MBA scholarships than ever. Dan Poston, the Assistant Dean for Master’s Programs, explained how Foster looks at scholarships differently in a recent article. “As a policy, Foster does not grant ‘full ride’ scholarships. Instead, we choose to spread scholarship awards across a larger percentage of students than some other schools enabling us to reduce the cost for more people,” he said.
According to a recent data analysis, the Foster School is one of the few top-ranked MBA programs with an average salary over $110,000 and average debt less at 30% of the salary. It makes Foster one of the most affordable MBA programs in the top 30.
Using the MBA Rankings Calculator along with data from U.S. News, Businessweek, Forbes, Financial Times, M7 Financial, and the Economist, Foster ranked top programs by the average debt percentage of average salary. Foster came in fourth overall behind Wisconsin-Madison, Brigham Young (Marriott), and Florida (Hough).
As a business school in a leading public university, we believe offering a first class graduate business education while still keeping the tuition at a reasonable level is part of our public mission,” Poston explained. “Also, we know graduating from an MBA program with a large debt often limits post-MBA career options.